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Cf . WCC press release PR-04-56 of 11 November 2004
From Sweden to Kenya, churches should take responsibility for mobilizing locally and advocating for economic justice at their national government level. This was one of the main messages from a public seminar on "The role of the churches in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals" taking place in New York City during a World Council of Churches (WCC) International Affairs and Advocacy Week at the United Nations.
Based on a vision of justice and a radical change in economic ethics as the ultimate goal of church advocacy, the focus for the14-19 November Advocacy Week's first session was on the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as one step towards a more just society. The MDGs were agreed by the UN, and aim to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.
Speakers at the seminar, representing a variety of WCC partners, agreed that the power to achieve the MDGs and debt cancellation lies with the national governments in the South as well as the North, and that churches should focus their advocacy work on these governments. Mobilizing at the grassroots, local, level on economic issues, and advocacy on good governance and anti-corruption campaigns at the national level, are important ways that churches can work towards more just economic systems, they suggested.
"The hope of humanity is in the churches. Churches need to challenge the neoliberal policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund when they undermine the spirit of the Millennium Development Goals, and also need to keep national governments in the South accountable to rational and honest use of their national resources," said Polycarp Omolo Ochilo, director of international affairs, service and witness with the All Africa Council of Churches.
Salil Shetty, the executive director of the UN MDGs Campaign, suggested that churches can be critically engaged in unifying and mobilizing people. He offered many positive examples of creative MDG campaigns across the globe, from Italy to Brazil, showing how mobilization of civil society can call attention to issues of poverty and call for government integrity and responsibility.
Chien Yen Goh from the Third World Network highlighted the inequitable trade policies that make it very difficult to achieve the goal of "creating an international partnership for development". According to Goh, trade is a crucial part of global society, and trade policies should ideally serve the needs of development within a government’s overall policy. Current economic systems and patterns of liberalization critically weaken necessary structures and widen the gap between poor and wealthy countries.
"It is impossible to meet the MDGs without 100% debt cancellation for the poorest countries," said Neil Watkins of the Jubilee USA network. Interest payments are crippling many countries, to the extent that Zambia is paying 20% of their national budget on debt interest and repayment, and only 3% of their budget on health care. This is happening while their country suffers from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and life expectancy has gone from 50 years in 1980 to 38 today. Watkins also pointed out that there is no evidence that debt relief has contributed to corruption and increased military spending; he suggested that in fact, all the evidence shows that debt relief has freed funds for poverty reduction.
Like many churches around the world, the Church of Sweden has been active in the Jubilee campaigns, and staff person Karin Lexén said that they "will continue to rally around the Millennium Development Goals as one tool for advocacy towards a more just economic system".
2005 will be a critical year for work on issues of economic justice. This year offers a new opportunity to put poverty and human rights back on the agenda and to show critical links with the current overarching security concerns. Discussions on 100% debt reduction are actually happening within many governments, and there will be a review of the MDGs as well as other major economic policies.
Speakers at the public seminar were the moderator, John Langmore, former director of the International Labour Organization liaison office at the UN, and keynote speaker Salil Shetty, executive director of the UN MDG campaign. Responding to them were Chien Yen Goh of the Third World Network, and Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA
By the year 2015, all 189 United Nations member states have agreed to meet the following goals:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by half
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
For more detailed information on the goals and the background of the goals, see the UN website
Media contact person: Dr Laurence Konmla Bropleh, permanent representative, WCC UN Liaison Office, tel: 212- 867 5891, Mobile: 1 202 258 4166 email: [email protected]
Information on the 2004 WCC Advocacy Week is available at:
www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/advocweek04.html
More information on the work of the WCC UN Liaison Office (UNLO) in New York is available at
Photos from the 14-19 November International Advocacy Week are available on our website at:wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/advocweek-photos.html