Of Human Values

This post is an extract of the speech delivered during the CIRDAP Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam on 7th December 1989.

 

The Rich

Malaysia acknowledges that poverty contributes towards environmental decline but it is only because the poor are unable to help themselves. If they are denied a few natural resources that they still have, they will become poorer and would cause even greater environmental degradation. On the other hand, the rich can afford not only to reduce their waste-generating lifestyle but can expand more on reforestation of the agricultural land they had wrested from the forests. With their technology and wealth, they can make millions of acres of desert bloom.

The Poor Minorities

CIRDAP member nations comprise countries where the experience of poverty is still real and not just intellectual. The World Food Survey pegged the number of undernourished at not less than 500 million people. They need food.

Poverty has put a strangle hold on the harmonious application of the divine rule. As humans, we need shelter for rest, clean water to drink and clean environment for generation of oxygen.

Malnutrition

It is because of poverty that there is malnutrition, deprivation of shelter, drinking of polluted water and destruction of the environment. With this awareness, why are we still far from success? I cannot offer another reason except that not many nations, capable of providing assistance, are really helping. Some do and we are grateful to them. Some countries are immune to the plight of the poor even in their own country, not to mention those scattered all over the globe.

The poor in these countries are minorities who do not count for mush politically. They are a negligible lot for the politicians. We, therefore, have to help ourselves. We have to wipe out poverty from the face of this earth.

WIPER

We must start thinking of propagating a WIPER network with each institute helping to train the poor in its own country. If it has the capacity, WIPER should allow the poor from other countries to participate. There should be a world network with the same name, logo, charter, syllabus, motivation, orientation and methodology. Malaysia will be establishing one such institute. The chain of institutes will produce committed leadership with the capability to lead the poor to change and succeed in this rapidly changing world.