Developed countries hit by the global financial crisis should still realize their responsibility to support the developing ones.
They should also support demands of the third world for a new, properly balanced international economic order.
As many as 53 million more people could be trapped in poverty as economic growth slows around the world, according to the latest World Bank forecasts. And, in a blow to efforts to reduce infant mortality, between 200,000 and 400,000 more babies could die each year between now and 2015 if the crisis persists, the bank said.
"While much of the world is focused on bank rescues and stimulus packages, we should not forget that poor people in developing countries are far more exposed if their economies falter," World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick said.
The developing countries are becoming innocent victims of the crisis. Unlike the developed countries with large foreign exchange reserves and dominant positions in the global economic system, many of the poor nations are still heavily in debt despite relatively rapid economic growth in recent years.
The challenges the poorest in the developing countries have to face in the current crisis is not losing their cars or houses, which they have never dreamed of, but their lives and families.
Undoubtedly, the developed countries, as the source of the trouble, should take measures to prevent such tragedies.
The UN and African leaders have already raised their voices calling for substantial support for developing countries.
Speaking after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in New York on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters the G20 summit in London on April 2 "should commit to sustaining an international stimulus package."
"It needs to comprise aid for the poorest and most vulnerable countries, long-term public lending from the multilateral development banks, and liquidity support not only to least developed countries but also middle-income developing countries," Ban said.
African leaders, who met Brown in London earlier this month, agreed to support an initiative proposed by Zoellick, which demands that 0.7 percent of all bailout plans by developed countries be channeled to Africa.
The developed countries are also facing increasing pressure to strengthen the representation of emerging and developing economies in a fairer international economic order.
The unfair global financial and trading system which the developed countries have dominated and benefited from during the past decades, as many economists point out, is the root of poverty of many developing countries and the cause of the global financial crisis.
Without the establishment of a new global economic order in which the developing countries have a louder voice and more opportunities, the world may find it difficult to avoid another crisis of such magnitude in the future.
(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2009)