While the governments of developing countries buy over twenty-five billion dollars a year in arms, their people remain subject to the chilling reality of poverty. These people cannot participate in the development of society because they do not know how to read or write. Their health worsens because they have never had contact with a qualified doctor. They continue to tolerate squalid living conditions because they lack access to potable water. The time has come to make people more important than arms.
Human security is a matter of human dignity.
It is a child who does not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed. When human security needs are not met, we foster a cycle of violence. When we allow militaries to grow in power in order to control increasingly desperate populations, we have failed to address the root causes of conflict. Too many poor countries spend their limited resources on militaries that serve only to oppress their own people. Too many industrialized countries continue to export death to the developing world.