Billion dollar Drain
Imagine sitting in a taxi with the meter ticking up $1 million a minute. That's roughy what the planet's passengers are paying for the arms race, according to a study just released by UNICEF.
Estimates of arms-spending should perhaps be given in megaton-years to reduce the number of noughts on the end, but if the figure means anything then the total bill for weapons-buying since the end of World War If is $6000,000,000,000 or about $1500 for every man woman and child alive in the world today.
One thing it does mean is that less cash is available to meet foreign aid obligations. Ten years ago, the industrialised world agreed to give 0.7% of its G.N.P. in aid to the developing countries. Today they are giving, on average, only 0.3% of G.N.P. Yet the target could be fulfilled by diverting less than 5% of the money spent on defence.
So small are the cash needs for development in comparison with the arms bill that some of the Third World's most pressing priorities could be met out of the Pentagon's petty cash account. The developing world's total requirement for agricultural assistance, for example, is $5 to $6 billion a year - one week's worth of weapons. Malaria, which now kills an estimated one million children a year, could be wiped off the face of the earth, says the World Health Organisation in Geneva, at a cost of $450 million - about as much as the world spends on arms every twelve hours.
With as many soldiers as teachers in the world, it is not just cash which is swallowed by the bottomless pit of the nuclear silo. A quarter of all the world's scientists and engineers and about half of all scientific research and development is now devoted to weaponry. ' Military assistance' concludes the UNICEF report, ' is the single most massive obstacle to development progress'.
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Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
- Raised Voices audio:
- Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
- Vinayan from India on agriculture
