Andreas Jeninga/The Hoya World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said global poverty could be ended through the World Bank during a Tuesday address in ICC Auditorium.
World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn provided a full ICC Auditorium audience with a compelling and poignant discussion of global priorities needed to fight poverty, and achieve a more balanced distribution of wealth in the world in a speech Tuesday night.
Wolfensohn was also honored as the 23rd recipient of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy’s Jit Trainor Award, recognizing excellence in the conduct of diplomacy.
Wolfensohn, who has traveled to 140 countries during his two terms as World Bank President, presents a distinguished background in law, international investment banking, the performing arts and service in the Australian Air Force.
He graciously accepted the distinction and began his speech by getting to the heart of the matter.
“I am deeply honored to accept this award on behalf of the World Bank, and am particularly pleased with these introductions,” Wolfensohn said. “Yesterday I spoke at a gathering at a university in New York, to which they opened the proceedings by saying, `What is it like to be president of the most hated institution in the world?'”
Acknowledging the World Bank’s fierce opposition and task to alleviate many of the world’s most complex development problems, Wolfensohn informed his audience of the purpose behind his current direction of the Bank toward achieving a better global balance.
“We live in a world that is 6 billion people, in which 1 billion in the rich world control 80 percent of the income and 5 billion in the developing world control 20 percent of income,” he explained. “Our preoccupation right now is to deal with this imbalance and inequity, because we now live in a world that is more interdependent than it ever was.”
In describing the World Bank’s strategies for addressing such global inequities and the implications for development, Wolfensohn emphasized the world’s inevitable interdependence, from globalization to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“The basic theme that we are addressing in our institution is trying to get people to recognize that this issue of poverty is not theoretical, that the issues of interdependence are real,” Wolfensohn said. “We are linked by trade, and finance, environment, crime, health, drugs and terror, and there is no way of escaping from the result of poverty in one area, and its impact in others.”
With regards to international cooperation on fighting poverty and facilitating development, the World Bank is extremely involved with the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.
Wolfensohn noted the extreme importance that has been given to these goals by leaders around the world including himself, and the actions that must be implemented in order to achieve the eight goals in the next decade.
“By 2015, we will need to lower the proportion of people in poverty, need to address the questions of infant and maternal mortality, and deal with the questions of environment, water and sanitation – with 1.5 billion people not having access to clean water and 2 billion not having access to sewage,” he said.
“These numbers are off the charts of what we can absorb or even think of in Washington, but they are not off the charts to the people who live in other areas of the world, with lives under conditions of lack of service and lack of hope.”
Wolfensohn framed the World Bank’s task of alleviating poverty and achieving new balance not as a matter of effectiveness of foreign service or diplomacy, but merely to providing people with opportunities and hope for the future.
He concluded his speech by challenging the audience to take seriously the connection between poverty, opportunity, hope and peace.
“Achieving a new balance is a question of relations between the developing world and the developed world and trying to establish a sense of importance of the absolute essential connection between poverty and peace. This is what the bank is about,” Wolfensohn said.
