Havel calls for restructuring of values

• Pages: 309

Page 309

Following is a brief, edited extract from the welcoming address by Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel to the Annual Meetings in Prague on September 26.

One of the principal themes of the various debates about the situation of today’s world, and also of the discussions concerning the mission of the Bretton Woods institutions, is the deeply entrenched poverty of billions of people and the question of what can be done to combat it.

I am afraid that debates of this kind may make us susceptible to one danger—that we shall, unwittingly, begin to perceive poverty as a misfortune of the ones, and the fight against it as a task of the others; as if humanity was divided by fate into two parts—a relatively small group of people or countries that fare altogether very well, and a large group of people or countries that fare badly. As a result of which, the first group—for both humanitarian and security reasons—should help the second, financially as well as intellectually.

Today’s extensive poverty is one of the most visible manifestations of our contradictory civilization—a civilization that we all help share in one way or another. We all are, to greater or lesser degree, jointly responsible for its good and bad traits, and solving the problems this civilization generates is our common task.

We often hear about the need to restructure the economies of the developing or the...