Cardinal tells world leaders to fight poverty, not the poor

(September 23, 2010) Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson encouraged nations to keep their commitments to the Millennium Development Goals and urged the United Nations not to see population control policies as "a cheap means to reduce the number of poor people." The goals, set out to halve poverty by 2015, "should be used to fight poverty and not to eliminate the poor," Cardinal Turkson said September 20 during the U.N. summit of heads of state and government on the Millennium Development Goals. The summit September 20-22 was convoked to assess the progress made in the past 10 years toward reducing poverty, combating disease, fighting hunger, protecting the environment and improving access to education. Cardinal Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, represented the Vatican at the summit and told world leaders that he spoke not only as a religious leader, but also "as an African and a man coming from a poor family. I urge the international community not to be afraid of the poor," he said. The battle against poverty can be won, but it will require solidarity with the poor, favourable financial and trade policies, and assistance in fighting corruption and promoting good government, the cardinal said. Economic policies and technology alone will not be enough to fulfil the development goals, he added. Rather, the international community must work to expand our vision to accept all as brothers and sisters with equal dignity and opportunity to access the same markets and networks. War and violence and the related illegal trafficking of persons, drugs and precious raw materials also contribute to stalling development, he said. But the key to promoting development, the cardinal said, is to protect each individual's political, religious and economic rights and freedoms; that is the secret to moving from "merely trying to manage poverty to creating wealth" and "from viewing the person as a burden to seeing the person as part of the solution."