Pax Christi International Youth Forum

Hello everyone. Here is the translation of a little article Christiaan and I wrote for the IKV Pax Christi newsletter (sorry we flatter ourselves so much with the development aid role of the Netherlands, this is just to please the chaps at IKV Pax Christi ;)):

The Netherlands as the goodietwoshoes of the world community


Last week, Christiaan Heijting and Milan Slezák visited the youth-conference op Pax Christi in Strasbourg. The theme of the conference: The Millenium Development Goals and the meaning of military spending versus spending on development aid. "During this conference we didn't only meet with great people; we could also speak very openly about the themes presented with people all over the world"

In the entire world 1464 billion dollars a year is spent on the military, which is about 21000 dollars every second. This is hard to justify considering the fact that only five countries (among which the Netherlands) spend 0,8% of their GDP on development aid. This is only a tiny amount compared to the military spending in a lot of countries. While the relationship between both is not a direct one, this fact seems hard to justify morally.

We came to the conclusion that the army can, on the one hand, be an important means to secure the infrastructure of development aid. On the other hand, armament is one of the most important destabilising factors in todays world. Therefore, we cannot judge all military spending in the same way. What we should do is once again critically analyse what military spending is really necessary and what is not.

Development aid is subject to a lot of criticism in our time as well. We have been giving development aid to developing countries for decades now, often with very little results. While the millenium goals are mainly expressed in terms of money, it is at least as important to also look at what this money achieves in practice. Does it really bring development? Are local economic structures and the equality of men and women not also disturbed sometimes by bad development aid? We will have to take a good look at the nature of development aid to reduce the criticism on development aid.

It was a pleasant suprise to see how enthousiastic many people were about the Dutch development aid system. We are one of the five countries in the world that have reached the Millenium-goals until now (spending 0.8% of the GDP on development aid each year). We also spend relatively little money on our military (about 1,6% of our GDP). In a way, the Netherlands is therefore the goodietwoshoes of the global community and luckily the theme of the conference was not very relevant for the Netherlands on this matter. The Netherlands can be prooud to play such an important role in this matter and we should do everyting to keep playing this role in the future.

(Is goodietwoshoes really a correct English expression? A friend of mine who is studying the English language says it is, but I have never heard it before :p)