What is the UK governments motive in supporting the PACS Programme? Are there any commercial interests and obligations involved?
The PACS Programme is part of the UK government’s international development effort to help eliminate poverty and encourage economic growth that benefits the poor. In particular, the UK government’s Department For International Development (DFID) is committed to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty in the world by 2015. The commitment is based on obvious moral and ethical grounds — it is simply wrong that one in five people in the world live in abject poverty. Public opinion surveys in the UK have also shown that the public in the country are concerned by poverty and feel that their government should be working to reduce it. However, in addition to responding to the obvious moral argument, the UK government believes that the elimination of global poverty is a matter of enlightened self-interest. Poverty breeds conflict, increases vulnerability to natural disasters and accelerates overexploitation of resources. It also un
