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Misplaced priorities

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has estimated the World military expenditure in 2006 to be $1204 billion , which is 3.5 per cent more than in 2005. The United Nations compared these figures with the amount spent on peacekeeping and estimated that such collective security spending was only half of one per cent. If this raises issues of continued piling up of arms, a comparison with social spending required to achieve millennium development goals compels a rethinking on priorities. In the World Bank’s reckoning, countries need to spend about $40 to 60 billion a year, which is four to five per cent of global military expenditure, if those goals are to be reached by 2015.

The Human Development Report 2005 has it that $4 billion is all that is needed to finance basic health projects. Similarly, eliminating starvation, getting rid of homelessness, and achieving total literacy require relatively small outlays that appear eminently attainable. But funds are not to come by easily. Rich countries spend $10 on military budgets for every dollar invested in aid, according to the HDR. Military expenditure incurred for the basic security of a nation is understandable, but it is the ambitious geopolitical policies and the quest for global or regional dominance that have often stretched the military expenditure of rich countries. This curtails the scope for increased assistance. The U.S. military budget is a case in point. Studies show that even countries with poor human development indicators tend to spend more on their military and arms than on social development. The HDR 2006 notes that Ethiopia spends 10 times more on its military budget than on its water and sanitation budget. India spends about eight times and Pakistan 47 times. The U.N. recommends that a minimum of one per cent of the GDP should be spent on water and sanitation. On the ground, some countries seem to spend only half of it. It is disconcerting to find that only one of the eight world regional groups is on track to achieve all the millennium development goals. Even a fractional cut in global military expenditure by both the industrial and the developing countries and a corresponding step-up in development funding could help achieve the much-desired quality of life the world over.

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