Spending priorities for the planet

According to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the world now spends around US$1.1 trillion per year on arms. That’s US$1,100,000,000,000 every year. Broken down, this means that the world spends approximately:

• £1,500,000,000 per day
• £65,000,000 per hour
• £1,000,000 per minute
• £17,500 per second

So by the time you get to the end of this sentence the world would have spent around £350,000 on weapons.

At present the £ is worth about 2 US$.

Contrast this with development. The UNGA estimates that the total annual global spending on development is US$78 billion. That’s US$78,000,000,000 every year. A lot of money but about 7% of the figure spent on arms.

Around 1.2 billion people have to survive on less than US$1 per day and 30,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. Yet for every person on the planet, US$12 per year is spent on development compared to US$166 per year on armaments.

The Select Committee for International Development has reported that India and Pakistan spend 1% of government expenditure on health but on defence they spend 13% (India) and 31% (Pakistan).

According to GlobalIssues.org the US defence budget is 28% of the Federal Budget with health at 19%. However, in the discretionary budgets (part of the Federal Budget that is negotiated between the President and Congress each year as part of the Budget Process) the figures are very different. Defence takes up 52%, education 6.5% and health 6.1%.

According to UNICEF the full cost of universal primary education by the year 2010 would be US$7 billion per year - less than five days of arms spending. That figure is also equivalent to the amount Americans spend on cosmetics and Europeans spend on ice cream each year.

Marie Stopes International (MSI) estimates the cost of providing reproductive health services, "including family planning, maternal health and the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases for developing countries and countries in transition…to be US$17 billion per year ... less than the world spends on armaments each fortnight"

MSI also points out that current levels of global expenditure on sexual and reproductive health — around US$3.7 billion — amount to less than the amount spent each year on confectionery in the UK.