The Global South in International Development
[Music]
how many of you have been in a situation
where you’re scrolling through instagram
or scrolling through facebook
maybe you’re watching tv or watching the
movies or
maybe you’re just waiting for the ads to
load on youtube
or you’re just sitting in the subway
okay and you come across the visual
and this visual is it could be a picture
it could be a video but this visual
is of a poor impoverished young child
that looks like it’s probably from a
developing country looking at you
straight in the eyes
how many times or how many of you have
come across a visual like that
right see almost all of us
and visuals like this i have to admit
when i see visuals like this they make
me feel both
sad upset and guilty but also
uncomfortable and bothered at the same
time
good evening my name is rafael and i’m a
23 year old
indian who works in the international
development sector despite my young age
i have been involved in this sector for
close to a decade now
since i started leading community
development projects in bangladesh
while i was in high school and since
then i’ve worked in development in local
context
national context and international
context
and to add on to that i’ve had the
privilege of
living in seven developing and developed
countries which truly shaped
my perspective on the world and this is
important for you to know because
it’s been this perspective of mine that
has shaped how i view development work
especially as someone again who has been
in a developing context
and also developed context
so growing up i came across a lot of
content
that would often portray the global
staff in very stereotypical
ways and when i say the global south i’m
referring to
countries that were previously referred
to as the third world but we stopped
using that term in the 80s
and now we call them the global south
and these are developing countries
that fall in the southern hemisphere of
the earth except for australia new
zealand so
this portrayal of the global south okay
there are many stereotypes that exist in
this but
most importantly we sometimes see the
stereotype of the global south as being
poor its people as being impoverished or
as
them being oppressed and requiring and
depending on our health
and this portrayal was bothered me okay
but
it truly started bothering me when this
movie came out
slumdog millionaire so despite the movie
having won
many oscars and having been critically
acclaimed
it also led to something else it led to
an
increase in the stereotype of india my
home country
as being poor as its people living in
slums and as there being a lot of
poverty
now please don’t get me wrong i’m not
denying that these problems don’t exist
in my country
they do but for us to go ahead and use
images like this
to wash over an entire cultural identity
a historical identity
a political identity of a country and
painted as just being poor
is simply wrong and since this has
happened
since the movie came out a lot of
individuals that once they find out that
i’m from india
they asked me about the poverty in india
the slums in india
and it does leave me feeling quite
uncomfortable the most recent of these
comments was from a colleague of mine
who in the past year told me that they
would never want their children
to visit india because it’s just so
dirty you know
so dirty now i’m going to ask you a
question
is dirty and adjective that you would
use to describe the new york subway
yes yes so the new york subway is dirty
okay and now new york is inside of the
u.s
so based on the fact that the new york
subway is dirty
can i jump to the conclusion that the
u.s is dirty
no right that’s too large of an
assumption to make and that’s exactly
what’s happening over here
but still i’ve convinced myself that
maybe
this was just me simply over examining
and overthinking things like i normally
do
especially as somebody millionaire was
the fieldwood movie of the decade
and indians seem to be happy with it it
brought our stars upon the stage
and it also won several oscars but
the more i kept on working in the
development sector
the more people that i met the more
professionals that i met who wanted to
go to africa and work in the field
or the more events i attended the more
reports i read i realized no
this is a reality and it’s external to
me and we’re just oblivious to it
so we’re going to do a very quick
activity okay
i am going to say specific themes in
international development
and i see and as i say these themes i
want you to think about
first visuals that pop up in your head
we’re not going to share them you’re
just going to keep them in your head but
it will get
it will help you get a better idea of
this okay so the first one
is eradicating poverty okay so just take
a few moments to think about what comes
in your head
combating world hunger
providing access to an education
and others having access to clean water
okay
and here they are okay these four now
i’m pretty sure if not most of you at
least several of you must have gotten
images of you know
for black and ground kids from
developing countries in your head
and if you didn’t i’m it’s com i mean
i’m glad that you didn’t but if you did
i don’t want you to feel guilty or
embarrassed this is just the way many of
us have been influenced to think about
the world
and these developmental problems so we
collectively as a society have
internalized this narrative
internalize this portrayal of developing
countries
as being poor as problems only existing
in that part of the world not over here
and that’s the problem it’s a problem
because we whenever we think about
issues like poverty
or education or health or sanitation
we immediately think of poor countries
we don’t think about what’s happening
here
and i’m sorry
developing countries our own and
developed countries are only shown
when they’re either providing us with
assistance when they’re providing us
with aid
or we’re on the or when they’re on the
field actually helping people
but why is this a problem right now i
want you to know that
this issue there’s so many different
layers to it you can really break it
down
and find so many things across it but
today i’m going to be focusing on
providing you with
two thoughts two ideas that will help
you at least have the foundation
to begin this talk to begin this
conversation with others around you
now the first claim or the first idea is
that given its historical roots
international development encourages the
existence of a power imbalance
and hierarchy between nations
now historically development is
something that a lot of
western imperial countries used to
impose
when they used to go on their conquest
to find more lands or to extract
resources
and when they used to do this their
agenda of development i would say used
to focus on three main things
okay so the first one was promoting
religion so teaching people about god
and our existence
then there was the idea of science and
knowledge of teaching people about what
is true what is not true what are facts
and then number three teaching people
how to live a civil life
how to live a proper life and there’s a
poem
written by a man called rudyard kipling
who also wrote the jungle book
and it’s called the white man’s burden
and he wrote this in 1899
at a time when the us was about to annex
the philippines
and this poem i think really nicely
captures
the whole idea of this narrative that
needs to exist
with the western imperial powers so in
the poem
kipling is basically encouraging people
in the us to enroll themselves in the
army
to go to the philippines and to help
quote the half
devil and half child people living in
the philippines and that is extremely
disrespectful
now at the same time he was also
encouraging people to go and basically
civilize the people
help them get rid of the famine help
them get rid of the diseases
right so creating this dependency of
people living in that part of the world
to those people living in the western
part of the world
now we’re going to fast forward and come
to the end of the war okay
colonization has happened the wars have
ended colonies are now starting to
demand their independence
and the u.s has emerged as a global
hegemonic power
it’s 1949 and president truman is giving
his inaugural speech
which has famously been coined the
four-point program okay and we
are concerned with point number four and
this is what he said
so in his in his address uh president
truman
basically says that the u.s now you know
have with the war having been finished
uh the u.s must now use
its knowledge its scientific knowledge
its technical assistance
and provide that to individuals who
elevated underdeveloped underdeveloped
parts of the world
and in this he justifies this by saying
well
half more than half of the world
currently lives in madrid they have
poverty
and this poverty is a threat it
handicaps them they don’t have good
economies
and on top of that he also says that in
order to help them realize the potential
that their lives could have
we need to go and help them we need to
go and provide them with this assistance
and at the same time the us should work
with other countries
who are also in this position to help
them
again achieve this and also we should be
working with the un
and its agencies so ultimately we can
have a world
where we have peace we have plenty and
we have freedom
government has colonial roots right
because what we see is that in the
pre-war period we had the
colonizers versus the ones that they
were colonizing and now
after the war we have developed
countries working with the countries
that are developing
right so okay and so we get that there
is this
context of it being colonial and
imperialistic but we can’t just
stop promoting development can we
because we have basic human rights
every single person all around the world
has the right to have a certain standard
of living
so what do we do about that now here’s
what i’m suggesting
instead of you know just either stopping
development or continuing it in this
manner
we need to first start with
acknowledging the fact that yes the work
the manner in which we do development
today
is imperialistic there is this hierarchy
that exists between nations because
there is this dependency that developed
countries tend to go and help those who
are developing
so what we need to start with doing in
this situation is firstly
sorry we need to first start with
working with countries that are in the
developing context so maybe
empower the local governments of those
countries look for grassroots leaders
that are working in those developing
countries
and see in what capacity can we help
them because if we continue this
dependency where okay
if i’m living in a developed country i
want to go and help that person living
in that poor country
that’s wrong we need to start with
saying okay what is their government
already doing
what might they need how can my
government possibly help them
instead of maybe how can my government
possibly pressure them into doing what
they want
now the next thing is that international
development
continues to restrict its focus on the
global south and the developing
countries
which further encourages the assumption
that these developmental issues
only exist in that part of the region
right
now at the start of the 21st century the
un came out with a set of
goals and these were the millennium
development goals okay these were eight
goals
that primarily focused on issues of
health of education
and poverty and these were primarily
focused on developing countries okay
and countries were meant to meet this by
2015 but they didn’t
and then we had the sustainable
development goals and the sustainable
development goals are goals that the un
is now working on meeting
until until 2030 and it’s not just the
un
it’s governments it’s it’s the private
sector it’s public sectors everyone
so when we compare these two goals side
by side right what do we see
well firstly obviously we see that the
sdgs the sustainable development goals
there’s more of them um and they also
seem to be a little bit better designed
i think
but on a more serious note the
sustainable development goals
are more inclusive in two ways okay
firstly
they’re more inclusive in terms of the
themes that they address so the sdgs
they go beyond just
health and poverty and education and
they include ideas of the climate right
so they have
a lot of goals that focus on the climate
and they also bring in the aspect of the
economy
so how can we maybe have more innovative
practices more innovative enterprises
how can we be more responsible consumers
and producers
but a second aspect in which the sdgs
are more inclusive
is regarding who needs to work on that
right so
with the mdgs as i mentioned earlier on
they were focused on developing
countries
but with the sdgs they’re global goals
so their goals that
all of the countries at the u.n have
agreed that no we all need to work on
them collectively
this is not something that’s restricted
to one part of the world these are
problems that could exist here
there are problems that exist everywhere
so that’s that’s great right because
we see this transition that has happened
at the policy level at the leadership
level
where countries are finally admitting
that yes you know it’s not just poor
countries who have this problem
we also have this problem but
but we still continue to see a portrayal
of developing countries in the same
light
so a couple of weeks ago i was at the
global citizen festival in new york city
okay and for those of you who don’t know
the global citizen festival
is a festival where actors performers
musicians
they all come to perform but at the same
time they also take time to speak about
developmental issues
so while i was standing in the crowd a
couple of my friends
and i was listening to this speaker talk
about sdg number four
education a part of me was happy with
all of the progress that was being made
but the other part of me couldn’t help
but notice the fact that
behind that speaker they again continue
to show us pictures of poor
you know black and brown kids from
developing countries and that infuriated
me
so i asked my friends who are these two
german girls that guys is it just me or
do you notice this as well and they did
and they were also uncomfortable with it
so
at that point really why it bothered me
was because
at the festival most of the attendees
are young people like the
like the audience sitting in front of me
and if we continue to show
our future policymakers our future
change makers leaders politicians
business women and men and if we show
them this information that
this is the hierarchy that exists that
you need to go and help others living in
other parts of the world
then that’s going to influence the way
that they carry out their work and
that’s wrong
so yeah and and what’s going to happen
is that when you talk about an issue
such as
poverty if you’re only showing images of
people from developing parts of the
world
you’re going to forget about the fact
that actually poverty is also a big
issue here in the us
right so at this point i’m not saying
stop showing me poor people no there are
definitely vulnerable groups that exist
in the developing parts of the world
but in that situation don’t forget about
vulnerable groups that live in other
parts of the world
so this isn’t so much about stop showing
as them it’s more about show as everyone
who has these developmental issues
don’t don’t focus on developing parts
focus on the issues so for example
if we’re looking at gender right don’t
think about what do you also think about
them don’t just think about
women that are in south asia and that
might not have access to
a certain thing also keep in mind the
fact that gender is also issued in
developing parts of the
world with transgenders not having as
many rights right so
you have to start thinking in that
manner you have to start thinking about
okay
if this is a developmental issue um
where is it present
learn about the context surrounding it
so the politics the culture the history
and that how that has you know led to
the problem existing and how can you
address those different things to solve
that problem
because if we don’t do that right if we
don’t
re-evaluate the ways in which that we
think about development developmental
work and developmental problems in
different parts of the world
then we’re going to continue this
narrative we’re going to continue this
narrative where we convince ourselves
that people living in a certain part of
the world are waiting for us to come and
help them
when in fact problems exist everywhere
and everyone deserves to have those
problems resolved
right and i think you guys as the new
generation um
you know a speaker before me they very
nicely talked about the power that
social media has and that technology has
on shaping the way that you think and i
think that’s also essential because
you guys the future generations you need
to think about ways that
you can maybe restructure this narrative
ways that you can bring in newer
perspectives into this narrative so that
you can really level the field because
i really believe that if we ultimately
want to meet the objective of
international development right
the objective of international
development is for there to be
developed countries for all countries to
ultimately have a point in history where
we’re all equal we all have the same
living standards but if you truly want
to reach that we need to start
with giving those countries the space to
be that
because if we continue to perpetrate
this idea that oh
there’s this hierarchy oh the problem’s
only there then we’re not going to get
anywhere
and we’re going to grow up with another
generation more and more generations of
people that are convinced
that they’re either saviors who need to
go and help those who are in need
or that there are those in need who need
saving so
i really want you as as you go home
today
to really think about this and think
about the ways in which that you
yourself can maybe
change how you perceive development what
can you do in the future to change the
way that we talk about development
because this is a really big problem
that is so chris and it really stops us
from ultimately reaching our goal which
is
to have developed nations thank you so
much