Nobel Peace Laureate dares to imagine a World without Poverty by AFP, NYT, Reuters 10:02pm 10th Dec, 2006   December 10, 2006    Microcredit pioneer criticizes globalization at Nobel ceremony, by Walter Gibbs. (New York Times)    The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who developed microcredit, the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned Sunday that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous "free-for-all highway."    "Its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies," Yunus said during the lavish ceremony at which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.    "Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway."    While international companies motivated by profit may be crucial in addressing global poverty, he said, countries must also cultivate grassroots enterprises and the human impulse to do good.    Challenging economic theories that he learned while pursuing a doctorate in the 1970s at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, he said that glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit had led to "one-dimensional human beings" motivated only by profit.    Yunus, 66, then took a direct jibe at the United States for its war on terror. He told about 1,000 dignitaries at Oslo"s City Hall that recent American military adventures had diverted global resources and attention from a more pressing project: halving worldwide poverty by 2015, as envisaged by the United Nations six years ago.    "Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size," he said.    "But then came Sept. 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream."    Yunus called for legal recognition of a new category of corporation that would be neither profit-maximizing nor nonprofit. It would be a "social business," like Grameen Bank, the microcredit institution based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that he started 30 years ago.    Grameen has lent nearly $6 billion to help some of the poorest people on earth start businesses, build shelters and go to school.    The bank — with which Yunus shared the prize Sunday — is an interest-charging, profit-making business with more than 2,200 branches. But it is owned primarily by its poor clients and is run for their benefit.    Similarly structured institutions, Yunus said, could bring health care, information technology, education and energy to the poor without requiring infusions of aid.    "By defining "entrepreneur" in a broader way, we can change the character of capitalism radically," he said, "and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market."    Yunus traveled to Oslo with nine of Grameen"s board members. Four of them are among Bangladesh"s nearly 300,000 "telephone ladies," each of whom once borrowed money to buy a cellphone and now earns money charging rural villagers to use it.    The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, called microcredit "a liberating force" for women and Muslims, many of whom have traditionally shunned interest-charging institutions.    "All too often, we speak one-sidedly about how much the Muslim part of the world has to learn from the West," Danbolt Mjoes said. "Where microcredit is concerned, the opposite is true: the West has learned from Yunus, from Bangladesh and from the Muslim part of the world."    December 10, 2006 (Reuters)    "Poverty is a threat to peace," the first Bangladeshi peace laureate said in his acceptance speech, declaring it possible to create a world free of need and relegate poverty to museums.    Mr Yunus and Grameen Bank"s representative Mosammat Taslima Begum received the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony at Oslo"s City Hall to applause from about 1,000 guests. The prize created by the Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel comes with a cheque for 10 million Swedish crowns ($A1.87 million) to be shared by the winners.    Mr Yunus and Grameen Bank won the peace award — which has traditionally gone to statesmen, peace-brokers, human rights advocates and humanitarian organisations — "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below".    Their work lending small sums to help start businesses from basket weaving to chicken farming has pioneered a movement known as "microcredit" which has spread around the globe. The bank is owned by its clients and counts thousands of beggars among them.    Mr Yunus, an economist and head of the bank, said the link between a peaceful world and fight against poverty was clear.    He said the new millennium began with a dream to cut poverty in half by 2015 as agreed by world leaders in the UN millennium goals in 2000.    "But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism," Mr Yunus said.    "I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action," he said, adding that the United States has spent over $US530 billion ($A672.72 billion) on the war in Iraq.    He said terrorism had to be condemned "in the strongest possible language" and that the world must tackle its roots.    "Putting resources into improving the lives of the poor is a better strategy than spending it on guns," he said.    "Poverty is the absence of all human rights," said Yunus, who began the microcredit movement with a $US27 ($A34) loan to a group of 42 villagers who had fallen victim to extortionate money-lenders.    Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes said the group sought to shine a light not only on the fight against poverty but also on dialogue with the Muslim world and on empowering women.    "Microcredit has proved itself to be a liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions," Mjoes said.    He noted a "widespread tendency to demonise Islam" since the September 11 attacks on the United States and said the Nobel    Committee aimed to "narrow the gap between the West and Islam".    Where microcredit is concerned, he said "the West has learned from Yunus, from Bangladesh and from the Muslim part of the world".    December 10, 2006    Nobel Peace Laureate Dares to Imagine a World without Poverty, by Bill Schiller. (AFP)    In receiving the Nobel Peace prize, micro-credit pioneer Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh will no doubt hammer home the message he has been preaching for 30 years: a world blighted by poverty is a world without peace.    The one-time economics professor stumbled almost by accident onto the formula that has lifted tens of millions out of penury, but the result of his labors has been so extraordinary that today he dares all who will listen to imagine a world without poverty.    And he fully intends to use the Nobel limelight to further his cause.    "The Nobel Peace Prize has made me and Grameen Bank very visible," Yunus told journalists on Saturday, referring to the borrower-owned lending institution he founded that has issued nearly six billion dollars in loans averaging less than 100 dollars each, mostly to women.    "Before, my voice didn"t go very far. Today, when I whisper the whole world hears loud and clear."    Shocked into action by a terrible famine while teaching in Bangladesh in 1976, the US-educated Yunus abandoned his textbooks and went into a village near his university to see how he could help.    What he found were resourceful and hard-working villagers victimized by usurious money lenders and trapped into lives of endless drudgery, modern-day serfs held captive by destitution. He was astounded to discover how little was needed for them to break out of this vicious cycle: a measly 27 dollars for 42 people.    When Yunus could not find a bank with enough imagination to launch a lending program for people so poor that they had nothing to offer as collateral, he reached into his pocket and lent the money himself.    Every penny was returned. Indeed, the audited repayment rate over the course of Grameen Bank"s history has been 98 percent.    There are, Yunus often points out, more than a billion people in the world living on less than a dollar a day, and many of them, he says, could change their lives and their prospects with a little bit of seed capital.    Yunus" concept of tiny, collateral-free loans has already caught on all over the world. Grameen Bank itself is present in dozens of countries, and has been copied by hundreds of other micro-credit lending institutions.    But the concept can still be vastly expanded, and Yunus hopes that the Nobel prize will compel traditional banks to take a closer look at lending methods that turn conventional practices on their head.    "Banks can create special branches -- we have done it, they can do it much better, they are professionals," Yunus said.    But micro-credit is only part of a broader vision in which Yunus sees the development of a kind of socially-conscious capitalism driven by what he calls "social business enterprises," companies that reinvest profits rather than paying out dividends.    He has already pioneered several, which he hopes will motivate established corporations and young entrepreneurs to follow suit.    Yunus argues that modern communications technology -- mobile, borderless -- is one of the most powerful tools available for eradicating poverty.    One of Grameen"s most successful lending programs has targeted rural women who borrow money to purchase a mobile phone, and then sell telephone services in their village.    There are today over 300,000 of these so-called "telephone ladies" throughout Bangladesh, including four on the 13-member board of directors of the bank. All of them came to Oslo this weekend to share in the glory of their collective achievement.    And so it is that Yunus has a dream -- as did another Nobel Laureate, Martin Luther King -- that no longer seems quite so naive or out of reach.    "One day," he told journalists on Saturday, "the only place we will see poverty is in a poverty museum."    December 10, 2006    Poverty is a threat to Peace, by Muhammad Yunus.    Muhammad Yunus is the head of Grameen Bank, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for it''s innovative work on microcredit lending with the poor of Bangladesh. This is an excerpt of his acceptance speech, given on December 10 to the Nobel Foundation in Oslo.    By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace. World''s income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety-four percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while 60 percent of people live on only six per cent of world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.    The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size. But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. Till now over $ 530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the U.S.A alone.    I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.    Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights    Peace should be understood in a human way—in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.    Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.    The creation of opportunities for the majority of people—the poor—is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves to during the past 30 years.    Free Market Economy    Capitalism centers on the free market. It is claimed that the freer the market, the better is the result of capitalism in solving the questions of what, how, and for whom. It is also claimed that the individual search for personal gains brings collective optimal result.    I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives—to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.    Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.    Many of the world''s problems exist because of this restriction on the players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Health care remains out of the reach of the majority of the world population. The country with the richest and freest market fails to provide health care for one-fifth of its population.    We have remained so impressed by the success of the free market that we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption. To make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.    By defining "entrepreneur" in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling—a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.    Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and the second type of business as social business.    Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be plowed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.    Role of Social Businesses in Globalization    I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalization. To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway. In order to have a win-win globalization we must have traffic rules, traffic police, and traffic authority for this global highway. Rule of "strongest takes it all" must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and piece of the action, without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalization must not become financial imperialism.    Powerful multi-national social businesses can be created to retain the benefit of globalization for the poor people and poor countries. Social businesses will either bring ownership to the poor people, or keep the profit within the poor countries, since taking dividends will not be their objective. Direct foreign investment by foreign social businesses will be exciting news for recipient countries. Building strong economies in the poor countries by protecting their national interest from plundering companies will be a major area of interest for the social businesses.    We Can Put Poverty in the Museums    I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.    Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment), or developing institutions which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.    I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.    A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well-being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution.    Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.    To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.    Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash their energy and creativity.    Let me conclude by expressing my deep gratitude to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for recognizing that poor people, and especially poor women, have both the potential and the right to live a decent life, and that microcredit helps to unleash that potential.    I believe this honor that you give us will inspire many more bold initiatives around the world to make a historical breakthrough in ending global poverty. Visit the related web page
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