Mr. Speaker, l also rise to associate myself with the Statement made by my very good Friend, the hon. Member for Nkawkaw. Mr. Speaker, let us all congratulate ourselves that we have set down a day referred to as Commonwealth Day that we celebrate and remember.
Mr. Speaker, according to the Statement
one of the focus of the celebration of the day would be on health. He did gave some statistics, and said that 60 per cent of maternal mortality rate is from members of these countries which refer to themselves as Commonwealth nations. Mr. Speaker, he did also say that more than a third of those suffering from HIV/AIDS can be found among members of this association referred to as Commonwealth countries.
Mr. Speaker, out of fifty-three countries that are members of that association, quite a big chunk come from the Third World and more particularly Africa. Indeed, it is good that we celebrate the day and remember what have been our lot over all these centuries, not that we just share a tradition, the Commonwealth tradition,
not that we all share one language, but quite a lot of us remember that we have a colonial past with a very well developed country - great Britain.
Mr. Speaker, we agree that quite
a number of the countries - Canada, Australia, the Ireland and a few of them -- belong to the developed world. The greater percentage of members of this association are from the poor countries. For a very long time, although we have had independence, poverty is our lot. More than a third of the world's population that can be described as poor come from the Commonwealth countries.
Therefore, there is the need that we speed up our efforts towards ensuring that we reduce poverty. Indeed, poverty reduction is one of the goals that the Commonwealth countries have associated themselves with, just as the United Nations (UN) has also done. But, definitely, the fact still remains that greater percentage of those of us in the Commonwealth remain poor and very little has been done. Indeed, poverty is even becoming a scourge instead of it being reduced -- a scourge of these countries. Many of us have been ridden by debts. Although quite recently efforts have been made towards debt cancellation and so on and so forth we still are indebted and extremely poor.
As we take stock of what is happening to the Commonwealth and as we celebrate it, it is important that particularly those of us in the third world and Africa should realize that our destiny lies in our own hands. It is good for us to belong to some association and this particular association, but more importantly, that we make sure that poverty is reduced and
that we on our own strive towards our own development, improved standard of living, and just as the largest ghana has decided to do, to improve upon the quality of our own human resource. Then of course, we could stand as equal to those who are members of the association and in particular those who belong to the first world.
Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me this opportunity to associate myself with this Statement. We should remember that we belong to the Commonwealth countries and association but more importantly we should depend on our own selves.
Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor (NDC --
Lawra Nandom): Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this all important Statement made by the hon. Member for Nkawkaw (Mr. Kwabena Okerchiri).
Mr. Speaker, it is particularly important
that the very notion of the Commonwealth that started in terms of maintaining strong cultural bonds, particularly at the level of education and other cultural interaction based on the very conception of empire is beginning to expand to include more mundane daily concerns of the so called Commonwealth citizen. And I think this development, Mr. Speaker, is gratifying. Quite often it has been asked whether we do not need to evaluate and perhaps take a second look at the very notion of Commonwealth nations.
This has come up because the very cultural context in which the Commonwealth was put together seems to have been eroding substantially over the years. There is suddenly this clear division between western advanced Commonwealth countries and the Commonwealth countries of the south that are relatively poor. And we have seen over the years that the relationship between these two poles in Commonwealth has
