Examiner 13th October 2009

WHEN you have been working in the Third World for over three decades there is very little on the scale of human experience that can shock. Memory constructs its own cemeteries and monuments, and then buries them as deeply  as possible, so you don’t have to remember the death agonies of so many children and innocents; who died so needlessly.

I have to confess that I am shocked that 100 days could pass and still GOAL volunteers, Sharon Commins (32), from Clontarf, Dublin, and her Ugandan colleague Hilda Kawuki (42)  are still being held in captivity, having been seized from a GOAL compound in Kutum, in north Darfur, by a gang of armed men on  July 3rd. .

And I am  deeply horrified by the kidnapping of 79-year-old Father Michael Sinnott in the Philippines; a man who spent most of his life caring for people. For aid workers and missionaries these are increasingly desperate times. Those who looked askance when President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize are missing the point.

America’s 44 President has set out a vision of empowerment and equality for the Third World which has the dynamics to be a real engine of positive change.  He has brought hope where there has only been neglect and the prospect of even more severe suffering. For this reason his ambition and resolution to improve the lot of the downtrodden must be encouraged and built upon.

The handing over of the same award that was won by Nelson Mandela, Aung Suu Kyi, and Mother Teresa confers on America’s 44s the greatest prestige that any leader can carry; that is the designation of “peace maker.”

One only has to pause for the briefest of  moments to think how desperately our world is need of such custodians. Writing in 1953  President, Dwight D. Eisenhower noted: “ Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

His words evidently didn’t make too much of an impression however, for each year, around $45-60 billion worth of arms sales are agreed. Some two-thirds of sales are made to developing countries.  That is why President Obama’s mission statement of change and justice for all, is so critical.   And it is why the arrival of a “true son of Africa” in the Oval Office was greeted with such a thrill of excitement and expectation across the world, no where more so than in the Third World.  

The signals from Capitol Hill are encouraging that  a “new deal” could be in prospect for Africa, and not just for a select group of  corrupt leaders who have salted away vast fortunes in the vaults of Swiss banks, as the suffering of their peoples spirals.

On his first visit to the continent as  Mr Obama promised that “dirty leaders” those whom had stained their hands with graft, would be frozen out from US aid. It is said that the buck always stops at the President’s desk in Washington, but for many in the Third World the buck stops way before then. They never get to see the billions of aid that are siphoned off by Third World leaders.

Foreign direct investment in Africa represents just 4pc  of the world's total and as a result of the economic crisis Africa's predicted growth will significantly shrink this year. A better future requires a new "new deal for Africa" between African countries on one side and industrialised countries on the other.

But, we also need to continue to scrutinise  African democratic institutions and press for  good governance and political stability. Armed conflicts in Africa cost an estimated $284bn between 1990 and 2007, which is about equal to the amount of aid major donors gave in that same period. That is why American oversight and interest is so vital in preventing new wars and wiping out corruption.

It is tragically all too obvious from the number of aid workers who have been targeted recently, that the humanitarian work that they carry out is being exploited in certain war zones. Kidnappings and killing have become a common place, and a cause for alarm. The international community can no longer stand by.  The security of aid  workers must be made a top priority. Implementing aid agencies and missionaries are doing critical work in the most hostile corners of the planet, but there is no-one charged with keeping them safe. President Obama must press the UN to make the security of humanitarian workers part of its remit.

Since January 2008, 42 aid workers were killed and 33 abducted in Somalia, alone.  The truth is that since 2006, attacks on aid workers have increased  dramatically according to the Overseas Development Institute .  Last year was the worst in 12 years, with 260 humanitarian aid workers killed, kidnapped or seriously injured in violent attacks, according to the institute.

Our stories are singular but our destinies are shared, President Obama told the world on the day he was inaugurated. A billion people who live below the poverty line have never had grounds for believing that the Developed World had any interest in sharing its destiny with them. Change for them was always small and for the worst. If the poor have finally found a true champion on Capitol Hill then that would be change in deed.