The commemorative events on the first anniversary of 9/11 make it seem likely that that date will evolve into another annual day of remembrance for the fallen. But the victims commemorated on 9/11/02 were a minority of those who lost their lives on 9/11/01. In addition to the 3,000 who died from terrorism in the rich world, more than 72,500 died from poverty-related preventable diseases in the poor world.
(UNFPA’s "The State of the World Population 2001" report says that annually dirty water and poor sanitation kill approximately 12.6 million people, with air pollution accounting for a further 5.2 million, and tuberculosis another 3 million. UNAIDS notes 3 million deaths from AIDS each year.
According to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Maryland, malaria causes 2.7 million fatalities per annum—75 percent of whom are African children under the age of five. These figures total 26,500,000 and convert to an average of 72,500 per day. This figure does not include deaths from other widespread poverty-related preventable diseases such as hepatitis, respiratory infection, and bilharzia.)
Those who were actually remembered on 9/11/02 had names—as the roll call of the dead so vividly demonstrated—and photographs and videos show us their faces; they were individuals we can identify. The tens of thousands of others who died on 9/11 did not appear on our TVs or in our newspapers; they died invisibly and remain nameless and faceless to us, each one a mere statistic, but they were parents, siblings, friends, etc. to those who shared their struggle for survival. What all the victims of 9/11 have in common is that their deaths were the result of choices: the former by the suicide attackers, the latter by the economic policies pushed by the multinationals and adopted by the G8 through their bankers—the World Bank and International Monetary Fund—and their trading cartels via the World Trade Organization.
By insisting on the removal of food subsidies and the replacement of dietary staples for cash crops for export (to generate currency to service loan repayments), and by the introduction of prohibitive hospital "user" fees, the use of expensive patented medicines instead of cheaper generic ones, the privatization of water supplies (which invariably cause consumer costs to spiral, often beyond the means of the poor), and diminishing aid budgets, these bodies decide that we should not share our food with the hungry, our medicines with the sick, or try to ensure clean water for the thirsty. (See Matt. 25:31-46)
Kwesi Owusu monitors the G8 and other global institutions on behalf of Jubilee Plus. In the months preceding the Genoa summit, she "watched the world’s richest men and their hired merchants of spin talk themselves out of any vestige of real concern for the plight of the poor." In 1975 the UN set the target for rich countries—to donate 0.7 percent of their Gross National Product (GNP) to aid. By the early 1990s, the average was 0.33 percent; this has now fallen to 0.22 percent. The world’s richest nation, the U.S., is also its meanest donor—giving just 0.11 percent of GNP. The only nations to reach the UN target are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Holland.
Billions of dollars have been spent in response to the 9/11 attack. By 9/13, the U.S. Congress had appropriated $40 billion for its war on terrorism. In February 2002, President Bush increased the U.S. military spending budget by $48 billion, to $380 billion. The prospect is that billions more will be spent on a war against weapons of mass destruction. But what about combating poverty-related preventable diseases of mass destruction? Diseases that are preventable do not have to be tolerated but can be eradicated. According to the UNFPA report: "An estimated 60 percent of the global burden of disease from acute respiratory infection, 90 percent from diarrheal disease, 50 percent from chronic respiratory conditions, and 90 percent from malaria could be avoided by simple environmental interventions." The Economist reports that "16 million people die each year from easily preventable diseases." These evaluations support the claim of the South African AIDS campaigner Zackie Achmarr that "poor people die only because they are poor." James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, seems to agree: "People in poor countries . . . live on the edge. When you are living on a dollar a day [as 1.2 billion people do] it’s a question of life and death."
The 2001 Commission on Macroeconomics and Health report for the World Health Organizations calculates that an investment of $27 billion per annum on the war against poverty-related preventable diseases—0.1 percent of the collective Gross Domestic Product of the G8 (or $25 per citizen—the cost of a Harry Potter video)—would save 8 million lives each year; yet little is done. At their last meeting in Canada last year, the super-rich G8 could find just $1 billion of new money to aid Africa (the same amount they spend each day subsidizing their farmers). While 9/11 may have been a kairos day for the rich world—the day that changed the world—for the world’s poorest people, it was just another day of death. Tragically, it did not change their world. Action to alleviate the causes of their deaths has been minimal; over 72,500 have died every day since.
The multibillion-dollar response to the attacks of 9/11 and the failure to respond adequately to poverty-related preventable diseases highlights a double standard in the value of life. Do we really need to be reminded that there is that of God in everybody, that all human beings are equal, that all life is equally precious, and that the pain of death does not vary with context?
Cliff Marrs
London, England
