Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Drive Global Poverty to Extinction

Yesterday millions of people around the world who leapt to their feet to support an end to world poverty may also gain a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The STAND UP campaign is an event organised by the Make Poverty History coalition.

Unfortunately, just a one-minute leap up on the feet is not the solution to combat global poverty even if it creates a Guiness Record.

The root causes of poverty will have to be addressed and action taken on those problems can only help to alleviate poverty.

One example of a success story to empowering the poor stands out, thanks to the Norwegian Nobel Committee who recently awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to Professor Mohammad Yusuf of Bangladesh and the Grameen Bank that he founded to help the poor.

Bangladesh is a country that suffers an image crisis in addition to the problems of poverty that it shares with many other countries.. All the negative attributes like pervasive corruption, weak governance and political leadership, widespread poverty and backward economy conditions are the same problems that many other countries continue to experience.

Though poverty, corruption and economic backwardness are no stranger to many other countries of the world, the poverty of political leadership is not so conspicuous elsewhere as it is in Bangladesh. As a consequence, Bangladesh has remained a perennial and convenient whipping boy.

Its time for the international community to wake up to this reality and call for accountablity from those who are entrusted with the responsibilty to help the poor. The world has more than sufficient resources and wealth to let everyone live a dignified life.

Technorati tag: poverty, make poverty history

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