Earth Times - 03.20.2002

 

The Earth Times

Carter Criticizes US for not Going the Distance

By Jay Newton-Small

ONTERREY, Mexico -- Former US President Jimmy Carter is in Monterrey to attend the International Conference on Financing for Development, to debate at ministerial round tables and to criticize President George W. Bush. While Carter said he was pleased with Bush's recent pledge of an additional $5 billion in official development assistance (ODA) over the next three years, he also said that it wasn't enough.

"I was very pleased with President Bush's statement, with his commitment," said Carter. "It's the first time in 15 years at least that we've had such a weighted and dramatic statement, and I think that it's very significant that the level of development assistance will go up. You have to put it into perspective, however. The US is giving one one-thousandth of our GNP to development assistance to humanitarian causes, and if President Bush's plan is carried out we will be giving twelve ten-thousandths of our GNP. That's a tiny bit."

Carter said he's learned a lot since his presidency nearly 20 years ago, when ODA was higher, and agricultural subsidies were roughly the same level. The cold war, he said, helped him to increase ODA levels, since the US considered it a priority to compete with the Soviets for third world favor. Now, he said, it is more important than ever to raise the level of giving, and he added the US should make a firm commitment to 0.7 percent of GNP as a goal for ODA.

"There are public opinion polls that show the average American citizen thinks that we give five percent of our total GNP to foreign aid-we give about one-fiftieth of that," Carter said. "Over half of the world's population live on $2 per day or less; the average American family brings in over $50,000 a year, and most Americans I believe are very generous, but I think they just don't understand how little we give and how big the need is."

If the US were to raise its level of giving to 0.7 percent, it would mean spending more than 35 times more on overseas aid. But such a commitment is so firmly rejected by Bush that in January other nations allowed the Americans to downgrade the target's importance in the document from a commitment to an eventual goal in the consensus paper, fearing that the Americans might pull out of the conference altogether if they didn't agree with the resolution-something that has happened often in the year Bush has been in office. While many have welcomed Bush's announcement, Carter, who runs a nongovernmental organization that runs more than 65 projects around the world, thinks it should only be a beginning.

"The level of development assistance given to poor countries is extremely low, it's embarrassingly low. In the US we give one one-thousandth of our gross national product to overseas assistance. The Europeans give about three times as much, as does Japan. That is just a drop in the bucket of what is needed," he said.