Climbing Up to the Light

By Katherine Marshall

We are living today through an unprecedented world transformation that shatters

expectations of what citizenship means. Our new world has seen distances shrink,
human potential expand, and national borders fade in significance.
In this media world of instantaneous images, we
cannot hide from a disturbing contemporary reality:
vast gulfs separate the enormous, avoidable poverty
of billions of people from achievable living stan-
dards, decent healthcare, and basic nutrition that
could ease their suffering. We face an unmistakable
gap between what is and what should be.
Because we live in an unavoidably interconnect-
ed world, everyone who is blessed with a decent life
must today ask three questions: Why should I care
It’s still an intimidating idea to regard
poverty as something that can and must
be eliminated from our midst.
about global poverty? What is our responsibility to
act? And what can we do?
It is easily forgotten that the vast majority of
people, through most of human history, lived short
and difficult lives. Until rather recently, a quarter of
all children died before they were five, hunger was
a constant, slavery was commonplace, and educa-
tion was the privilege of a tiny minority. This situa-
tion was, for the most part, viewed as humankind’s
accepted fate: the poor would always be with us.
Charity was a duty; it could ease suffering, but would
not solve the underlying fact of inevitable poverty.
The past fifty years have given birth to a very
different reality, one whose full dimensions have
yet to insinuate themselves completely into the
way we look at the world. Revolutions of health-
care, global communications, manufacturing, and
transport have produced a demographic transfor-
mation, stretching normal lifespans so that now
we contemplate a time when our children may well
live routinely to 100. In such a globalized world, the
life of work and families themselves take different
shapes. Business, travel, and identities move across
hemispheres and cultures. In the global village, ev-
eryone is our neighbor.
By far the most exciting piece of this new real-
ity is that a decent life is truly within the reach of
almost every child born on this earth. This is a first
in human history: we have the resources and the
knowledge to end poverty. But we confront a world
that is deeply divided between rich and poor, mak-
ing true fairness a dream that is still far from reality.
Ascending the Ladder
So why should we care? There are many reasons,
but I propose a “priority ladder” to help order the
responses of our minds, our hearts, our souls, and
our hands to this new and demanding challenge.
The principles behind each rung can be found in the
teachings of the great religions, epitomized espe-
cially in the Golden Rule – to do unto others as you
would have them do unto you. They are captured
in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and
other wise calls to action and justice. Yet it’s still a
fresh, even intimidating idea to regard poverty as
something that can and must be eliminated from
our midst.
We should first care about poverty because work-
ing to eradicate it is fair and just. Human dignity, the
divine spark in human life, underlies a global ethic
that mandates giving each person a fair chance.
That ideal of human dignity and equality, however
distorted throughout history by unequal relation-

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µ Photo by Bethany Mahan
ships between men and women, between races,
and between rich and poor, underlies our modern
focus on rights.
Addressing the unfairness of inequality, we talk
today about a right to development, a right to educa-
tion, a right to food, a right to freedom. We should
not forget that rights come with responsibilities.
And once you accept that human beings are equal,
Helping the “bottom billion” means con-
fronting the conflicts that plague them
and the poor political accountability that
above all sets them apart.
endowed by the creator with unalienable rights, then
surely there is a common obligation to translate
that into something real. Thus working for univer-
sal education, making it available to all children no
matter where they are born, is not driven alone by
the goodness of our hearts but by a common hu-
man obligation. The MDGs are above all about this
common responsibility to right the imbalances of
opportunity.
Neighbors in Distress
The second rung is compassion and charity. We
should never cease from caring in the face of suffer-
ing, from following our desire to respond when we
know about neighbors in distress. The outpourings
of citizens eager to help Haitians devastated by an
earthquake or orphans without anyone to care for
them show caring humanity at its best. There are
pitfalls in such impulses – they can feed paternal-
istic and patronizing behaviors – but they cannot
efface the nobility of wanting to help.
A third important theme is gaining force: giving
poor people the chance to prosper is good for every-
one. People who get access to resources spark pro-
duction and innovation and contribute to the global
economy in countless ways. So helping people at
the “bottom of the pyramid” to prosper, for example
with microloans to start a tiny business or access
to appropriate pharmaceutical products, is a third
rung on the ladder: we should work to end poverty
because it is good business.
Fourth, today’s mobile world sees movements
of people on a new scale: migration is a dynamic
reality. Those who would block migration are the de-
lusional modern-day King Canutes who cannot see
that the human drive to seek a better life won’t be
stopped. The real solution is therefore not to build
high and ultimately futile barriers but to recognize
the interconnectedness of markets and to work to
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give people a chance to prosper in their own lands
so that their migration is not driven by desperation
and lack of opportunity.
Fifth and finally, we must recognize the contem-
porary element of fear as another reason to care and
to act: the harsh truth is that an unequal and unfair
world is dangerous for all. The anger that is fueled
by the lethal combination of perceived unfairness,
lack of opportunities, and a sense that others lack
respect takes many forms, and many of them are
violent. If we want our children to be safe we need
to address the root causes of justifiable anger and
create a fairer world.
Each of these arguments points us to an urgent
obligation to care about poverty and seek new ways
of fulfilling our duties to our neighbors. We need to
revamp our thinking and our theologies in order to
make central the new promise of equity in a coming
world where every child has a fair chance.
It also means new dilemmas. The ethics of caring
about poverty seem quite straightforward, but we
must accept that the practicalities of doing some-
thing about it are immensely complex. And there
are plenty of sages and pundits who would paralyze
us with these complexities. We need to respect the
different sides of the debates as we navigate to-
wards sensible solutions. But necessary debate and
dialogue cannot be allowed to block action. Caring
about poverty demands the best of human commit-
ment and cooperation. We must live with complexi-
ties and learn from experience as we proceed.
Progress and Panaceas
In the thickets of debate, five have particular im-
portance.
The first turns on aid versus trade: is it more im-
portant to increase financial aid to fight poverty or to
focus on bringing down barriers to trade that stymie
national efforts to grow their way towards prosper-
ity? The question these days is part of a broader
discussion of macroeconomic forces and priorities.
The good news is that the ideological posturing that
stunted progress toward attracting private invest-
ment has quieted. But the evils that many see in
the unbridled power of huge multinational compa-
nies are not figments of the imagination. Economic
growth is a means, not a panacea. This challenge is
plainly about “both/and,” not “either/or.” Economic
management is too important to leave to the econo-
mists alone; theologians need to equip themselves
to enter the fray in intelligent ways.
A second set of debates turns on governance, a
catch-all term that evokes ancient skirmishing over
the roles of states and private actors. Today it points
to fears that corruption leaches most international
aid. A dose of good sense here helps to make clear
that there are no simple answers as to how large a
government is the “right” size; each society has to
sort that out for itself, whether the United States or
Great Britain or Mali or Malaysia. Legitimate fear of
corruption should never be the excuse for failure to
act; we know so much more than we did a decade
ago about how to stop it. The refreshing power of
information, the potency of transparency in deter-
mining how and where money is spent, can work
wonders in ferreting out hidden transfers of funds
and sheer waste and incompetence. Arguably it is
harder for tyrants to be tyrants in this 24/7 media
climate of internet, blogs, and YouTube. Many bod-
ies, public and private, have practical, even inspiring
tools that can advance integrity, above all through
the “sunshine principle” of shedding light on what
is done. There will no doubt always be some corrup-
tion, but a wiser, more vigilant citizenry, using the
tools that law and administration can offer, whatever
the nation, can turn the tide against it.
Harmonizing Chaos
A third debate pits aid coordination and harmoniza-
tion against local initiative. The large and growing
numbers of development actors do indeed compli-
cate aid programs; sensible efforts to corral pro-
grams, led by local actors, are essential. It makes
Arguably it is harder for tyrants to be ty-
rants in this 24/7 media climate of inter-
net, blogs, and YouTube.
far more sense, say, for Tanzania to have a single
national health program that works toward common
goals rather than a hodge-podge of scattered though
admirable individual clinics. An international effort
to harmonize aid is slowly making a dent against a
chaos of good if often misguided intentions. Trans-
lating these tools into practice in ways that don’t
produce a stultifying bureaucracy but also respect
the innovation and leadership of local initiative are
twin challenges for the future. We can all contribute
by sensible behavior that neither puts all faith into
a coordination committee nor allows the blinkers
of a local miracle to obscure how it fits into a larger
whole.
A fourth debate focuses on how to help the most
difficult cases: the Haitis, Burmas, and Somalias of
the world – the countries of the “bottom billion.” We
can neither wait for perfect conditions nor pour in
money without accountability and sensible controls.
Addressing the poorest and most fragile societies
needs the best and brightest minds and our most
courageous souls. That means confronting the
conflicts that plague them and the poor political
accountability that above all sets them apart.
Finally, the most complex and important debate
is about the very ends of development: what kind of
global society do we want to build? What common
values should and could it be founded on? How to
do this while respecting and encouraging the rich
diversity of human cultures and their faiths? That’s
something for UN leaders to ponder as they prepare
their speeches about what lies ahead for the Millen-
nium Development Goals.
These ten challenges can frame a thoughtful ex-
ploration of where the world stands on the noble
MDG commitment its leaders made in 2000 to
end the outrage of dehumanizing poverty. At the
United Nations in September there will be plenty of
well-merited complaints of shortfalls in action and
reminders of broken promises. But the great hope
that ending poverty is a reachable dream and, there-
fore, an imperative, must be kept front and center.
Katherine Marshall is a senior fellow at Georgetown Univer-
sity’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, a
Georgetown visiting professor, and executive director of the
World Faiths Development Dialogue. She has nearly four
decades of experience in development issues, including a career
with the World Bank (1971-2006). She led the World Bank’s
faith and ethics work from 2000-2009. Her books include
Development and Faith: Where Mind, Heart, and Soul
Work Together (World Bank, 2007).
Unspeakable Monument
Imagine a public monument to the victims of pov-
erty. Imagine that it resembles the black granite wall
of the Vietnam Memorial, and it includes the names
of everyone who has died of poverty-related causes
since the end of the Cold War twenty years ago.
That would be more than 300 million names,
mostly children. To make room for so many names,
philosopher Thomas Pogge calculates, the monu-
ment would have to be 480 miles long, roughly the
distance from Detroit to New York City. To keep
up with the tally of death that continues daily, the
length of the wall would have to be extended by half
a mile per week.
Source: Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights
(Polity, 2008)