Andy’s Big Idea to Solve World’s Problem

Try to list the World’s problem today and you’ll never finish until you are in your grave. It’s too long. World hunger. War. Human right violation. Torture. Nuclear weapon. Child labour. Discrimination. Genocide. And don’t even start with the term ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We will never finish just listing them.

One day when listening to a discussion on BBC Radio 4 – or World Service, I can’t remember – Andy came up with a brilliant yet simple solution.

Yes, I have listened read and observe all those discussions, even written research papers on social political matters. But I have never thought of any solution. I always ended up confused and frustrated. Seems like whatever we human race do, we are doomed anyway. We always make bigger and bigger mistakes.

The latest and ‘sexiest’ debate is bio-fuel ‘to save the planet’. Is it really? Hmm..what about those rainforests sacrificed to plant those crops (soya and all its cousins)? What about the indigenous people who lost their only source of living? Not to mentioned the number of tribes and communities being evicted – many times with violence – to cater the massive plantation for bio-fuel.

People in rich countries – or even rich people in poor countries – donated lots of money to feed hungry children in the third world and for emergency aid in disaster areas. But what if we found out that the money was spent mostly on publication by the charity organisation? Have we ever question those charity organisation and relief agencies how many percentage spent on the real relief – food, shelter, and all that needed – and how many spent on their own ‘operational cost’?

What I saw in Aceh right after the Boxing Day Tsunami (2004) describes one big problem. I went to areas where a number of families were being supplied houses by UNHR while their neighbours received Oxfam houses and others received houses from USAID or other agencies. After a few months, they start comparing. The most ridiculous scene was IDP (internally displaced people) camps with different flags – one has Japanese flag, the one next door Canadian, USA, UK, Malaysian – it was like the UN headquarters moved. The Japanese medical team did not dare going to the camp with Canadian flag and vice versa. It was unthinkable but true.

I will sound very bitter and bitchy if I continue listing the examples. So I better go straight to Andy’s Big Idea to solve those problems.

That night when we were listening to the discussion on the radio, he said, “I’ve got a solution! One country should be responsible for another smaller country. Instead of everyone ‘fighting’ to ‘save’ one country in disaster, the ‘foster country’ should coordinate the relief.”

Let’s pick a small – poor, third world, underdeveloped – country. Let’s call it Z. Then pick a bigger – rich, first word, developed or even member of the G8 – country (call it A). Now we tell country A, “Right, you’ve been doing well. Now we give you a foster country. From now on, Z is your responsibility. Whatever Z doing, you are responsible. If the people in Z is hungry, you have to either feed them or find donors to feed them. If Z is killing its own people, the world will turn on you to solve it. If Z is doing better, you will get the credit for being a good ‘parent’.”

The biggest task – I imagine it would be for UN – would be distributing who is going to foster who. We imagine it could be by proportion – of populations and area. For example The USA is big, so it will receive a big but poor country in Africa or Asia. France is smaller, so it will be responsible for smaller poor country somewhere.

Let’s say USA adopted Indonesia. On second thought, not USA, say big country “A” (readers can imagine anything from Saudi Arabia to Andora). When Indonesia is abusing its power over West Papuan people and the world find out, the ‘parent’ “Country A” will get a slap around the head. The UN, other countries and the media will say, “You are doing a bad bad job A! Fix it!” Then say another big earthquake somewhere in Indonesia happened. Instead of all those G8 countries coming in and hire their own local offices for relief aid, the experts from “Country A” should coordinate this. Canada and UK and USA and/or other countries can donate through the US. If the relief aid coordination went wrong, we know who to point finger to.

It is simple. Really. We just need to convince the UN to apply this, and then to explain this concept to some simple minded bigots who look at fostering and adoption as interference to their own conventional way of doing things. Hmm… Maybe that’s the most difficult part.