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We should all be pursuing a lasting victory over world want

By James Cumes - posted Friday, 15 February 2002

The process involves, first, a gathering of moral support from all around the world. Then Commissions will be convened on a wide range of issues.

We will have Commissions on, for example, Economic Growth and Employment; Wealth, Income and Inequality; Mobilising Financial Resources for the War against Want; Financial and Other Pledges for the War against Want; Priority Destinations for Public Investment; Housing the Homeless; Free, Universal Education; Free, Universal Health Care; Water Resources; Transport and Communications; Rights of Economic Migrants and Asylum Seekers and Regulation of Economic, Social and Political Migration; Logistics for the World Conference; and Conference Participation and Issue of Invitations.

People sitting around the tables at these Commissions will be from India and Ireland, China and Peru, Nigeria and Nicaragua. They will be Moslems and Methodists, Brahmins and Buddhists, Catholics and Jews.

Some will be poor, others rich. The disadvantaged will sit alongside the "elites."

Their common quality will be their determination to promote the common "global" good, to reconcile differences, to abolish want and, through it all, to achieve peaceful, continuing change for the betterment of all.

The Commissions will report to a World Conference which will decide on ways to implement agreed measures.

It is crucial that, within this process, voices of dissent be heard and the content of dissent thoroughly debated. They must not be shut out as they have been from intergovernmental gatherings from Seattle to Genoa, Montreal to Melbourne; and from the World Economic Forum, in Davos and New York, where agenda and guests were acceptable to the world's 1000 foremost corporations and their smaller governing group.

That exclusion of other voices, other ideas must stop.

Governments and their mainstream advisers have failed. They have failed even to listen. Participants in the VOW process must therefore help us make a fresh start, with fresh ideas and fresh policies. Governments of goodwill and their equivalent in the economic, social and political mainstream are welcome but they must not be allowed to dominate the process.

We must have a real globalisation of ideas, not a globalisation of formulae devised to serve the self-interest of particular countries or particular economic, social or other groups.

The process will draw on the expertise of those who know both the immensity of the task and the means by which it can be successfully accomplished. We have, for example, the support of the Institute for Creditary Economics, with headquarters in Norway and Members in several countries, whose guidance will be invaluable in setting the financial framework within which VOW can reach its goals more surely and speedily. The Institute also has Members with creative expertise in urban and other transport systems which can be used, for example, in the Commission on Transport and Communications.

Finance for the VOW process and national and international infrastructure projects will come eventually, we hope, from most or all governments but especially in the preparatory stages and in stimulating governments to act, funds from private associations, foundations and individuals will be vital. Over many years, George Soros has given a magnificent lead, with generous contributions to many causes in many countries and regions. Recently, Australian Richard Pratt has donated $A100 million to use, conserve and develop water resources. This visionary initiative depends on political support, already forthcoming in significant measure. This demonstrates the way in which private and official efforts can be brought together. Private initiative supplies the vision and initial funding while governments are called upon to respond with public resources to be applied both nationally and internationally to meet worldwide needs, in this case for more, better-managed, cleaner water.

Some people see VOW as a new incarnation of the famous Charter 77 whose purpose, twenty-five years ago, was to win freedom from the tyranny of communism. VOW's incarnation as Charter 2002 is seen as a way of completing, for everyone, a victory won for the oppressed by such visionaries as Czech President Vaclav Havel.

Jozef Imrich, who courageously swam the Morava River from Czechoslovakia to freedom in Austria in 1980, has told the story of his escape in a thrilling and moving book called The Cold River. Two of his friends died. His faithful dog, Bessie, miraculously survived. The Cold River will appear next month, March 2002. Its author is one of those who see VOW as a completion of Charter 77. As a token of that conviction, he has generously donated half the earnings of The Cold River to the campaign for victory over want. With support of this kind, VOW is – humbly and gratefully – assured of success. In freeing people from want everywhere, VOW opens horizons for peaceful change we have scarcely even glimpsed before and, in the new millennium, leads us forward, not only with hopes high but, above all, with newfound assurance that we know the road we must travel by. It is a road we can and must all travel together - hands clasped, as in the VOW logo - living together, working together, prospering together.

This is not an impossible dream. It is a realistic vision. All we need is to accept the challenge and feel again the fire in our bellies that we knew at great moments in the past. In 1969, Man walked on the Moon. Now is the time to make another "giant leap for mankind" – this time right here on Earth.