Exposing corruption

"There is enough for all of us on the earth to live well. So why are we poor?"

That was the question posed by Dr Dion Forster at the African Biblical Leadership Initiative (ABLI) forum in Uganda. Part of the answer may be a new campaign about to be launched by Bible Society and others.

The Exposed campaign intends to combat global poverty and corruption by bringing stark facts to the attention of world leaders, including the G8.

"854m people are undernourished," said Dr Forster, who is from South Africa. "Yet annually, North Americans spend about $558bn on take-out food and $33bn on weight-loss products.

"A child dies every five seconds due to hunger-related causes and half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.

"As a Christian I have a responsibility to do something about the hunger around the world."

Dr Forster said the church must be mobilised into action. The Exposed campaign aims to challenge the Church worldwide, along with business and governments to highlight the impact of corruption on the poorest of the poor. It claims:

· $1 trillion goes missing each year due to corruption.

· Providing malaria prevention to the developing world would cost just 4.2bn dollars – 10 per cent of what is spent on take-away food. $25bn a year would be enough to give life-saving medical services to every low income country.

· 1.6bn people have no access to clean drinking water, and each day 29,000 children die from preventable diseases.

· Just one per cent of the world’s global income would be sufficient to eradicate extreme poverty.

Bible Society, Micah Challenge, the Salvation Army and others are behind the Exposed campaign, which aims to gather 100m signatures to present to the world’s economic leaders at the G8. The campaign gets underway in October, but the website petition is already live. For more details, go to www.exposed2013.com

Micah 6.8 ‘He has showed you, O man, what God requires of you. To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’