A Divided World

There is strong empirical evidence for the view that economic liberalization policies – widely touted as the pathway to prosperity and convergence – have caused the gap between rich and poor in global and national terms to further widen in recent years. The 2005 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report states:

At the start of the twenty-first century we live in a divided world. The size of the divide poses a fundamental challenge to the global human community … The world’s richest 500 individuals have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million. Beyond these extremes, the 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day – 40 per cent of the world’s population – account for only 5 per cent of the world’s income … uman development gaps within countries are as stark as the gaps between countries … There will be an additional 380 million people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015.

Indeed, a critical concern is that wealth appears to be flowing from the poor to the rich within and between countries – a trend that is hugely unjust. The 2004 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNDP) Annual Report describes the yearly net transfer of US$200 billion from poor to rich countries in the form of capital flight, debt and interest payments and profit repatriation of multinational corporations.

How we can talk about peace and justice without economic justice?