IPU Debate: Pushing Back the Frontiers of Poverty
 

Madame Speaker, 

The IFP takes this opportunity to make inputs that may eventually help to inform our own Parliament's position at the IPU Assembly which takes place in Cape Town in April. 

I have listened to poverty eradication debates for too many years to count.

I heard them in Washington; in London; in Geneva; in Strasbourg; in Beijing; in Kuba and in many other cities of the world - even here in our own land. 

I have listened to too many firm resolutions to count on how we are going to eradicate poverty. I have heard about time schedules; of cutting down poverty by certain target dates; and by what percentages poverty will be reduced. 

But in the end? 
 

Madame Speaker --- 

In the end it is all  -- Words. Words. Words. 

Just more and more resolutions and resolutions and resolutions on how to eradicate poverty. 

And the end results? 

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That, unfortunately, is the end result. Very little comes from the millions of words spoken at dozens of podiums over many decades on how to eradicate poverty. 

Call me a pessimist if you so wish. Because I'm going to say we will once again be faced with words at the forthcoming IPU meeting.  

Words. Words.  And many beautiful resolutions on how to eradicate poverty. 

And thereafter? 

The same. Just the same. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. 

So, then, what are we to do? 

There can but be one real solution. 

That is to create the will to eradicate poverty.  

Because that will does not really exist. 

It was the same with global warming. It took years to foster a strong political will to do something about global warming. Al Gore got his teeth into global warming and things are now starting to happen. 

To eradicate poverty you need more than one Al Gore. You need many of them.  

The time has arrived for many dozens of prominent persons all over the world to form a strong structure to address world poverty.  

The Bill Gates type of billionaires; retired prominent politicians; academics; churches; statesmen; ordinary people and others from the whole spectre of world society are to get their teeth into the challenge. 

They must demonstrate the WILL to eradicate poverty. The must form a massive structure to do so.

 And produce results: More than just words and beautiful resolutions! 
 

In conclusion, Madame Speaker 

Let it therefore be written one day that it was at Cape Town in 2008 that the solution was born on how to really eradicate poverty.  

The whole world has to unite against poverty. 

Thank you.