/ world today news/ Probably the most widely discussed international document now is the message of the World Bank that in 2020 the world is dramatically impoverished and something must be done about it. The document, and especially the last appeal, is clearly addressed to the upcoming annual meeting of the G-20 (leaders of the world’s leading economies), but it contains many facts that are also interesting to everyone.
And the most impressive fact is that we, that is, the world, lived very well in the last two or three decades, but few people noticed this: good things are easy to get used to. Since the early 1990s, the share of people in the world living below the absolute poverty line ($1.9 a day) has fallen from 35% to 8.4%: a fantastic success, thanks primarily to China, where around 700 million have become rich. At the start of the year, only 9.2% of the world’s population, or 689 million people, remained “extremely poor”. It was said that by 2030 there would be total victory – there would be a world without poverty.
So the WB informs us that 2020 has come – and the graph curve has collapsed downward for the first time. By the end of the year, 88-115 million people will be pushed back into poverty. And, (if you’re lucky), it will be possible to return to the starting point, the point of yesterday, maybe ten years from now.
The bank identified the causes as follows: a combination of military conflicts, climate change and pandemic. The last factor is the most important. Here you have to get into the details: the typical super-poor has until now been a resident of some remote village in sub-Saharan Africa. Now the most affected countries will be completely different – those with “middle incomes”, which will now reproduce up to 82% of the newly impoverished.
These are mostly India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and others. The portrait of those who today are thrown into poverty is this: they are more likely to be urban dwellers, working in the “informal sector” and in some industries “that were most affected by quarantines and restrictions on movement.” India, we recall, is known for the longest and most severe quarantines of any other country in the world.
It turns out, according to the bank, that 150 times more people will be on the brink of survival in the near future than have died from the pandemic itself.
In general, everything resembles the scale of losses that the world usually suffers after some kind of world war. In fact, many experts have already said that the Third World War has been going on for a long time, it is just being conducted with new methods – without military action as such (if you do not count regional conflicts). It is a war of values and approaches to global and local governance, inextricably mixed with the struggle of different lobbies and sectors of the economy, which of them will dictate to people how they should live now.
The sharp rise in extreme poverty is only part of such a process; one can recall the impoverishment of the middle class in a relatively small group of Western countries that call themselves developed. Or the very strange campaign to populate Europe or the US with migrants while talking about “white man’s innate racism”. Or other campaigns aimed at destroying the normal life of societies.
Before such a restart of the entire system happened according to the final results of massive military actions (feast of the winners), now it happens without them.
The unprecedented nature of what is happening suggests that not everyone in the world today will heed the WB’s calls to “do something” about the spike in poverty – many don’t. For example, at least the US – is there anyone who believes that America, with its current problems, is capable of improving the world?
Although G20 finance ministers have taken very seriously the idea of extending the moratorium on external debt servicing of the least developed countries until 2021, this is unlikely to be more than a drop in the ocean of problems.
China is the only great power to make optimistic statements about humanity’s ability to successfully and amicably overcome the current black streak. For example, the idea of building a “prosperous, clean and beautiful world” is quite typical of Chinese foreign policy statements (in this case, we are talking about initiatives oriented towards environmentally friendly technologies). But Beijing succeeds at best in declaratively indicating the direction in which it would like to go together with its partners. Or to lead the movement, although leadership is something that must be offered very carefully.
But if we talk about practical and effective actions, then things become more complicated. Last week, for example, China held an action at the UN – initiating a joint statement of 26 countries in the Third Committee (on social and humanitarian issues). The twenty-six (including Russia) are countries against which the USA and its allies have imposed sanctions. And the sanctioned ones are more – the list is incomplete.
The idea behind the statement is simple: sanctions must be lifted immediately. Because they always worsen the situation of the population of the countries against which they are introduced. And the present moment is precisely the time to say goodbye to sanctions and sanctions policy.
But everyone understands that now no one will take anything, no matter how many the “new poor” become. After all, what is the Third Committee – on March 23, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights called for the same, and on March 26, the UN Secretary General. And then the entire General Assembly, with a majority vote.
Yes, it is obviously already physically impossible to lift the sanctions. The Atlantic magazine lists 7,967 U.S. sanctions against any country as of May 2019. And since then (this October), sanctions have been added, for example, against 18 Iranian banks, that is, actually against those who will deal with them. And many more.
The grounds – yes, they have long been of no interest to anyone. And how – from a purely technical point of view – can you cancel this whole pile of documents, just listing which can take more than a day?
Usually, as a result of world wars, all such vechtorias are swept into the past at once. But World War III is clearly not over yet, so the opposition to sanctions and the associated fight against suddenly exacerbated poverty will not end anytime soon.
Translation: ES
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