Image via WikipediaTo me it feels like Bill Clinton makes fun of the United Nations every year. Just when the UN is having its most important week of the year, Bill Clinton goes ahead and hosts his conference and goes on to raise more money for his foundation than is the UN's annual budget. Here is a retired white guy. I mean. The guy should have restructured the World Bank and the IMF when he was president so as to let the Global South have a greater sense of ownership with those global institutions.
All member governments need to give 1% of their GDP equivalent to the UN like citizens pay taxes in democracies.
Like Al Pacino say in a mafia movie, "I will give you money, but not power."
The US continued to not pay the UN what the US owed to the UN in obligations - taxes, if you will - when Bill Clinton was president.
No less than a Nobel Prize winning black woman called Bill Clinton "America's first black president" to honor this white guy from the South who has taken pains throughout his life to go out of his way to try and suggest maybe his heart is alright.
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeHe is not like the white guys who stood in MLK's path every way they could. His heart might be clean, but he did not exactly lead the efforts for structural changes at the global level that might have sped up the process of global poverty elimination.
A few billion dollars raised by the Clinton Foundation or a few tens of billions of dollars raised by the Gates Foundation will, at the end of the day, will not be the decisive blow to global poverty.
Poverty will not be eliminated because some white guys retired. Poverty will be eliminated because many people decided to make careers out of the cause. And perhaps the fundraising efforts send a clear message it is the private sector that will play the decisive role in poverty elimination. There are many for profit ways.
Image via WikipediaPolio could be cured. Poverty can be eliminated. And it can happen faster than many people imagine. 
No comments:
Post a Comment