Former Dundee MP’s poverty plea
From the Dundee Evening Telegraph, 29 April 2005
Dundee-based Oxfam campaigner John McAllion today called on people across Scotland to stand up and be counted in the fight against global poverty and environmental decline.
The former MP for Dundee East made the plea at the City Chambers as he gave the International Workers Memorial Day lecture, entitled Natural and Man-made Disasters, organised by the city council and the Scottish Churches Industrial Mission (SCIM).
During his talk, he argued that the damage wrought by disasters, whether caused by the hand of man or by the unyielding force of nature, is largely preventable.
“Whether disasters are natural, as in the tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean, or man-made, as in the ongoing emergency in Darfur, the one common feature to them all is that it is always the poorest who suffer most,” he said.
“Research has shown that fatalities from natural disasters that hit wealthy countries average 20-30, while for poor countries fatalities average 1000.
“Hurricanes, for example, hit Haiti — one of the poorest countries in the world — as much as the USA, but the Americans have the resources to do something to prevent large scale casualties.
“It’s the same with the tsunami. Wealthy countries around the Pacific like
Japan and New Zealand have an early warning system, while the Indian rim
countries don’t.”