|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
October 2002 Excerpts from the Speech of U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV at the Population Council's 50th Anniversary Dinner, New York, June 5, 2002 . . . My father wanted nothing less than to change the world, and he devoted his life and his fortune to doing so . . . The Population Council, with its fight to help people choose their families and control their destinies, was my father’s greatest passion. Along with a handful of population pioneers, my father understood that accelerating population growth was a threat to the world he was working to create—a world in which every individual had a chance “to lead a life of satisfaction and purpose, to achieve in life more than mere survival.” In making the connection between population and poverty as early as the 1930s, he was very much a visionary. And now, in the 21st century, when the global poverty the Population Council attacks is a source not only of moral outrage, but of crime and terror, his vision seems even more penetrating. . . .
Today, in a world where goods and services, immigrants, workers, pollution, crime, and terror move from nation to nation irrespective of borders, poverty is also a direct, physical threat to the American people . . . Four-fifths of the world’s six billion people live in developing nations. Three billion live on less than $2 a day. One in five human beings lives in absolute poverty—earning less in a month than it costs to park your car overnight in Manhattan. At the same time, a global communications web beams images of American affluence and ostentation to every corner of the globe. The sharp contrast between slow or even negative growth for billions and the accelerating affluence of America and the industrialized world makes the United States even more attractive—and, for some, more abhorrent—than ever. They pay attention to us. But we don’t pay attention to them. Insulated as we are from the world’s worst pockets of poverty, or focused on poverty here at home, it is terribly easy for Americans to put the problem out of our minds . . . It’s time for us to engage the rest of the world, as human beings. That means a foreign aid budget that reflects the magnitude of the poverty we face, based on need and effectiveness. That means an education system that teaches languages, geography, world history, and geopolitics—to kindergarteners and to graduate students. That means a U.S. diplomatic strategy based on cooperation and multilateral action, rather than impulse and naiveté. It means a commitment to public service as educators, volunteers, elected officials, and career activists. And it means a global commitment to family planning and to population services. I know that there will never be enough support flowing from the West to less-developed nations to educate every child, support every entrepreneur, empower every individual. But family planning can help to close the gap. Large government projects are important: like power generation, new schools, and drinkable water. But when people can control the size of their families, they have a far greater ability to pull themselves up on their own. A smaller family may mean that a child is sent to a secular school rather than to work or to a fundamentalist madrasah that turns out jihadists by the score. It may mean a cow, or a small plot of land. It may free a woman to contribute to the family income. Or it may save her life—every 60 seconds, a woman dies from the effects of pregnancy or childbirth. It may mean purchase of a loom or a taxi or a kiln, and the beginning of what we now call “microenterprise,” the first steps toward economic independence . . . In this, the Population Council, and my father, have shown us the way. Not because population services in themselves are a cure for poverty. But because you resolved the same intellectual challenge as an organization that we now face as a nation. Fifty years ago, my father founded the Council in a world just beginning to understand the science of population growth and the biology and sociology behind it. Birth control was in its infancy. And the world’s political and intellectual leaders had not yet generally grasped the importance of your efforts to realizing their own dreams for their people and their nations.
You changed that. You studied demographics, designed birth control, and built an intellectual consensus. It was critical, demonstrable progress. But it was only half the solution. Someone recently told me that they thought amazing thing about my father was that more open and more flexible as he grew older. the same is true of this organization. Because, than bind yourselves to an established approach vitally important, but with declining marginal utility—you began to look beyond the science until you discovered people. Guided in part by my father, the Population Council learned that empowering women, supporting families, educating individuals about their lives and their potential were important, too.
And by marrying science and humanity, your influence and effectiveness reached the peak on which you sit today—the movement leader, active in 70 nations, and respected in political, scientific, and academic circles around the world. If America can understand the connection between poverty and violence as well as the Population Council understands the relationship between education and overpopulation; If we remember that people with hope will live their lives in peace, and people with economic power live in ways that benefit us all; If we fight the war on terror by engaging in a global war on poverty, and follow your example by using politics and technology as a means while understanding that opportunity and enrichment for human beings is the only legitimate end; Then perhaps we can find peace for America, and create a world of opportunity that, as my father wrote, “frees man to achieve his individual dignity and his full potential.” On behalf of my father’s memory, myself, and all of us who share a dream of a world in which our families are safe and every person has hope, thank you. Thank you for everything you have taught us over the last 50 years; thank you for the vitally important studies and field work going on right now; and thank you for the hope you will continue to bring to people around the world for many years to come. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
