During the height of the recent Asian economic crisis, I met a spirited 10-year-old girl in a slum near the port in Jakarta, Indonesia. Like most of the slum's children, Mariana was small for her age. Her daily diet of rice seasoned with bits of fish was insufficient for normal growth.
In good times, Mariana went to school and her family barely got by. Her father earned money by collecting sea sand in a small wooden boat and selling it to building contractors. But the drastic currency devaluation that accompanied Indonesia's economic collapse had reduced his weekly income from $10 to $1. Meanwhile, the price of rice, the staple of the family diet, had multiplied several times. Jakarta's building projects had halted virtually overnight. The slum's unemployed construction workers begged for piece labour or scavenged through garbage dumps. Children whose parents could no longer afford school tuition shelled mussels to earn the equivalent of 30 cents a day.
Mariana's family and neighbours blamed the government of President Suharto with its cronyism, bad loans and poor economic policies for their predicament. But their desperate situation was aggravated by globalisation. Foreign capital that flooded into Indonesia during good times quickly departed when things went sour. As always, the poor bore the brunt of the suffering.
I am not arguing against globalisation. I think globalisation is inevitable. Technology, open markets, and international corporations with earnings larger than the gross national products of many nations quickly move money, products and culture around the earth. As a result, people's minds are opened to an unprecedented range of ideas and influences. We drive Japanese cars on South American roads, eat Italian cuisine in Asia, and hear American hip hop music in the African bush. Those dwelling even in the slums of Bombay, Nairobi or Lima absorb the world from television. Some of what we experience panders to our worst tastes, but other experiences can inspire our better - even our best - instincts. Yet unregulated, laissez-faire globalisation will continue to weigh heaviest on the weakest.
I am not an economist. I can't recommend particular measures for regulating capital, loans, trade or investment policy. But I do know that in a world where national borders count less and less, governments, transnational corporations and global institutions must continually ask the question: "How does what we are doing affect the poor?" The poor must come first.
I know of a church organisation where one of the first questions asked at every meeting is: "How does what we are about to discuss here affect the poor?" If there is no potential positive effect on the poor, the meeting agenda is reconsidered.
If the poor are not part of the conversation, they will remain on the margins of the global economy. Their labour will be exploited; their produce under-valued and under-priced; and their demands for faire wages, safe working conditions, job security and future opportunity ignored.
As a Christian, I am called to follow the Great Commandment: Love God and love my neighbour. I cannot love God and ignore my neighbour. I cannot serve God and abandon those created in God's image. I cannot know God if I fail to see Christ's spirit reflected in the poor.
Globalisation puts the world's vulnerable, hungry and hurting poor at my doorstep. I must not ignore their cries.
-- Dean Hirsch is International President of World Vision.