Bono in tune with battle to end world poverty
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California First Lady Maria Shriver and musician Bono speak at the 2008 Women's Conference at the Long Beach Convention Center on October 22, 2008 in Long Beach, California Photo: Michael Buckner/Getty Images
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By Lesley Wroughton
Friday Oct 24 2008
When 116 million people stood up against worldwide poverty, their cry failed to make big headlines -- but they did inspire Bono to write a new song for U2.
Bono said on Wednesday that the Stand Up and Take Action campaign in 131 countries moved him to pen a song called 'Stand Up'.
"It's not finished yet but it's inspired by this concept of stand up. It's a little diamond," Bono said.
Hypocrisy
"It's not a 'let's hold hands and the world is a better place' sort of song. It's more kick down the door of your own hypocrisy."
Organisers said the 116 million people, who called on global leaders not to forget promises to reduce world poverty and hunger by 2015, represented nearly 2pc of the world's population.
World leaders set a series of agreed targets on poverty, education, health, equality and malnutrition known as Millennium Development Goals or MDGs, eight years ago. But developing countries fear rich nations will use the financial crisis as an excuse to scale down their promises.
"There is a moral contract that was made," Bono said. "To break a promise to yourself, to your partner, to your family, a politician to his constituents, are all bad things to do -- but it's a heinous crime to make a promise to the poorest most vulnerable people on earth and break it."
Bono addressed a women's conference in California on Wednesday organised by Maria Shriver, wife of Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He joined singer Jennifer Lopez and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on stage at the conference, which was attended by around 15,000 women.
Ms Rice told the audience that failing public schools could undermine the ability of the US to compete in a global economy.
Equal access to educational opportunities, she said, also lies at the heart of one of the nation's most important core values - the belief in the United States as a true meritocracy.
Ms Rice said it broke her heart to see "kids who might be the next Nobel Prize winner... trapped in some public school that's just warehousing them."
- Lesley Wroughton
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