Caritas launches MDG campaign at UN

(September 20, 2010) Meanwhile Caritas International has urged the UN’s MDG summit to put justice for the poor at the heart of its development plans. Abbe Ambroise Tine, the secretary general of Caritas Senegal is participating in the Sept. 20-22 talks as the representative of Caritas Internationalis, the confederation of 165 national Catholic charities worldwide. He will be speaking on Wednesday about how justice and not charity is key if the MDGs are to be met. said that a poor family in Senegal will almost certainly not have heard of the Millennium Development Goals. But they are working every day as hard as anyone to achieve them. They just know the MDGs by a different name - survival. What is needed, Abbe Tine said, is political will from world leaders to see through the promises their governments are already committed to. That political will must take the form of further debt cancellation, fair international trade rules and more aid, better spent. According to Abbe Tine it is not simply a question of more money. We need political leaders to regard all people as human beings whose dignity, freedom and right to better living conditions are deemed sacred and inviolable. Caritas is running an international campaign in support of the Millennium Development Goals.