Common Ground: Goodness for Hatred

August 2005 | Editor’s Note

Goodness for Hatred

The Chinese sage Lao-Tsu taught that it’s best to attend to difficulties in the world when they are still simple, that we should return goodness for hatred, and deal with the hard while it is still easy. You might think Lao-Tsu was saying tend your own garden before tackling the world’s problems; but, if ecology and human relations teach us anything, it is that our gardens are all interconnected. They are not hermetically sealed. Personal and social transformation is part of a piece. Does Lao-Tsu’s counsel apply to nations as well as individuals?

Last month’s bombings in London were timed to upstage the G-8 summit, a gathering in which Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair exhorted fellow leaders of world’s most powerful nations to focus their resources on alleviating suffering in the world’s poorest places. Eradicating poverty in Africa, providing universal access to AIDS treatment, achieving free education for all, fair trade policies and debt relief might seem like daunting aims, but they are within reach. They underlie commitments agreed to by all 189 UN member states as Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for 2015 (www.un.org/millenniumgoals ). Most experts agree that girls’ education is an especially powerful tool in reaching these goals. Consider the following:

• Women and girls comprise 70% of the world’s poor, a figure linked to their educational neglect.

• Among the world’s 860 million illiterate adults, almost two-thirds are female.

• In Africa today, more than 40% of women do not have access to basic education.

• Of more than 100 million children who are not in school, most are girls.

Women’s education impacts health issues as well:

• HIV/AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among those with some schooling.

• In 2004, over half of the three million HIV infections in southern Africa affected young people between the ages of 15 and 24.

• Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.

According to UNICEF’s Per Engebak: “Education is the only effective ‘vaccine’ against HIV/AIDS.” Hence the importance of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary schools. It is the first target of the UN’s MDGs. If all this sounds like pie-in-the-sky, here are some countries that are making it happen: Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Ghana, and Vietnam, according to recent reports by the charity Save the Children and UNICEF. Countries that keep girls in school reap long-term social and economic benefits.

Yet the pace is not fast enough. Slow progress could mean 10 million child and maternal deaths and cost poor countries as much as 3% in economic growth, according to the Global Campaign for Education (GCE).

What’s missing is political will and common sense among wealthy nations to follow up on their MGD commitments. According to the GCE, aid to basic education in low-income countries is still only about one-fifth of what’s needed. While the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries have stepped up to the plate, the slackers are most of the wealthier countries, including the USA and Japan, which, so far, have provided less than 10% of their fair share to support the UN’s Education for All initiative. Bush has proved himself to be the Scrooge of Empire.

“By educating girls,” says the UN’s Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “we will trigger a transformation of society as a whole — social, economic, and political. That is why education and gender equality must be given priority.”

What better way to answer the viciousness of the London terror attacks and the moral cowardice of the bomb makers?

— Carl Nagin

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