A 'Marshall Plan' Ukraine's strategic imperative

It was in London in 2004, that P-CEDs founder wrote: 

"The opportunity for poverty relief was identified not only as a moral imperative, but also as an increasingly pressing strategic imperative. People left to suffer and languish in poverty get one message very clearly: they are not important and do not matter. They are in effect told that they are disposable, expendable. While the vast majority of people in poverty suffer quietly and with little protest, it is not safe to assume that everyone will react the same way. When in defence of family and friends, it is completely predictable that it should be only a matter of time until uprisings become sufficient to imperil an entire nation or region of the world. People with nothing have nothing to lose. Poverty was therefore deemed not only a moral catastrophe but also a time bomb waiting to explode."

He had just returned from Ukraine and his work on an economic development project for Crimea's Tatars, where his proposal had said:

"By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster.

These points were made to the President of the United States near the end of 1996. They were heard, appreciated and acted upon, but unfortunately, were not able to be addressed fully and quickly due primarily to political inertia. By way of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US out of Afghanistan – on which the US and the former Soviet Union both inflicted havoc, destruction, and certainly poverty – I rest my case. The tragedy was proof of all I warned about, but, was no more tragedy than that left behind to a people in an far corner of the world whom we thought did not matter and whom we thought were less important than ourselves.

We were wrong."

He'd placed the Crimea project on hold because of corruption issues but in London I'd drawn his attention to UNDP plans for economic development for Crimea's Tatars. He wrote warning UNDP that corruption should be taken seriously and  of his intention to sue for violation of intellectual property, should they proceed.

As I recall, UNDP had morphed the original budget of $40 million upward by about 100 fold

Returning to Ukraine in 2004, as the Orange Revolution began, working alongside Maidan activists would result in the delivery of a strategy paper known as a 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine to Ukraine's government in October 2006. It was subseqently introduced to USAID and the EU in 2008. A cost of 1.5 billion dollars was projected.for a multi component approach to enabling democracy

In Kyiv Post I read today that a 'Marshall Plan' is now a strategic imperative for Ukraine. 

The op-ed comes from Daniel Bilak whose projection of between $21 and $25 billion should not come as a suprise, given his former role at UNDP.. Once again, the issue of orphans and street children is brushed out of the picture. Ambivalence to corruption as evdenced in Crimea will serve gangsters before it helps democracy.  

It begs the obvious question - why did UNDP not show any interest before now? The strategic imperative is perhaps more  that of development agencies, like the anti-poverty "fat cats" in the UK's Commonwealth Development Corporation.  

USAID made it plain enough when they said there was no budget for "retarded children" in response to our call to support.a 'Marshall Plan'  

At the top, in theory the UN is at least talking our walk. 

In 2009 Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the President of the United Nations General Assembly said:

“The anti-values of greed, individualism and exclusion should be replaced by solidarity, common good and inclusion. The objective of our economic and social activity should not be the limitless, endless, mindless accumulation of wealth in a profit-centred economy but rather a people-centred economy that guarantees human needs, human rights, and human security, as well as conserves life on earth. These should be universal values that underpin our ethical and moral responsibility.”

That aligns rather well with what had been suggested 3 years earlier:

'This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for "people-centered" economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a "top-down" approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way. '