Millenium Goals

We are the first generation who can put an end to extreme poverty. We have the means and, for the first time, we start having political willpower to succeed. With this idea in mind, the first Millennium Summit was held in New York in the year 2000, in which representatives of 189 countries signed the Millennium Declaration. This text establishes human development priorities for the forthcoming years, in terms of peace, human dignity and eradication of poverty, resulting in eight concrete objectives –seven to be achieved before 2015. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the following ones: 

 
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
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

 
We are still far from achieving these goals, and we have even taken a step backwards in some issues since the Millennium Declaration was signed, but we are still on track. We should demand that our governments place MDGs on the top of their priority list and fulfil them. No excuse.

Sources:

1. 189 is a large representation of world countries: http://www.deliveringdata.com/2010/08/how-many-countries-are-there-in-world.html
2. Millennium Declaration: http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm
3. Millennium Goals: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
4. Current situation of MDGs: http://www.mdgmonitor.org/
5. “No Excuse 2015” campaign: http://www.noexcuse2015.org/
  

 

How much money is needed to eradicate world hunger?

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) regularly calculates the financial cost of eradicating world hunger. FAO summits encourage rich countries to donate this amount, but for the moment, all countries reply that they do not have so much money –which is an euphemism to reply that, by no stretch of the imagination, are hunger and malnutrition their priorities as governments. Among all kinds of excuses, this is one of the most recurrent: it is a noble objective but it is far beyond our possibilities. Let’s check if this is true.
In the latest World Summit on Food Security held in Rome in November 2009, FAO stated that it would take $44 billion a year to put an end to world hunger. Does it sound like a lot of money? Governments say it does, as they do not have so much money and it is a utopia to think they can ever get such an amount. However, governments do not say that in 2007, the expenditure in arms was more than 30 times greater ($1,340 billion), just to set an example. Or that $44 billion is more or less the budget of Beijing-based Olympic Games of 2008. The only thing necessary to end world hunger is just politicians’ willpower.

Sources:

1. FAO’s web site: http://www.fao.org/
2. 2009 World Summit on Food Security: http://www.fao.org/wsfs/wsfs-list-documents/en/
3. Data provided at the summit: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/37425/icode/
4. Olympic Games in Beijing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics#Costs
  

  

The official EU languages

In 1958, the first EU language policy was passed. By then, the official EU languages were only four, being the working languages of the six Member States at that time: French, Italian, German and Dutch. As a result of the EU enlargement, the number of official languages has increased, accounting for 23 at present. Official EU languages have two main characteristics: any citizen or institution can send documents to the EU and receive a reply in any of these languages, and also EU regulations, legislative documents and the Official Journal are publish in all 23 official languages. However, due to time (translations may delay even more all EU paperwork) and budgetary constraints, most procedures are carried out just in three languages (English, French and German), which are the so-called procedural languages.
Obviously, there are many more than just 23 languages spoken in Europe. In fact, all Member States have al least two languages, but each Member State specifies which language is to be used as official language. Countries can propose the inclusion of any language spoken in its territory to the EU, so that it becomes an EU official language as well. When making this decision, such issues as the total number of speakers or the language majority within the State are not taken into account. For instance, Catalan language is not official in the EU but it has a larger number of speakers than nine of EU official languages (Danish, Slovak, Slovene, Estonian, Finnish, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Maltese). Moreover, some EU official languages like Irish Gaelic are proportionately a minority language if compared to Catalan in its own country. Despite not being an official EU language, Catalan has been recognised as a communication language by the EU, that is, it can be used to issue EU information to the citizens (campaigns, publications, press releases, official web site, etc.).
With the future EU enlargement (there are 4 candidate countries adhering to the EU, namely Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia and Iceland, plus some more which have applied for it), the number of official languages will increase. This is considered to be a problem by some countries (curiously enough, by the countries with the most powerful languages). But if we take into account the data of the Eurobarometer survey on languages, 56% of EU inhabitants speak at least two languages and 28% speak at least three, so EU institutions should accept the obvious: we live in a multilingual continent.

Sources:

1. About the enlargement of the European Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_enlargement_of_the_European_Union
2. EU web page on official languages: http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/index_en.htm
3. Catalan language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language
4. Eurobarometer survey on EU languages (in English): http://ec.europa.eu/spain/barcelona/images/documents/catala/eurobarometre_complet.pdf
5. Multilingualism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism
 

  

Iceland and the press freedom

In 2008 Iceland suffered a finance crisis that collapsed most backs and the national currency and completely destroyed the country’s economy. By means of some legal stratagems, Icelandic banks could hide their bankruptcy for 4 months to avoid taking urgent measures, but it only made things even worse. Fortunately, a local television filtered some information to the web page Wikileaks so that everybody could be aware of it.
Iceland has always been reputed to be one of the best countries in the world in terms of freedom of speech. Now, the Icelandic government wishes to become an international haven for freedom of the press. Some members of the Icelandic Parliament from all represented parties are interested in Wikileaks’ proposal to introduce a new legislative regime to protect freedom of the press and pass a law including all good legislative practices from every country. The core of the matter is that there are many countries with good laws, but no country has all of them… so far.
With this new legislation, called IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative), Iceland wants to favour research journalism and freedom of the press so that newspapers, televisions and web sites get based on the island. The adopted new legal measures include legal protection of information sources, protection for public workers who would be allowed to break their duty of silence in cases of extreme public interest, and tools to fight against the so-called libel tourism, in which plaintiffs choose to file libel suits in jurisdictions thought more likely to give a favourable result. Iceland-based media could appeal against these suits, regardless of the country of origin.
Many journalist associations have already issued a very positive assessment on these measures. For instance, the Spanish Federation of Journalist Trade Unions (FeSP) stated that it is the most significant step ever in the defence of the freedom of speech.

Sources:

1. Wikileaks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
2. Icelandic Modern Media Initiative: http://www.immi.is/
3. Article about the new law proposal in Iceland: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/12/iceland-legal-haven-journalists-immi
4. About libel tourism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
  

Who needs a leader?

Times of financial, political or military crisis usually call for a strong leader. In recent centuries, chiefs of the tribe made way for kings, who made way for presidents and prime ministers (not everywhere), but today we still need leaders, who we give all necessary powers to make decisions on our behalf. And this is not only the case of governments: any group of people, including a company or a sports club, has a leader. But delegating political tasks to our democratically elected representatives (today, representative democracy is one of the most common forms of government) does not necessarily involve having leaders.
Doing without leaders may seem utopian or too radical, but nothing further from the truth. The Swiss Government is a good example of a world without leaders. For more than 150 years, Switzerland features a different system of government: leadership is collegial instead of a presidential system, that is, the government is a seven-member executive council. Every year, one of them becomes the President to represent the country, but the post confers no special powers or privileges. Decisions are taken by all the seven members of the Federal Council and most laws are approved, ratified or contested by means of popular referendum --there are four or five referendums annually. It is not perfect, but it is the closest system to a direct democracy among the examples of government around us.
It goes without saying that we still have a long way ahead to think and act by ourselves, but that’s a good beginning.

Sources:

1. Representative democracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
2. Politics of Switzerland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland
3. The Federal Council of Switzerland: http://www.swissworld.org/en/politics/government_and_parliament/the_federal_council/
4. Direct democracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy