Panelists: U.S. must provide relief for developing world even in downturn

The panel, titled “What are American Obligations to Financing Poverty Relief and Global Health in Economic Hard Times?” featured founder and president of Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW) Jim Luce, Wilson School professor and World Bank researcher Jeff Hammer, bioethics professor Peter Singer and politics professor Charles Beitz.

“American obligations to global health are exactly the same during hard economic times as at other times,” Hammer told the audience of about 40.

Hammer explained that the United States spent only $16 billion in humanitarian aid last year, about .5 percent of the national budget.

“We spent more on Citibank last week, without much talk from Congress,” he added.

Singer said the United States still has an “ethical obligation” to help poorer nations because of our relative prosperity. “We are not trying to live on a dollar or a dollar fifty a day ... That gives us options,” he explained.

Singer emphasized that “we have to give more weight to [non-governmental organizations’] transparency” to understand their effectiveness.

The distance between the United States and developing nations does not justify ignoring these nations, he explained.

“That they’re anonymous, that in a sense they’re mere statistics, all these facts make it more difficult [to aid developing countries], but the morality is not essentially different when we learn we can save a life,” Singer said.

Beitz agreed, saying that individuals have the same obligation to strangers as to people with whom they are familiar.

Beitz also stressed the role of government in humanitarian efforts.

“To neglect the potential of rich countries’ governments is a mistake,” Beitz said. “Governments have the capability to mobilize responses beyond what can be reasonably expected that the private sector can.”

The $48 billion the Bush administration has committed to fighting AIDS in Africa over the next five years is larger than the amount spent by private institutions, Beitz said. In contrast, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent only $3 billion on its projects, only part of which will go toward fighting AIDS, he added.

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Luce, a former investment banker who left Wall Street to start OIWW, related his experiences as an American working to improve the situations in other countries, saying that individual efforts can make a difference.

He began this new line of work after he “played God” by adopting one infant out of the 200 in a small orphanage in Indonesia. Luce explained that the thought of having to leave 199 babies behind deeply affected him, eventually prompting him to “take kids out of big institutions and [move them] into small homes.”

Luce, who is HIV positive, has also had experience working in Africa with those afflicted with AIDS. “I see people die of what I take four pills in the morning for,” he said.

“If I can do 100 percent of what I can do, that’s good enough for me,” he added.

The panel was sponsored by the Student Global AIDS Campaign and the Princeton AIDS Initiative as part of World AIDS Week.