Globalization key to future, says Clinton
Globalization key to future, says Clinton
DUBLIN (AFP): Former U.S. president Bill Clinton urged countries to work closer together to alleviate world poverty, in a speech in Dublin on the latest leg of his lucrative speaking tour.
He said more people had been lifted out of poverty in the last two decades than at any time in history but poorer nations had been left behind and needed more international debt relief.
"There are a whole of lot of people out there who are not part of this modern world," he told his audience at Trinity College, Dublin, late Monday.
"If we want our children to have the future of our dreams for them, we have to decide to take all those other children along with them.
"If we do, I think the 21st century will be the most prosperous, the most peaceful, and maybe even more important, the most fascinating time in all of human history."
Clinton is being paid more than $100,000 (113,000 euros) per speech for his engagements during his 10-stop European tour, which takes in Poland, Sweden, Austria, Britain, Belgium, Spain, Norway and Spain.
A group of anti-globalization protesters picketed the university where the former president was speaking.
He said protesters worldwide against globalization were wrong when they said it was responsible for poverty, disease and misery.
"But the protesters have a point if they say instead that there has been a global economy which has developed more quickly than the global social institutions necessary to ameliorate the problems and expand opportunity.
"For all the new millionaires and billionaires in the world, we began the new century with half the people on the face of the earth living on less than two dollars a day.
"One billion people live on less than a dollar a day. One-and- a-half billion people never have access to clean water. One woman dies every minute in childbirth. One hundred million children never go to school at all."
The former president will be guest of honor at a charity dinner in Dublin later Tuesday in recognition of his contribution to the peace process.
He will then travel to Northern Ireland where is expected to visit Belfast, Enniskillen and Derry on Wednesday and Thursday, giving a boost to supporters of the peace process ahead of general elections on June 7.