By: Bikal Dhungel
Every year, the head of leading industrial nations meet in a
place to discuss various issues. This year in Hamburg, Germany, as the head of
state of G20 met, the vandals vandalized the city in such an extent that was
not seen since World War II. A whole street full of Cars were burnt, shops
vandalized and infrastructure destroyed. Who really did this was the matter of
heavy debate. The main-stream media blamed left-wing extremists whereas the
left is blaming the center-right parties of organizing this vandalism in order
to win votes in the coming election. Whoever vandalized the streets, this is
not new. Every year when G7 or G8 met, a large protest of NGOs, Environmental
Groups and anti-Globalisation protestors followed. Their demand is genuine,
which is to question just policies for all the citizens of the world. They
criticise G8 leaders for ignoring the interest of the poorest among the poor
and environment and representing the issues of the rich. Although the economic
development reached to the epic like never before but this happened in the cost
of planet earth which will further pressure the poor and drive them out of their
villages due to natural catastrophes.
The G20 this year, 2017 consisted of world's largest
economics which included just one from Africa and one from South Asia, which
are two poorest places on Earth. The representative from Africa, which is South
Africa and the representative from South Asia, which is India are not poor,
they have achieved high development in the recent year. They are not really the
voice of the poor. The G8 or G7 or less , which does not really have a
manifesto started after 1973 started with the Oil Crisis. Years proceeding
this, powerful nations met to discuss issues that are of their interest. From
2008, the G8 countries, USA, Russia, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and
Canada are meeting in a regular basis, at least once a year.
After the year 2008, G8 has dealt some issues like Climate
Change, Energy, Terrorism, Poverty, Food Security , Financial Crisis etc. There
are other issues that are not open or at least not disclosed. However, even
though world leaders have promised a lot to deliver but has not even delivered
even one fourth of it, the agreements have been a water on sand. However, as
leaders are changed, their political poles change, the agreements done in the
past are difficult to implement. For example, President Barack Obama initiated
agreement that promised food security and development aid for climate change,
the promised fund for the coming years were stopped when Donald Trump became
president.
The left wing protestors are blamed to be stupid because they
are against Globalisation. Globalisation has created more winners than losers,
this is the fact because numbers and statistics can prove that. Of course there
will be losers but if the gains from the winners compensate the losers and if
everybody are better off after that, we can consider it has a gain. But this
does not mean that we have to do everything to reduce the losers and the burden
to the poor. If distributive justice is not functioning well, the losers cannot
be compensated and hence, there will be opposition. Unfortunately, this is the
truth in current situation. Taking the example of Niger Delta, the government
sell Oil, companies pay the tax and government is supposed to use this gain for
social causes but if due to corruption, the government is not investing for
social issues at all, the people living in Delta area will bear the cost
through environmental hazards but do not get the gain in the form of education
and other supports. Hence, the protestors are right to protest as distributive
justice worldwide has terrible credibility. However, these are few issues that
are minor. The G8 , in its core idea is actually there to talk about the issues
that really matter. For example international terrorism, economic crisis,
financial crisis etc. They are even successful in it. But still, in the cost of
the poor. Poor, not only from poor countries but also from their own countries.
When we take inequality as an example, which is a deep-rooted societal problem,
about 1% of the people in G8 countries possess 60% of their wealth and about
10% richest own over 90% of the wealth, which clearly shows that a vast number
of people are poor. A recent study in Germany showed that 40% of the people
have factually no wealth. At the same time, governments are deeply concerned
about the lack of fund for public kindergartens, universities, infra-structures
etc but at the same time, they are promising tax breaks for the rich. They know
that the fund is lacking everywhere but at the same time, not doing anything or
even fostering the Tax Heavens. All the leaders of G8 countries know about
Cayman Islands, about Switzerland, about Singapore and their fond of being tax
heavens but still, nothing has been done, why ? because politicians support
them, or their base. If countries really want to , they can solve the problem
very easily. The US government proved that with Switzerland, i.e. to make them
disclose the information of US tax avoiders or face dire economic consequences.
The swiss calculated costs and benefits and finally agreed to disclose the
information. This shows that this problem can be solved very easily. If G8 does
not even talk about it, they are supporting it. Silence is supporting the oppressor,
being neutral is supporting the oppressor. One reason why there are protests.
Second reason, the real problem of our world is poverty, or
at least it is the root of all problems. As long as there is poverty, people
are vulnerable to join terrorist forces, as long as there is discrimination,
people are prone to be violent, as long as there is discrimination, there can
be no real peace. Still, basically nothing is being done to solve these issues.
Then comes health. We live in a global world. Not only our movement is global ,
rather the connection, the business and unfortunately diseases. Viruses see no
border and the risk of Ebola can be felt equally in Montreal like in Mogadishu.
Although lot has been done for health in the last decades, the aid in this
sector declined, but it should have been increased. Donors have justified it
through the lack of fund, which is not true. the fund for defence has
increased. And they aim to fight disease outbreaks and civil wars through
military. This is a wrong way. As long as there is poverty, as long as people
are poor, there will be war. As long as rich countries do not invest in
providing jobs at home in Africa, there will always be the movement to people
towards Europe. Only when Angela Merkel did some deals with african countries
to do something in their country, in their place, the number of Refugees
declined. She decided to fight the root, not the problem itself through a
top-down process.
To make the list long, there are other issues that deserve
immediate attention, like Women's issue, domestic violence, nuclear weapon,
development, inequality, freedom, oppression, disease, education and so on and
on which have wide international implication, politicians are being too narrow
sighted, they are just thinking about the next few hours. However, when my
child becomes an adult tomorrow, she will ask, ' why the heck you didnt raise
voices to solve these easily solvable problemes ? , ' why the heck you did
nothing for our climate and even deteriorated it ?', 'why the heck you put the
world in such a mess that it is almost impossible to fix it ' ? These are the
questions we need to answer our future generations. If we put Paris agreement
under the carpet and tomorrow see one billion climate refugees, our children
will know us that we closed the eyes and steal their future, steal their
prosperity, took out happiness from them, took out their right on this
beautiful planet and stand there shameless with no answers why we did it. The
G8 protestors might have different aims in participating this but there are
huge number of people in our society who are asking genuine questions , that
is, 'economic growth makes no sense if the planet is destroyed fully to be a
dead zone'
The leaders should be visionary. They leaders should think
about the future as well along with the present. A leader should also disappoint
public opinion when it is necessary for the sake of this planet and more about
the social issues which will directly impact our economic well being. If the
leaders lack these visions and follow the narrow nationalistic policies to
serve the few 1% on top of the society, the protest will grow, the protest will
be justified and the mass will , some day, take over the power, possibly in an
ugly way. Hence, to keep peace and harmony among the people, G8 needs to be
reformed. It is good that it now invites G20 but when the issue is about
poverty, people related to poverty deserve participation in the meeting and
similar for other issues.
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