"Advances In Global Health" Symposium: A Response

I’m still reeling from my exposure to a full two hours of rhetoric without substance at the symposium on “Advances in Global Health by Non-Governmental Organizations.” The radical difference between the conference keynote speaker’s view of the world and my own makes it difficult to find much good in a speech that majored on conclusions drawn from undefended assumptions. Nevertheless, rather than fall into the error I so heartily condemned I offer the following as an attempt to interact with the main thrust of the rhetoric and plea of the contemporary social democrat.

Ideology cannot be addressed by merely practical means. Stephen Lewis, symposium keynote speaker and former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, gave morbid and shocking details about the various ways some African men exploit women—men who even think of rape as a legitimate strategy of war. The ideology that undergirds the strategic implementation of these horrific actions to achieve political or personal ends is hideous and deserves all the censure and indignation we can muster.

However, to ask in futile exasperation (my paraphrase), “What in God’s name is wrong with this world that preconceived notions exist which permit men to allow this sort of behavior to go unpunished?” and then suggest that an increase of Western funding of food and water projects and public health and education programs in Sub-Saharan Africa is the primary solution is radically short-sighted.