By Frank Sainworla, Jr.—first published in 2011 BORDERLESS BEATS: Seeking hope and help for our world: A Liberian journalist’s worldview : Sainworla Jr., Frank: Amazon.sg: Books
There is no gainsaying the truism that whether black, white, brown, yellow or red, rich or poor, strong or weak, well-educated or less educated, unemployed, or gainfully employed, the basis for creating a peaceful and prosperous world marked by love (fairness, equity and justice) is the common consciousness of our shared humanity and responsibilities.
Hence, it would bring a realization that we all face the same challenge (though in varying degrees) of climate change, air and water pollution, global inequities, religious and ideological extremism, the widening gulf between the rich and the poor in developed and developing countries, among other things.
My trips to three of the world’s seven continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica and Australia) and interactions with people from five continents leave me with the solid conclusion that love and hate, joy and sadness, ethical and unethical, fidelity and infidelity and fanaticism and modernization can be found in peoples from all corners of the world.
All it takes to be on the right side of history is to have an open mind, be a keen observer and a good listener, asked legitimate questions and show mutual respect.
Reflecting on the recent wave of natural and man-made disasters from Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, floods across West Africa, Pakistan, Brazil, India, Australia, etc to people’s uprising in Tunisia and Egypt—with the mass media and other forms of modern communication bringing the events into our homes—what more is needed to bring home the point that we share a common humanity?
They elucidate the concept of a “global village” in which what happens in one country affects other countries positively or negatively. They also show how fragile we all can be when nature explodes, and how easy it is to have outpouring of empathy and solidarity in sharing the grief, the shock, the fear, and the joy of the moment. The Chilean miners’ ordeal and their miraculous rescue, the death of American music superstar Michael Jackson, the brief war between Russia and Georgia, the American invasion of Iraq, etc, all reinforced the global village paradigm.
In short, such incidents send one resounding message across the spectrum for realists and pragmatics, and the reverse for those who have eyes but cannot see: we are one humanity.
This is a humanity that can endure pains, sufferings and despair but can also garner hopes and aspirations and change things for the better.
Just listen to the stories of people living with HIV/AIDS, a disease which knows no borders, and you’ll understand how the desire to ‘live and let’ runs from country to country, city to city, family to family. According to UNAIDS, there are 33.3 million people living with HIV around the world, with 22.5 million living in Sub-Sahara Africa. Recent reports say on the global scale, the number of new cases are dropping, which is good news.
But it happened because of vigorous and concerted efforts from around the globe involving statesmen like former US President Bill Clinton, government departments and agencies, the UN system, global and local NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, mass communication outlets and practitioners and community groups. It happened because of shared responsibilities.
However, the first growth and greater accessibility of the communication superhighway (the internet), broader and better access of people in different parts of the world to cable news, and the ubiquity of cell phones as well as the high volume of air travels from one end of the globe to the other has contributed greatly in exposing the double standards of the rich and powerful in the international political system. A friend of mine recently cited content of Wikileaks releases of secret diplomatic cables as a classic example of double standard for rich and powerful nations of the North and an entirely different standard for the poor and weak ones in the South.
And it is still the case that when the North sneezes, the South catches cold as evident in the 2008-2010 great recession that was of US extraction but wreaked havoc from Senegal to Liberia to Bolivia and Lebanon, because of the interconnectedness of the global financial system with the US Wall Street at the helm.
Also, while some claim- for political or profit-making reasons- that there is no climate change, natural disasters and adverse weather conditions are on the rise, spotlighting both the best and the worst of humanity. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States led to the death of 1, 846 (mostly poor and middle class black people) and destroyed properties worth an estimated US$81 billion. Haiti’s devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010 killed some 316,000, with some 300,000 injured and 1.5 million people rendered homeless. Mind you, Haiti is a black nation in the Caribbean that gained independence in 1804 after a successful slave rebellion.
But nations from the US and China to Senegal and Liberia came to its aid in the wake of the ravaging earthquake though problems still abound and the ensuing cholera epidemic has not yet abated. As Yoletta Eithienne, Director of Oxfam America’s new program in Haiti, has been quoted as saying, “Working in Haiti to change things is to working to change things in the world.”
The July 2010 flood in Pakistan which affected 20 million people and claimed the lives of thousands was a shared burden for the global community. Aid came from countries in the North as well as those in the South. The massive Australia flood started in December 2010 and is said to be the worst in decades, claiming dozens of lives and damaging properties in Queensland and Victoria to the tone of a few billion dollars, as flood waters reached a peak of 4.4cm or 14ft.
The ripples have been as borderless as the reactions. The same is true of the floods that hit the West African sub-region in 2009. The UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Office (OCHA) put the number of deaths at 159. Flood waters damaged the homes of some 600,000 people in 16 countries. Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Senegal were among countries facing the brunt of this natural disaster.
Yet indeed, what happens in one country affects and challenges other countries, and a threat to life and property anywhere is a threat to life and property everywhere. And that illuminates the role of global statesmanship, leadership and citizenship. So, Africans and other developing countries must no longer be seen as subjects but partners in the development equation. The World Bank’s January 2011 World Economic Report released on January 17 hit the nail on its head: “Despite concerns about overheating, inflation currency appreciation or collapse, emerging economies have been leading global economy and will continue to do so well through this year and the next.”
And millions of people are still hungry and starving with the World Bank disclosing that 1.4 billion people around the world were in extreme poverty by the end of 2011, much work is left undone. “This painful reality of the crisis isn’t confined to income poverty. The World Bank estimates that by 2015, 1.2 million more children under five may die, 350,000 more students may not complete primary school and about 100 million more people may remain without access to safe water,” says the World Bank.
Vision and vigor, hope and help, determination and dignity, promise and performance must therefore flow from the bowels of our common humanity to tackle these challenges.