When Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, created the Carter Center in 1982 at the end of his presidency, he set ambitious goals that far surpassed those of the foundations launched by other presidents: “Waging peace, fighting disease, building hope.” And indeed, his center, based a stone’s throw from Martin Luther King’s Atlanta home in his native Georgia, has become an astonishing platform for political, charitable and health actions in over 80 countries, as well as hosting, debating and supporting a host of human rights activists.
Read more Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, has died at age 100
Carter was its soul, animator and face, surrounded by a large team of professionals and experts from various disciplines. But everything had been designed, since the 1990s, to ensure the durability of the structure. The funding ($600 million in endowments in 2015) is private and the board of directors is made up of independent figures.
“Waging peace” meant personally taking part in numerous mediations and conferences to prevent or resolve conflicts (in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America…), as well as sending observers to ensure the smooth running of elections around the world (the center has monitored over a hundred, most recently in Tunisia, Mozambique and Myanmar), experts to help draft constitutions that respect democracy, and professors and law experts to advise on justice and open government.
The world’s emergencies
“Fighting disease” was the drive to eliminate preventable pathologies affecting the poorest, such as elephantiasis and river blindness, by launching huge international programs based on education and simple, low-cost methods. In this respect, the Carter team’s undisputed success was the fight against dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm disease, an infection caused by a parasite present in water, and on the way to being eradicated, making it the second, after smallpox, to disappear worldwide, and the first to do so without vaccine or medication.
It was a challenge that Carter took up in 1986, after observing the excruciating suffering of a young Ghanaian girl, when the annual number of cases in Africa and Asia was estimated at 3.5 million. “I’d like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do,” he declared in January 2015, when his center announced that there were only 22 cases left in Africa.
But after seven decades in politics, trips to 145 countries, and more than 30 years of foundation work with the world’s most disadvantaged populations, Carter convinced himself that if there was one issue to prioritize in the world’s emergencies, one “more serious than all of the others, with terrible consequences but which no one is dealing with seriously yet,” it was gender inequality and the suffering inflicted on women and girls.
He had made this a personal battle, expressing in a book – A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014) – his belief that religions and the fallacious interpretation of the Bible and the Quran were at the root of the domination of women. He was revolted by this domination, which was, he said, at the root of massive crimes, slavery, mutilation, rape, human trafficking and, whatever the country, differences in pay for equal work.
He invited religious leaders of all stripes to the Carter Center, including the grand imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and wrote to Pope Francis. “All of my passion and all of my strength will go into this, for the rest of my life,” he said in 2014, during a visit to Paris. All the priorities of his foundation had been reviewed with this objective in mind.
