Dear Editor,
‘How should we respond to the world’s poorest?’, asked Justin Hall (en September). We should ‘give and continue to give’ was his answer, and he has a point, since, as Jim Wallace, put it in relation to Matthew 25.31-46: ‘People will be stunned to discover they will be judged, not on the basis of right doctrine, personal piety or sexual ethics, but on how they treat the poor.’ But unhappily, as I stated when Tearfund took me to Tanzania and Zambia in 2011: ‘We have these great injustices, that are grinding down entire generations, across whole continents. The idea that we can rectify [extreme poverty, etc.] without getting major ‘structural’ changes, is delusion.’
‘Structural injustices’, such as unfair trade rules, tax fiddles by big corporations, and repayments of historic debts, cost poor countries far more than they get in aid, and then there’s our habit of ‘poaching’ many of their best trained people. The effects amount to nothing less than economic terror. As Aminata Traori, the former Malian government minister, put it: ‘Hypocrisy. They are killing us while they say they are developing us, but they are lying.’
