Globalization and Child Deaths

Thomas Riggins

The 5-8-07 New York Times tells us that 28,000 children a day die as a result of disease (easily preventable) and starvation. That is 28,000 X 365 = 10,220,000 children a year. This report was on page A6, the front page was taken up by the problems Paul Wolfowitz is having trying to keep his World Bank job.

The ten million plus number is a great testimony to the successes of globalization. This info is from a report by Save the Children. Here is a quote from one of the report's health experts, David Oot: "In 2007, when we know what to do and how little it costs, that 28,000 kids are still dying each day is just plain wrong."

The World Bank President is more concerned with the fallout from his promotion of his girl friend than with those children, and the big powers, especially the US would rather waste its resources killing people in Iraq and elsewhere than helping those dying kids!

It was 25 years ago that the international drive to reduce infant deaths was initiated and there was some success at the start, but of late, the Times reports, "broad progress against infant and child mortality has flagged." Thanks to the US, Iraq has the highest increase in the child death rate-- its rate is up 150% since 1992 due to sanctions and war.

Last year 122,000 under 5s died in Iraq due to "deteriorating health services, rising inflation, and electricity shortages [which] have worsened living conditions" according to the report ("State of the World's Mothers: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5.")

That ten million plus a year is, by the way, worse than any genocide anywhere. It really represents a new kind of genocide, that of the rich industrial nations, the big capitalist powers, against the poor children of the world and their mothers. It is a genocide of indifference at best, at worse it is knowingly allowed to happen because natural resource exploitation and "free" trade, as well as wanting to maintain sources of cheap labor, rank as more important than these children-- cast aside to die as so much surplus population.