Professor Peter Singer gave the first of this year’s Uehiro Lectures on Practical Ethics on the topic of Global Poverty at the Martin Wood lecture theatre on the evening of 29 May. Addressing a packed lecture hall, Professor Singer set out his views on the moral obligations of the citizens of rich countries give money to aid the world’s poorest people.
Professor Singer described a world where a billion people live in extreme poverty, on one dollar or less a day, and are ‘undernourished, lack safe drinking water, cannot send their children to school, for whom healthcare is beyond their means and whose life expectancy is 48 years,’ and contrasted this with the world’s rich countries where the average person can enjoy luxuries previously unknown even to royalty.
Professor Singer declared that in the poorest nations 30,000 children are dying each day and that for citizens of rich countries to fail to take action to prevent this was comparable to failing to save a child’s life in order to protect an uninsured car.
See full Press Release.
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