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BETWEEN - NO 104 - August - September 2004
| In order to better
address the plight of the millions of people around the world uprooted
from their homes by war and other emergencies, the United Nations
has created a new office, the Inter-agency Internal Displacement Division
of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Established on 1 July by the UN Secretary-General, the Division—directed
by Dennis McNamara, Special Adviser to the UN’s Emergency Relief
Coordinator—will address the issue of internally displaced people
(IDPs), which does not fall under the direct mandate of any single
agency.
Initially, the Division will focus on the six to eight major countries of displacement—Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, Liberia, Burundi and Colombia, with access being negotiated for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sri Lanka—for the next year to 18 months. Staff from the humanitarian agencies will be seconded to the Division to work alongside OCHA staff. Those IDPs “are the forgotten or neglected victims of conflict worldwide,” Mr. McNamara told a press briefing in Geneva on 20 July. “Displaced civilians remain a massive humanitarian crisis.” He noted that of the 21 conflicts raging worldwide, 18 of them were internal, so most of the population displacement—some 25 million people in all, about twice the size of the 13-15 million global refugee population—is taking place without people crossing international borders. Another 25 million people have been displaced by natural disasters and development projects. Those 50 million people probably matched or were more than the number of people around the globe suffering from AIDS, “but [they] get relatively minor international attention,” Mr. McNamara stressed. The Division was established to address the fact that no adequate inter-agency response to displacement existed, particularly for victims of war and human rights abuses, the most obvious recent example being in Darfur, Sudan, he added. Even so, the gap in response is not a problem for agencies and NGOs alone, Mr. McNamara said, stressing that governments also bear responsibility since IDPs by definition were citizens in their own country and the host State often created conditions for displacement or responded inadequately to the phenomenon. In addition, the international donor community was also at fault for response shortfalls: the UN’s 2004 Consolidated Appeal (CAP) had asked for US$5 billion and had received just US$3.5 billion, the new Director said. “The global humanitarian aid budget last year was US$10 billion;
the global military expenditure budget US$800 billion—80 times
the amount of the global humanitarian aid budget,” reflecting
distorted priorities and the consequences of the inadequate humanitarian
response, he said. Contact: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland, fax +41-22/917 0200, website (http://ochaonline.un.org/index.htm).
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In August 2004, Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the appointment of three women to senior posts in the United Nations dealing with gender issues and humanitarian affairs. On 12 August, Rachel Mayanja, currently the Director of the Human Resources Management Division at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was appointed Mr. Annan’s Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. She succeeds Assistant Secretary-General Angela King, who retired earlier this year. Ms. Mayanja joined the UN shortly after the 1975 UN World Conference for Women. Also announced on the same date, was the appointment of Margareta Wahlstrom as the new Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator. She most recently served as the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in charge of relief, reconstruction and development. Ms. Wahlstrom succeeds Carolyn McAskie, who is now Mr. Annan’s Special Representative for Burundi and chief of the UN Operation (ONUB) in the Central African nation. On 25 August, the Secretary-General announced the appointment of Mehr Khan Williams (Pakistan) as Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. The appointment is at the Assistant Secretary-General level. Ms. Khan Williams has worked for the United Nations since 1976. She has held senior management positions in New York, Florence and Bangkok with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and has also served as Acting Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Sydney. She is currently serving as Special Advisor to the Executive Director of UNICEF.
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A new panel—the Secretary-General’s Advisory Panel on International Support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)— has been formed in order to provide international support for NEPAD, the African development road map. Announced on 20 July at UN headquarters in New York, the panel includes eminent economists, development practitioners and academics and is headed by Chief Emeka Anyaoku (Nigeria), the former Commonwealth Secretary-General and President of the World Wide Fund for Nature. The panel will monitor the scope and progress of international
support for NEPAD and advise the Secretary-General on ways to expand
and strengthen global partnerships for Africa’s development
goals. The Special Adviser has issued reports that highlight progress in three main areas of the NEPAD programme—increasing capital flows to Africa; integrating NEPAD priorities into Africa’s national development strategies; and strengthening cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries (South-South cooperation) in reaching Africa’s development objectives. The report on capital flows, entitled Potentials for Financing
the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, contains specific
recommendations for African governments and their development partners
in six key areas, including: The report on South-South cooperation, Experiences of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, highlights links between African countries and their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts in agriculture, health and education, energy, telecommunications, peace and security, the environment and trade. The report notes that government-to-government cooperation between Africa and the region has fostered greater contacts among African and Latin American and Caribbean civil society organizations on a range of issues, including human rights and governance. Development bodies like the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, the report notes, could play “a catalytic role” in expanding development cooperation between the regions. The experiences of three countries in incorporating NEPAD’s objectives into national development strategies—Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa—are outlined in the third report. The study notes that while integrating NEPAD’s continental goals into national and local development programmes is complex, substantial early progress has been made in each of the countries examined. NEPAD reporting and monitoring mechanisms have been established, and priorities for initial action have been identified. Although the involvement of civil society and the private sector with NEPAD varies greatly, the report observes, consultations among stakeholders in all three countries are increasing. The reports are available online (www.un.org/esa/africa/publication.html). On 17 September, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan released his second annual report on NEPAD’s implementation (A/59/206). The report finds that although African countries are making considerable progress in carrying out the continent-wide plan, they also need firmer and more coherent support from the international community, including more aid, debt relief, foreign investment, and trade opportunities. Greater consistency in external policies should also be involved so that advances on one front are not undercut by lags on another. To develop Africa’s physical infrastructure, Mr. Annan reports that NEPAD’s Heads of State Implementation Committee has approved a list of 20 “top priority” projects, including in energy, transport, water and sanitation and information and communications technologies. Although the World Bank and African Development Bank have already earmarked some financing, about half of the estimated total cost of US$8.1 billion is expected to come from the private sector, the report notes. It is available online (www.africarecovery.org) under NEPAD/UN Reports. Contact: Agostinho Zaccarias, Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, United Nations, DC1-1237, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/963 8435, fax +1-212/963 3892, e-mail <zaccarias@un.org>, website (www.un.org/esa/africa).
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| 19 August: One Year Later | |||
| On 19 August,
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan led a ceremony at the
Palais des Nations in Geneva commemorating the first anniversary of
the bombing attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad that took the lives
of 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the late Special Representative
to Iraq and High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Addressing the audience, Mr. Annan said, “It was a personal
tragedy for each and every one of us, because of the dear friends
and close colleagues we lost, and because of the direct attack against
the blue flag and we who have devoted our lives to the United Nations.”
“But the attack on the Canal Hotel was a really unique blow for us as an organization. It brought us face to face with danger in a new and more intimidating form—the danger that we, servants of the United Nations, will no longer be victims simply by virtue of the times and places in which we are called upon to serve, but may have become in ourselves one of the main targets of political violence. “We are now wrestling with wrenching, fundamental questions: “How do we improve security without unduly impeding our work and effectiveness? “Our work is with people. We must be able to get to them, and they must be able to get to us. “How do we balance this need for openness with security in today’s world? “How do we operate in places like Iraq and some parts of Afghanistan, where many people want and expect us to help—and this includes the Security Council—but some are determined to block our work at any price? “Are we witnessing a paradigm shift, or a tragic phase that will pass? “We have been working hard to find answers, and to correct
our own systemic weaknesses. Much has been done, but much more is
still to be done,” the Secretary-General concluded, asking
for a minute of silence in honour of all the victims and their families.
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| S-G: Law & Transitional Justice | |||
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On 12 August, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan released a report entitled The rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies (S/2004/616). The Secretary-General suggests that in helping war-torn societies re-establish the rule of law and come to terms with large-scale past abuses after conflict, the United Nations must reject any amnesty for genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. The report also says that Security Council mandates should ensure that no such amnesty previously granted bar prosecution before a UN-created or assisted court. However, Mr. Annan’s report stresses that the UN not establish or directly participate in any tribunal for which capital punishment is a possible sanction, and that it insist upon full government cooperation with international and mixed tribunals, including the surrender of accused persons. Helping such societies, “all within a context marked by devastated institutions, exhausted resources, diminished security and a traumatized and divided population, is a daunting, often overwhelming, task,” he noted. However, “justice, peace and democracy are not mutually exclusive objectives, but rather mutually reinforcing imperatives,” he said in his recommendations. “Advancing all three in fragile post-conflict settings requires strategic planning, careful integration and sensible sequencing of activities.” Mr. Annan calls for recognizing the need to ensure gender sensitivity in restoring the rule of law, as well as ensuring the full participation of women, and for avoiding the imposition of external models. “We must learn as well to eschew one-size-fits-all formulas and the imposition of foreign models, and, instead, base our support on national assessments, national participation and national needs and aspirations,” he said, noting that recent years have seen an increased UN focus on questions of transitional justice and the rule of law in conflict and post-conflict societies that has been “yielding important lessons for our future activities.” According to the Secretary-General, success will depend on a number of critical factors, among them the need to ensure a common basis in international norms and standards and to mobilize the necessary resources for a sustainable investment in justice. Mr. Annan said he would instruct the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ECPS) to propose concrete action to strengthen UN support for tackling the issues. The ECPS, a high-level coordinating body created by the Secretary-General, facilitates communication between UN programmes and agencies in order to prevent, respond to, and end conflict. It is not a standing body but is convened on a regular basis by the Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs. The report is available online (www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep04.html).
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| S-G: Violence in Afghanistan | |||
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On 17 August 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan released his report on Afghanistan (S/2004/634) noting that extremist violence, factionalism and the illicit drug industry are on the rise, threatening lasting peace as the country prepares for elections. The report, entitled The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security, indicates that violent attacks and cross-border infiltrations have increased, especially in Afghanistan’s south, and these activities are depriving many communities of the benefits of economic and political reconstruction. Violence—both terrorist and criminal—is carried out “with seeming impunity,” resulting in “the loss of too many Afghan lives and increasingly of those of international assistance workers,” the report says. An estimated 30 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2003, most of them by suspected remnants of the Taliban militia who have vowed to halt humanitarian work and derail the elections planned for October 2004 and April 2005. Médecins sans Frontières announced in late July that it was leaving Afghanistan after 24 years because of concerns over security. Five of its staff were killed in an attack in the northwest of the country in June. However, the Secretary-General says the high rate of voter registrations—more than 9.9 million people have now enrolled, with 41% of them female—shows that the groups responsible for the violence are politically isolated ahead of presidential and parliamentary polls. The voter registrations are “a clear response to the efforts of the Taliban and other extremist groups to derail the elections and to exclude women from public life,” the report finds. Speaking before the Security Council on 25 August, Jean Arnault, Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said that voters and electoral workers will need urgent protection, noting that even the threat of violence could cause large numbers of eligible voters to stay away from the polling sites, especially in the south. With existing security stretched thin, he called for enhanced international support to cover the 5,000 polling sites across Afghanistan. Mr. Arnault called for UN workers to receive enhanced protection, saying there should be more trained Afghan personnel to protect UN sites and more resources for gathering and analyzing security information. Pointing to the political and ethnic diversity of the candidates standing for president, Mr. Arnault said this was evidence that “meaningful political competition is seen to be possible” at least at the national level. More information is available online (http://mirror.undp.org/afghanistan/unama.html). |
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| 1 Million Refugees Repatriated | |||
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According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), one million Afghan refugees have returned home from Iran since UNHCR started its voluntary repatriation programme in April 2002. This reduces by half the overall Afghan refugee population in Iran, which now stands at around one million. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers welcomed the news as a positive step for Afghanistan, and a milestone for UNHCR’s work in the region. “For over two years now, UNHCR has been strongly committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Rebuilding a country after years of war is a long and difficult process, and I remain concerned at the deterioration in the security situation in some regions. But today gives us all the opportunity to take stock of how much has been accomplished already. One million Afghans have been able to repatriate from Iran, and behind this figure there are one million individual stories, one million people who made the choice to go back, and are now rebuilding not just their own lives, but also their homeland.” UNHCR says this millionth return comes towards the end of a summer season that has seen a marked increase in the repatriation trend from Iran to Afghanistan. In recent weeks, up to 4,000 Afghans a day have made the journey back home. The rise in the number of returns follows the introduction of a series of new measures implemented by UNHCR to facilitate voluntary repatriation. “Many Afghan refugees in Iran are very educated, they have professional skills that are essential to the future of Afghanistan,” said UNHCR Representative in Iran Philippe Lavanchy. “Every teacher who goes back will teach hundreds of Afghan children to read, every doctor will save lives, all will be an integral part of the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This is why the team here has made it a priority to help refugees who want to repatriate by removing some of the obstacles that stood in their path.” The measures put in place by UNHCR over the past year cover a wide range of issues of concern to refugees, from the logistical to the educational. UNHCR has doubled the number of trucks with accompanying baggage leaving on each convoy, allowing refugees to take more of their personal belongings home. UNHCR is also running an information campaign to let refugees know their entitlements under the voluntary repatriation programme. Another UNHCR initiative was to set up “dispute settlement committees” in seven Iranian cities to help refugees resolve their legal disputes before repatriating. The committees deal with civil cases only, and use mediation and arbitration to resolve such issues as non-payment of salary, or refusal to return rental deposits. Often, the sums involved are all the savings that the refugees can rely on to start a new life back in their homeland. If the current repatriation trend continues, UNHCR estimates that another 200,000 Afghans will have repatriated from Iran by the time the voluntary repatriation programme is scheduled to end in March 2005. This will leave around 800,000 Afghans in the country, and the refugee agency is working with the Iranian authorities to find long-term solutions for some of this remaining caseload. Contact: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, CH-1211 Geneva 2 Dépôt, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/739 8111, website (www.unhcr.ch).
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| Second World Urban Forum | |||
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The Second World Urban Forum, held in Barcelona from 13-17 September, opened with warnings from world leaders and mayors that rapid urbanization is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, as they called attention to the fact that millions of people in cities around the world still lack access to safe water and sanitation, health care, education, shelter, and security of tenure. The meeting brought together over 4,000 people, including over 600 mayors from around the world to address the conference’s theme: “Cities: crossroads of cultures, inclusiveness and integration?” The United Nations Human Settlements Programme’s (UN-HABITAT) Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka said the question mark in the theme of the conference implied that the world still had not yet arrived at an effective strategy to make cities work for everyone. The five-day Forum included three plenary sessions, a series of thematic and partner dialogues, networking events, panel discussions, and special events. Numerous speakers called for more backing for local authorities from the UN system and governments, as well as a renewed drive for decentralization. “Urbanization is bringing problems of concern to us all,” said former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in his address. “Four years ago, when world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, it seemed they recognized the urgency of the problems,” he said. “But all of us today are concerned that many leaders having taken that step, have not shown the political will to implement them and take on the obligations they assumed. We have to be frank—we cannot leave the millennium commitments to the same fate as Rio document of 1992.” Joan Clos, Mayor of Barcelona and President of the United Nations Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (UNACLA), pointed to the formation of the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG, see Go Between 103) in January 2004. He noted that in many countries local governments were unelected, lacked financial independence, were unable to raise their own finances and thus unable to make full use of their authority. The new UCLG wanted to help develop local administrative independence around the world. Nicophore Soglo, Mayor of Contonou (Benin), said that nowhere is the challenge of urbanization greater than in Africa: “The world’s urban population is approaching the characteristics of a time-bomb. We must disarm it immediately.” He pointed out that Africa’s challenges were double those of elsewhere in the world: “We must never forget that Africa has undergone four centuries of deportation—the slave trade followed by colonization and now we have unviable States, governance problems, conflict and HIV/AIDS. Its world market access is derisory. Decentralization and democracy is only beginning in many countries.” During a discussion on urban resources and finance, a number of panellists highlighted the fact that despite their lack of access to urban resources and finance, the urban poor in many cities still manage to build settlements. Their efforts at incremental housing must, therefore, be recognized by the finance sector, and appropriate finance products must be developed to meet their needs. Panellists also raised the issue of setting appropriate interest rates that would serve the needs of the urban poor. This would require support from people themselves, who will need to save regularly, but also from governments who need to assure secure tenure. On their part, development finance institutions need to provide adequate credit guarantee mechanisms to reduce risk and make interest rates affordable. Dennis Shea, Assistant Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, stressed the need to harness private sector resources to meet the needs of the urban poor. He added that while national and local governments were willing to put in equity in the form of land for slum upgrading, commercial capital was still not easily available. The discussion concluded with a set of recommendations, including adapting commercial banking and housing finance systems to the needs of the urban poor and ensuring that slum dwellers are the dominant partners in slum upgrading initiatives. The Huairou Commission, representing grassroots women’s organizations around the world, called on UN-HABITAT to convene an expert-group meeting on women’s concerns, and said the Third World Urban Forum should have a “special place” for a women’s caucus. Esther Mwaura Muiru, of the commission, said governments had to address the issues of the Millennium Development Goals with particular attention to the plight of women. The Forum closed with a call from urban leaders on governments to give local authorities more support saying the challenge of urbanization is the greatest facing humanity. In her closing remarks, Mrs. Tibaijuka said, “In two short years, the World Urban Forum has established itself as the world’s premier urban development platform. The 1,100 people at the inaugural event in Nairobi in 2002 would scarcely have dared believe that more than 4,000 participants would come to Barcelona for a week of networking, discussion and debate,” she said. More information on the forum and the initiatives and partnerships that were launched is available online. Canada has agreed to host the Third World Urban Forum in Vancouver (Canada). Contact: Sharad Shankardess, Head, Press & Media Unit, PO Box 30030, Nairobi, Kenya, telephone +254-20/623153, fax +254-20/624060, e-mail <sharad.shankardass@unhabitat.org>, website (www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2004/default.asp). Sarah O’Brien, Executive Officer, United Cities and Local Governments, Carrer Avinyó, 15, 08002 Barcelona, Spain, telephone +34-933/428750, fax +34-933/428760, e-mail <s.obrien@cities-localgovernments.org>, website (www.cities-localgovernments.org).
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| Role of Women Ex-combatants | |||
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Women ex-combatants from Rwanda, speaking at a meeting organized in Kigali in late August by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), have asked for a role in regional peacekeeping missions in Africa. The meeting was organized in recognition of the fact that women ex-combatants, despite the essential roles they can play in post-conflict disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes, are frequently excluded from these processes. Because of a strong focus on male ex-combatants, the needs of women ex-combatants are often inadequately addressed in demobilization phases, resulting in situations of deteriorating health and poverty. The UNIFEM/CIDA meeting discussed the challenges faced by female ex-combatants reintegrating into society, and the role they are playing as peace builders in their communities. The meeting, which brought together over 200 women from an association of female ex-combatants called Ndabaga, was also attended by Rwandan Minister for Gender, Valerie Nyirahabineza, who said that peacekeeping missions must have a gender perspective, and that Ndabaga members could lend valuable contributions. “Since wars and conflicts affect children and women in a special way, and since women tend to confide in their fellow women more that they do men, peace missions should have a big representation of women to attend to the special needs of women suffering the consequences of war,” she said, citing the recent mission from Rwanda to Darfur (Sudan) as an example of where Rwandan women ex-combatants should have been included. Members of the Ndabaga group, established in 2001, said they are deeply committed to Rwanda’s national reconstruction and reconciliation process, and many are already active leaders in grassroots organizations often called upon to assist their communities with conflict resolution. Rwanda’s Ministry of Gender has allocated funds to help the Ndabaga women access the resources they need and to carry out their activities, while the Minister of Labour, Vocational Training and Public Service, Angeline Muganza, pledged to sponsor Ndabaga members aged 20-25 years for vocational training for three years. “This has really caught people’s imagination,” UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer, said. “We will help their organization to meet with other women’s groups not only within Africa but outside as well. We hope to create a network of demobilized women,” Ms. Heyzer said, referring to their overall role in rehabilitation after conflicts, including education, health care and employment. On the specific issue of women in peacekeeping operations outside their countries, she said they would have to be prepared, but added, “We try to break new ground.” See related article on page 20. Contact: Joanne Sandler, Deputy Director for Programmes, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 304 East 45th St, 15th Floor, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/906 6400, fax +1- 212/906 6705, e-mail <joanne.sandler@undp.org>, website (www.unifem.org).
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| Disarmament: Consensus elusive | |||
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The Conference on Disarmament, the sole multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations, concluded the third and last part of its 2004 session on 7 September after adopting its annual report, which will be presented to the General Assembly. Although intensive consultations were held and a number of informal proposals were put forward, the report notes that the Conference was not able to agree on a programme of work. The Conference works by consensus and cannot undertake new work without the agreement of all Member States. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his message to the opening session of the Conference, said recent events had inspired demands for new efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of arms control and disarmament agreements, and to revitalize the multilateral disarmament machinery, including the Conference. He stressed that political will was essential in overcoming the current impasse and revitalizing the Conference. During the session, the Conference adopted a decision with regard to enhancement of the engagement of civil society in its work, deciding that after the Conference adopts a programme of work, it will allocate one informal plenary meeting per annual session to NGOs to address the Conference. Only NGOs whose activities are relevant to the work of the Conference will be able to address it, and a formal selection process will be put in place to consider requests. In his closing statement, the President of the Conference, Ambassador Mya Than of Myanmar, said, despite all efforts, the programme of work still remained elusive. However, he pointed to progress made in certain areas, including the enhancement and engagement of cooperation with civil society. The Conference’s report requests the current President and the incoming President to conduct consultations during the intersessional period and, if possible, make recommendations, taking into account all relevant proposals, views presented and discussions held. The dates for the three parts of its 2005 session will be from 24 January - 1 April; 30 May - 15 July; and 8 August - 23 September. Contact: Conference on Disarmament, Palais des Nations, CH-1211
Geneva 10, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/917 3440, fax +41-22/917
0034, website (www.unog.ch/disarm/dconf.htm). |
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| World Investment Report 2004 | |||
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Launched on 22 September, World Investment Report 2004: The Shift Towards Services (WIR04) presents the latest trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) and explores the shift towards services, with a special analysis of offshoring service activities. Part One of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) report discusses recent global and regional trends in FDI and international production by transnational corporations (TNCs). Global FDI flows bottomed out in 2003, the report notes, but there were some regional differences, and the sectoral pattern of FDI is moving towards services. Outward FDI from developing countries is becoming significant. UNCTAD says there is also optimism that inflows to these countries will increase in 2004 and beyond. Part Two of WIR04 deals with FDI in services—an important but often neglected area of FDI in the context of development. It examines the shift of FDI towards services with a focus on the entry of TNCs into new service areas. Services FDI, especially in intermediate and infrastructure services, affects the economic performance of a host-country in all sectors. The offshoring of corporate services is taking off rapidly because of advances in information and communications technologies. However, the potential of such offshoring can only be harnessed if countries adopt appropriate policies, UNCTAD warns. Part Three analyzes key issues relating to national and international policies on FDI in services. As many services are deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political fabric of host societies, the impact of FDI on those services could be far-reaching, WIR04 notes. Therefore, national policies matter—not only to attract FDI in services, but also to maximize its benefits and minimize its potential negative impacts. UNCTAD points out that the proliferation of international investment agreements (IIAs) covering FDI in services has resulted in a multifaceted and multilayered network of international rules that affect national policy making. WIR04 includes a statistical annex, the Outward FDI Performance Index, which shows how countries stack up against one another in terms of their outward FDI performance in terms of their economic size, measured by gross domestic product (GDP). “The Index shows that small developed and developing countries invest relatively more abroad than big ones and that there is greater potential for outward FDI for some big countries,” Karl P. Sauvant, Director of UNCTAD’s Investment Division, said. Countries at the top of the Index include a number of developing economies from South-East Asia (e.g. Hong Kong (China), Malaysia and Singapore). Firms from these relatively small, open economies are subject to the same competitive pressures of the globalizing world economy as their counterparts from developed countries, and are thus increasingly building up their competitive strength for expanding through FDI, WIR04 notes. A number of economies have seen an improvement in their outward FDI performance over the past 15 years. The fact that their FDI grew faster than their share of global GDP indicates that their enterprises are building ownership advantages rapidly and/or are increasingly choosing to exploit their advantages by establishing operations in foreign locations, UNCTAD says. Contact: Karl Sauvant, Director, Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise Development, UNCTAD, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/907 5707, e-mail <karl.sauvant@unctad.org>, website (www.unctad.org/wir). |
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According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the situation of the global economy is brighter than it was a year ago. Since growth in world output and trade recovered in 2003, there is now widespread optimism that the acceleration of growth in 2004 could lead to a return of the performance experienced at the end of the last decade, and that the world economy may enter an extended period of growth. In reality, however, the outlook for a sustained recovery is more clouded and uncertain than at the beginning of the 1990s, UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2004 (TDR2004): Policy Coherence, Development Strategies and Integration into the World Economy suggests. Large disparities in the strength of domestic demand persist among the major industrial countries, and increasing trade imbalances between the major economic blocks could lead to new protectionist pressures and increase instability in currency and financial markets, with adverse implications for developing countries, the report cautions. The sharp increase in oil prices and uncertainty about their future development, as well as their possible impact on inflation and interest rates, are an additional reason for concern. The report notes that that income growth is unequally distributed both among developed countries, where the euro area continues to lag behind, and among developing countries, where fast and sustained growth continues to be concentrated in East and South Asia. At the same time, per capita income in most of sub-Saharan Africa is stagnating, and the basis for sustained growth in Latin America is still very fragile. TDR2004 points out that the improvement in the global economy has been the result of exceptionally good performance in a small number of countries, with great variations in the spillover effects on other economies. The recovery of the world economy has been driven largely by the US economy and continued fast expansion in East and South Asia. Through its increasing fiscal and trade deficits, the United States economy has provided a strong demand stimulus to the rest of the world. On the other hand, several developing economies in Asia, in particular China, have been able to increase not only their imports—with strong spillover effects in economies in the Asia and Pacific region—but also their exports at double-digit rates. TDR2004 points out that the African continent benefited from the recovery in the world economy less than other developing regions, and that given the severe financing constraints of most sub-Saharan economies, investment rates remain too low to achieve the required degree of diversification into higher value-added production and more dynamic products in international markets. The report stresses that debt relief and the additional provision of official development assistance (ODA) in the form of grants are indispensable for alleviating poverty and improving social conditions in these countries. In light of the persisting weakness of per capita income growth, the report warns that it now appears increasingly unlikely that sub-Saharan Africa can attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular that of halving poverty by 2015. In most countries, growth would need to be doubled and sustained over a decade in order to meet those goals. Greater openness to international trade and finance has not enabled developing countries to establish a virtuous interaction between external financing, domestic investment and export growth. TDR2004 argues that, to achieve this, a feasible development agenda has to be based on the concept of “coherence.” According to the report, a more comprehensive policy framework is required that addresses the need to reinforce coherence between the international trading system and the international monetary and financial system. The processes that have led to the recovery of the world economy and the regional growth patterns in the developing world confirm the importance of proactive fiscal and monetary policies that support domestic demand growth, TDR2004 points out. Moreover, a competitive exchange rate can play a decisive role in forestalling external constraints and creating policy space for monetary easing. Contact: Heiner Flassbeck, UNCTAD, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/907 5840, fax +41-22/907 0274, e-mail <heiner.flassbeck@unctad.org>, website (www.unctad.org).
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| International Forum on Creative Industries | |||
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On 20 August, the Brazilian Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil Moreira, launched a joint initiative between the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Brazilian Government to set up an International Forum on Creative Industries in Brazil. The Forum aims to help developing countries derive greater development
gains from the emerging sector of creative industries, such as the
recording industry, photography, commercial art, as well as music
production and the motion picture industry. By improving market
transparency, sharing best practices, and international advocacy,
the Forum seeks to assist in the development of these industries
in developing countries. According to UNCTAD, creative industries
are also an important vehicle for the promotion of cultural diversity,
and are key to helping countries claim their own histories and to
envision their own future—and are thus part of a more holistic
view of the development agenda. UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero pointed out that “excellence in artistic expression and abundance of talent are not the privilege of rich countries.” Creative industries already contribute to employment generation and export expansion in some leading developing countries, such as the Indian film industry (known as “Bollywood”). Globally, they are estimated to account for more than 7% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and are forecast to grow on average by 10% per annum. However, most developing and transition economies continue to be marginal players in these sectors, reflecting a combination of domestic policy weaknesses and global systemic biases. The Forum will help address a broad range of factors that are hindering developing countries in making use of their potential. Other functions could include identifying marketable creative products in developing countries through market studies and data collection, helping to build the required supply capacity and to modernize the creative sectors (for example, through policy advice or facilitating access to distribution networks in importing markets), as well as providing marketing support in target countries. UNCTAD is setting up an inter-agency task force to provide expertise. The International Forum on Creative Industries represents the first follow-up action to UNCTAD XI, held in Brazil in June (see NGLS Roundup 115). Contact: Zeljka Kozul-Wright, UNCTAD Press Office, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/907 5004, e-mail <zeljka.kozul-wright@unctad.org>, website (www.unctad.org/press).
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UNV: Volunteers Have a Role to Play in the MDGs | ||
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The volunteer movement has a critical role to play in harnessing
and channelling volunteer energy towards achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), Ad de Raad, recently appointed Executive
Coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, said.
Speaking at a special forum of the 18th World Volunteer Conference
held in Spain in August as part of the Universal Forum of Cultures
- Barcelona 2004, he urged governments to seize volunteerism’s
potential in helping to realize their commitments to the MDGs. While volunteerism, he added, is not the solution to all of the challenges facing humanity, disregarding its impact would be moving in the wrong direction. “Volunteering is of course not a solution for addressing all of the world’s ills. But to ignore the contributions that many millions volunteers make, and not to factor volunteerism into official policy and programmes, is a fundamental mistake,” he warned. Created by the General Assembly in 1970 to serve as an operational partner in development cooperation at the request of Member States, UNV encourages people to become active in volunteering in their countries and is administered by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), working through UNDP offices around the world. On 1 September, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed proposals to streamline UNV, which seeks to mobilize people worldwide in the service of peace and development in sectors ranging from agriculture and health to support of human rights and electoral processes. In a note to the General Assembly, Mr. Annan endorsed as “balanced and constructive” a report by the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) that evaluated UNV and recommended improvements to ensure the most efficient use of resources. The report’s proposals to UNV include focussing on a more limited number of high-priority activities and trying to achieve a balance between ongoing activities and new initiatives and projects. It also calls for management to continue improving the representation of volunteers from under-represented countries as well as women and youth. Some 5,000 qualified and experienced women and men of nearly 160 nationalities serve each year in developing countries in technical cooperation with governments, with community-based initiatives, in humanitarian relief and rehabilitation and in support of human rights, electoral and peace-building processes. Contact: United Nations Volunteers, Postfach 260 111, D-53153 Bonn,
Germany, telephone +49-228/815 2000, fax +49-228/815 2001, e-mail
<information@unvolunteers.org>, website (www.unv.org). |
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A report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns that more than 2.6 billion people—over 40% of the world’s population—do not have access to basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water, creating a cycle of ill-health and poverty that will defeat human development efforts if urgent action is not taken. Entitled Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) drinking water and sanitation target -- A mid-term assessment of progress, the report details the progress of individual countries, regions, and the world as a whole between the MDG baseline year of 1990 and the half-way mark of 2002. WHO and UNICEF say the report, which is the first in a series looking at progress in water and sanitation coverage, should be a wake-up call to all global leaders: “Every country still has work to do to eliminate disparities in basic services and the data shows clearly how that can be done before the MDG deadline of 2015.” The report notes that while the world is on track to meet the MDG of cutting the number of people lacking safe drinking water to 800 million by 2015, the MDG of providing basic sanitation to 75% of the global population will, at the present rate of progress, fall short by half a billion people, allowing waste and disease to spread, killing millions of children and leaving millions more on the brink of survival, most of which will occur in rural Africa and Asia. “Around the world millions of children are being born into a silent emergency of simple needs,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. “The growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to basic services is killing around 4,000 children every day and underlies many more of the ten million child deaths each year. We have to act now to close this gap or the death toll will certainly rise.” “Water and sanitation are among the most important determinants of public health. Wherever people achieve reliable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation they have won a major battle against a wide range of diseases,” WHO Director-General Jong-wook Lee said. The severe human and economic toll of missing the sanitation target could be prevented by closing the gap between urban and rural populations and by providing simple hygiene education, according to WHO and UNICEF. They warn that a global trend towards urbanization is marginalizing the rural poor and putting a huge strain on basic services in cities. As a result, families living in rural villages and urban slums are being trapped in a cycle of ill-health and poverty. Reversing this trend and moving towards universal coverage for water and sanitation will take more than money, Ms. Bellamy and Dr. Lee stressed. National policies based on the principle of “some for all” rather than “all for some” have been the key to improvements in many countries. And at the local level, resources have to be retargeted to include the poorest communities, with local government and the private sector co-operating to bring affordable solutions. The report points out a number of encouraging signs, particularly in South Asia where drinking water coverage increased from 71% to 84%, and notes that great gains in water and sanitation coverage have been made against considerable odds in many countries. The report finds that the progress came as a direct result of political prioritization and a drive to find locally effective solutions. “This report is important because it proves that significant improvements are possible in a short space of time, even in the poorest countries,” Ms. Bellamy said. “By identifying trends now, and committing to course corrections, we have a real opportunity to ensure that by 2015 these basic essentials of life are available to all.” Contact: Gregory Hartl, World Health Organization, 20, avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/791 4458, fax +41-22/791 4858, e-mail <hartlg@who.int>, website (www.who.int). Kimberly Gamble-Payne, Deputy Director, Office for Public Partnerships,
UNICEF, 3 UN Plaza, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/824
6648, fax +1-212/303 7992, e-mail <kgamblepayne@unicef.org>,
website (www.unicef.org). |
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A report by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), entitled Industrial Development Report 2004: Industrialization, Environment and the Millennium Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa, finds that growing economic decay in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the number of people living in poverty rose from 42% to 47% between 1981-2001, is the biggest development challenge the world faces. The report notes that fostering macro-economic management and good governance and increasing agricultural output will be key to improving the lot of sub-Saharan Africans, as will creating institutional and social capabilities and diversifying their economies. “Only along this path will sub-Saharan Africa be able to not just break out of the vicious circle of poverty, but also to move on to achieving economy-wide productivity growth,” UNIDO said. In order to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, sub-Saharan countries must have per capita growth near 5%. At current rates, they will not halve their poverty rates by 2060, the report indicates. Some growth would be recorded if goals in health, nutrition, education and other social issues were met, the report suggests. It also recommends advanced technology to boost development: “As illustrated by community telecommunications centres and prepaid mobile telephones, it is possible to bring advanced technologies profitably to poor regions using the right mix of services and a basic level of infrastructure.” Part one of the Industrial Development Report 2004 pinpoints the opportunities and policy options available for the SSA countries to reduce poverty through structural change, productivity growth and diversification, and by building up the institutional and social capabilities essential to overcome adverse initial conditions. Examining the ways in which greater private sector participation, strengthened through the provision of public goods, can enhance poverty reduction efforts, the report also outlines forward-looking policy approaches to industrial development that take advantage of environmentally sound and advanced technologies. The report argues the improvements that MDGs envisage in health, education, gender, environment and infrastructure are essential if productive sectors are to grow, create employment and result in sustained development. It also argues that complementary to the efforts to offset the adverse conditions via the MDGs, a number of external and domestic policy interventions need to complement and reinforce the relationship between MDGs, poverty reduction and sustained growth. Above all, this requires the build up of social and technological capabilities. The second part features the Industrial Development Scoreboard, which benchmarks a set of industrial performance and capability indicators and provides a global overview of industrial competitiveness in all its diversity, assessing the main factors affecting it. Contact: UNIDO Headquarters, Vienna International Centre, A-1400 Vienna, Austria, telephone +43-1/26026 0, fax +43-1/2692669, e-mail <unido@unido.org>, website (www.unido.org/doc/5156).
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With landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) continuing indiscriminately to maim and kill children across Southeast Asia, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called on regional governments to redouble their efforts to clean up the devastating waste from decades of war. “Children are particularly vulnerable to landmines and UXO,” Patrick Hennessy, a senior official at UNICEF, told a three-day Regional Workshop on Mine Clearance and Victim Assistance in Southeast Asia, held in Thailand in late August. “They like to explore, they like to play with objects they find and they cannot read signs warning them of danger. Children also frequently undertake household tasks that involve going near or through mine-affected areas. In Viet Nam, they account for half of all mine-related injuries and one-third of all deaths,” he added. The region contains some of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Landmines and UXO are a danger to children in nearly half of all villages in Cambodia and nearly one-quarter of all villages in Laos. Up to 800,000 tons of UXO and 3.5 million landmines still cover Viet Nam, where over 100,000 people have been killed or injured since 1975. The effect on children is particularly vicious. Some 85% of youngsters who step on landmines die before they reach hospital. Those who survive are often denied their basic rights. They are excluded from school and left with little chance to marry, find work or contribute to their families and societies. Rehabilitation clinics are often too far away or too expensive to access, although children need more care than adults. As they grow, new prostheses need to be fitted regularly, and a child survivor may have to undergo several amputations, since bone grows more quickly than surrounding tissue. The workshop was hosted by the Thai Government as part of preparations for the First World Summit on Landmines, to be held in Nairobi (Kenya) from 29 November-3 December, which will focus on clearing/marking mined areas, educating people at risk, destroying stockpiles, providing assistance to landmine victims and universalizing ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty, already ratified by 141 States (see Go Between 99). Contact: Madeline Eisner, UNICEF East Asia and Pacific, telephone
+662-356/9406, e-mail <meisner@unicef.org>, website (www.unicef.org). |
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23 August marked the International Day for the Remembrance of Slavery and Its Abolition and was celebrated worldwide in a number of ways—including through films, discussions, communal gatherings, multi-ethnic bands, artwork and poetry. According to Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural and Organization (UNESCO) Koïchiro Matsuura, while slavery has been abolished by international treaties, it is still practised in new forms that today affect millions of men, women and children in the world. Such forms include human trafficking, child labour, forced marriage, and bonded labour. “The Day gives us the opportunity to reflect together on the historical causes, processes and consequences of the unprecedented tragedy that was slavery and the slave trade, a tragedy that was concealed for many years and is yet to be fully recognized,” Mr. Matsuura said at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. “It not only disrupted the lives of millions of human beings uprooted from their land and deported in the most inhuman conditions, but it brought about cultural exchanges which deeply and lastingly influenced morals and beliefs, social relations and knowledge on several continents,” he added. UNESCO and the UN General Assembly designated the Day to commemorate the 1791 slave revolt in San Domingo, which was the first known victory of slaves over slaveholders, as well as Haiti’s independence in January 1804. A two-day meeting on “Slavery and its Impact in Today’s World” was held in Panama from 23-25 August, allowing a retrospective look at the occurrences and influences which led to the abolition of the transatlantic trade in African slaves to the New World, and which also sought to inform the public about slavery today. The meeting produced the Panama Declaration on “Culture and identity as tools for overcoming racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and different forms of intolerance.” Contact: Andre Kramp, Chief, History and Culture Section, Division
for Intercultural Dialogue, UNESCO, 1 Rue Miollis, 75015 Paris,
France, e-mail <a.kramp@unesco.org>, website (www.unesco.org/culture/dialogue/slave). |
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According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), people in countries where income is protected report high levels of happiness, but about three-quarters of the world’s workers live in circumstances of economic insecurity that foster “a world full of anxiety and anger.” Only 8% of people—fewer than one in ten—live in countries providing favourable economic security. Economic Security for a Better World indicates that a socio-economic safety net, rather than income level, not only promotes personal wellbeing, happiness and tolerance but also benefits growth, development and social stability. “Coming shortly after the report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, this book should enrich the debate on how we can build a fair globalization,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia stressed (see NGLS Roundup 112). “Unless we can make our societies more equal and the global economy more inclusive, very few will achieve economic security or decent work.” The report marks the first attempt to measure global economic security as perceived by ordinary people and was based on detailed household and workplace surveys covering over 48,000 workers and more than 10,000 workplaces worldwide. Economic security is measured on the basis of seven forms of work-related security including income, labour markets, employment, skills, work, jobs and representation. Survey results paint a mixed global picture, showing that some lower-income countries achieve higher levels of economic security than certain rich nations. South and South-East Asia have a greater share of global economic security (14%) than their share of world income (7%). By contrast, Latin American States provide their citizens with less economic security. Key findings of the survey include: The ILO analysis concludes that conventional social security systems are inappropriate for responding to the new forms of systemic risk and uncertainty that characterize the emerging global economic system. Accordingly, governments and international agencies should promote universalistic, rights-based schemes that provide people with basic economic security, rather than resort to selective, means-tested schemes.
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With youth unemployment worldwide skyrocketing to an all-time high, the International Labour Organization (ILO) is calling for a combination of targeted and integrated policies to tackle the problem, which would also significantly benefit the global economy. ILO’s report, entitled Global Employment Trends for Youth 2004, indicates that young people aged 15-24 represent nearly half the world’s jobless although they account for only 25% of the working age population. The report finds that halving world youth unemployment rate would add at least US$2.2 trillion to global gross domestic product (GDP) equal to around 4% of the 2003 value. “We are wasting an important part of the energy and talent of the most educated youth generation the world has ever had,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said. “Enlarging the chances of young people to find and keep decent work is absolutely critical to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals.” The relative disadvantage of youth is more pronounced in developing countries, where they make up a strikingly higher proportion of the labour force than in industrialized economies, the report says. Eighty-five per cent of the world’s youth live in developing countries where they are 3.8 times more likely to be unemployed than adults, as compared with 2.3 times in industrialized economies. ILO warns that the problem goes far beyond the large number of young unemployed people—47% of the total 186 million people out of work worldwide in 2003. The report says that young people also represent 130 million of the world’s 550 million working poor who are unable to lift themselves and their families above the equivalent of the US$1 per day poverty line. These young people struggle to survive, often performing work under unsatisfactory conditions in the informal economy. The report puts global youth unemployment at 14.4% in 2003, with rates highest in the Middle East and North Africa (25.6%), followed by sub-Saharan Africa (21%), transition economies (18.6%), Latin America and the Caribbean (16.6%), Southeast Asia (16.4%), South Asia (13.9%), industrialized economies (13.4%), and East Asia (7%). The industrialized economies region was the only region where youth unemployment saw a distinct decrease from 15.4% in 1993. The report shows that the growth in the number of young people is rapidly outstripping the ability of economies to provide them with jobs. While the overall youth population grew by 10.5% over the last ten years to more than 1.1 billion in 2003, youth employment grew by only 0.2% to around 526 million. Policies to tackle the problem have been identified by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Youth Employment Network (YEN), a UN-World Bank-ILO partnership that pools the skills, experiences and knowledge of diverse partners at the global, national and local level. The ILO acts as the secretariat for the YEN (www.cinterfor.org.uy/public/english/region/ampro/cinterfor/temas/youth/yen/index.htm). Contact: ILO Department of Communication, 4 route de Morillons,
CH-1211 Geneva 22, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/799 7916, fax +41-22/799
8577, e-mail <communication@ilo.org>, website (www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/global.htm). |
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The committee charged with drafting the first-ever international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities adopted the report of its fourth session (A/AC.265/2004/L.4), on 3 September, which reflects the outcome of the latest round of negotiations on the new instrument. During its two-week meeting, the Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities concluded a first reading of the text, which addresses issues such as the definition of disability, general State obligations under the proposed treaty, the need to achieve equality and non-discrimination, and various rights of disabled persons under the law, including the rights to life, survival, development, equal recognition and freedom of expression, as well as respect for privacy, home and family and being included in the community. The treaty under negotiation was proposed to the General Assembly by Mexico in 2001, in the context of growing international recognition of disability rights as human rights. It aims to protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities, while moving beyond the traditional concept of access to the physical environment to include broader issues, including equal access to education, employment, health, and political participation. It is expected that the convention will be presented to the Assembly for adoption in September 2005. It will create a legally binding framework for promoting the rights of the world’s 600 million people with disabilities. The Committee recommended that its fifth session should take place in New York in January 2005, and that the dates should be included in the relevant resolution to be adopted by the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session. |
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On 1 September, the Government of Brazil and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) announced a new approach to scale up the response to AIDS in developing countries through multilateral agreements between the Government of Brazil, UNAIDS and other developing countries. As part of this new joint initiative, UNAIDS will establish an International Centre for Technical Cooperation on AIDS based in Brazil. “The new initiative will give other countries the necessary tools to effectively fight AIDS, now that financing is greatly increasing. Making this money work is now a priority. We urgently need to identify new ways for countries to build technical capacity to tackle the epidemic, the largest human development crisis in history,” said Peter Piot, UNAIDS Executive Director. “It is absolutely appropriate that the first centre be established in partnership with Brazil, which has demonstrated unrivalled leadership and creativity in responding to the AIDS epidemic, particularly with a strong partnership between the government and civil society.” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Dr. Piot met to discuss the global response to AIDS. “Twenty years into the AIDS epidemic, the linkages between poverty, hunger and AIDS are now more evident than ever,” Dr. Piot said, noting that President Lula has been a global leader in all these fronts. “The Brazilian response to AIDS has emerged as a model in tackling both HIV prevention and treatment head-on. I hope that President Lula’s leadership would encourage other leaders in the South to move forward the response to AIDS.” The Technical Cooperation Centre will initially be funded by UNAIDS and the Government of Brazil. Additional resources will be raised through the private sector and international foundations. Contact: Dominique de Santis, Press Officer, UNAIDS, 20 avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/791 4509, fax +41-22/791 4898, e-mail <desantisd@unaids.org>, website (www.unaids.org). |
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Greater participation of women and adolescents is needed in HIV vaccine clinical trials, according to a group of international experts, who attended a consultation on HIV vaccine trials in Lausanne (Switzerland) from 26-28 August. The meeting, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), brought together 40 experts from around the world to address the issues of gender and age, as well as race in HIV vaccine-related research and clinical trials. “We have identified measures aimed at rectifying the injustice stemming from the frequent exclusion or low participation of women and adolescents in HIV vaccine clinical trials. Clinical trial enrolment needs to be more inclusive, so the benefits of research are more fairly distributed,” said Ruth Macklin, co-Chair of the meeting and a bioethics professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. A number of reasons account for the lack of participation of women and young people, including: lack of empowerment, independent decision making and education in some settings; social isolation; discrimination; stigma associated with high-risk behaviour; trial enrolment criteria; and issues concerning confidentiality and informed consent, among others. Studies show that women, when exposed to HIV, are at least twice as likely to become infected with HIV as their male counterparts. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, girls and young women are up to six times more likely to be infected than their male peers. Girls and young women aged 15-24 make up 62% of the young people in developing countries living with HIV or AIDS. “Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection for biological, social and economic reasons,” said Catherine Hankins, Chief Scientific Advisor at UNAIDS. Young people are also at high risk of HIV—about half of new HIV infections in the developing world occur among 15-24 year-olds. “In spite of the epidemiological reality, women and adolescents, especially girls, have often had minimal involvement in clinical trials of HIV vaccines, as compared to men. This is in spite of the fact that they would be major beneficiaries of a future HIV vaccine,” said Saladin Osmanov, Acting Coordinator, WHO-UNAIDS HIV Vaccine Initiative. The Initiative promotes the development of an HIV vaccine, including through the facilitation of clinical trials. More than 30 new candidate HIV vaccines are currently being tested in human clinical trials, the majority of which began in the past four years. The number of HIV vaccine candidates in small-scale human trials has doubled since 2000, with the trials taking place in 19 countries. The international HIV vaccine research mission is to develop HIV vaccines that are licensed, acceptable, available and accessible by all populations regardless of their gender, age, socio-economic status, race, ethnicity or country, and that are effective across the board. Special attention must be paid to ensure that vulnerable groups, particularly women and girls, benefit from an HIV vaccine, UNAIDS and WHO stress. While there has been a lack of incentive by the private sector to engage in product development, in June the Group of Eight (G-8) leading industrial countries endorsed a global plan to accelerate the effort, a Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, that will allow laboratories to easily share data throught the development of an integrated global clinical trials system (see Go Between 103). Contact: Dominique de Santis, Press Officer, UNAIDS, 20 avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/791 4509, fax +41-22/791 4898, e-mail <desantisd@unaids.org>, website (www.unaids.org). Melinda Henry, Information Officer, World Health Organization, 20, avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/791 2535, fax +41-22/791 4858, e-mail <henrym@who.int>, website (www.comminit.com/st2002/sld-6526.html).
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According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), donations to the 34 Million Friends of UNFPA campaign have surpassed the US$2 million mark as of 4 August 2004 following the Bush administration’s 16 July decision, for the third consecutive year, to withhold US$34 million in funding that US Congress had appropriated for UNFPA (see Go Between 93). The Bush administration alleges that UNFPA is complicit in forced abortions in China. In its statement, UNFPA called the decision “regrettable,” noting that the lost funds could have helped prevent up to two million unwanted pregnancies and nearly 800,000 abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and more than 77,000 infant and child deaths. “UNFPA has not, does not and will not ever condone or support coercive activities of any kind, anywhere,” UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Obaid said. The 34 Million Friends campaign was launched by Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham in July 2002, following George W. Bush’s decision to withhold funding from UNFPA. Independently, the women began contacting friends and organizations urging Americans to send in at least US$1 and to pass the message along to others. “We have never experienced anything like this,” Ms. Obaid said. “Lois and Jane have not only mobilized funds that we need and are using to save women’s lives, but they also have demonstrated that citizens in the United States, as all over the world, understand that family planning and related reproductive health care, safe motherhood and HIV/AIDS prevention are essential requirements for basic human health—and that we must work together to make them universally available.” Support from the United Nations Foundation for administrative costs has enabled contributions from citizens to directly support UNFPA’s programmes. The US Committee for UNFPA accepts tax-deductible contributions for 34 Million Friends of UNFPA. Funds raised through this grassroots effort have supported safe motherhood, family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention and maternal health efforts in the poorest regions of the world. A substantial share of funding has been allocated to help prevent maternal death and disability, such as obstetric fistula, which often harms very young women. More information about the 34 Million Friends of UNFPA campaign is available online (www.34millionfriends.org). Contact: Kristin Hetle, Chief, Media Services Branch, UNFPA, 220
East 42nd Street, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/297 5020,
fax +1-212/557 6416, e-mail <hetle@unfpa.org>, website (www.unfpa.org). |
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The twentieth session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB-20) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Bonn (Germany) from 16-25 June 2004, bringing together over 1,350 participants to prepare for the 10th Conference of Parties (COP-10), to be held in Buenos Aires from 6-17 December 2004. The meeting took place amidst growing optimism that the Russian Federation is getting ready to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Russia’s ratification would enable the Protocol to enter into force (see Go Between 101). “We are extremely pleased with these recent developments. Based on these positive signals, we trust that the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol will be readily forthcoming,” Joke Waller-Hunter, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC said. “This will certainly give a boost to the climate change process, in a year where we mark the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of the Convention. In those ten years much has been set in motion, but much remains to de done if we are to meet the challenge of keeping concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels, while at the same time addressing the negative impacts that are increasingly felt,” she stressed. During SB-20, Parties adopted a number of conclusions and draft decisions that will be forwarded for deliberation at COP-10 in December. The meeting included two in-session workshops. The first addressed climate change impacts and risks, including various approaches to assessing risks and to integrating climate change policies into national development plans. The second workshop focused on efforts to minimize and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and explored alternative development paths, the relationship between climate change mitigation and other policy objectives (such as economic development, energy and food security) and new low-emissions technologies. A number of side events and presentations enabled participants to explore a range of climate change themes more informally. Subjects included national communications from several developing countries, joint implementation, the development and transfer of climate-friendly technologies, emissions trading schemes and the outcome of the International Conference on Renewable Energies, which took place in Bonn from 1-4 June (see article below). Contact: Press Office, Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC), Martin-Luther-King-Strasse
8, Bonn, Germany, telephone +49-228/815 1005, fax +49-228/815 1999,
e-mail <press@unfccc.int>, website (www.unfccc.int). |
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The International Conference for Renewable Energies Bonn 2004, hosted by the German Government, was held in Bonn from 1-4 June, bringing together 3,600 participants, including energy, environmental and development ministers, representatives from over 100 governments, UN agencies and other international and non-governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector. The conference was first announced by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) after the Summit failed to agree on timetables and targets for expanding renewable energy use (see NGLS Roundup 96). During the four days, the conference explored ways of expanding
renewable energies worldwide, while looking at central issues such
as how the proportion of renewable energies used in industrialized
and developing countries can be substantially increased, and how
their advantages and potential can be better used. The conference’s
goal is to have one billion people getting electricity and heat
from renewable sources by 2015. Renewables 2004 also concentrated
on: In his opening speech, German Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin pointed out that the challenges of global poverty and global warming must not be addressed in isolation from one another, and climate protection without economic development would not reduce poverty. Development without climate protection would destroy the basis for development, Mr. Trittin said, indicating that renewable energies would be a key means of achieving these objectives. He also noted that there is a need to satisfy a growing global energy demand, adding that it is not compatible with the principle of global fairness to deny access to modern forms of energy to some two billion people in the world when renewable energies are inexhaustible and available almost everywhere. Speaking on 3 June, Mr. Schröder warned that an over dependence on oil increases the world’s vulnerability to terrorism. While nations must stamp out terrorist networks and financing, “we must address the fact that the global economy’s one-sided dependence on oil greatly increases our vulnerability to such terrorism,” he said. Mr. Schröder also pointed out that high energy prices—for example those of oil—are undermining the chances of economic development across the world. Germany has made wind energy a centrepiece of its environmental policies since October 1998 and is the world’s largest producer of wind energy with 15,800 turbines that generate 6% of the country’s total electricity supplies. Another promising area is synthetic fuels—such as bio-diesel made from rapeseed and bio-ethanol made from wheat—which are growing in popularity as renewable sources of energy that can be grown on the farm, providing opportunities for agriculture and forestry. The conference produced a Political Declaration, Policy Recommendations and an International Action Programme. The Political Declaration contains shared goals for an increased role of renewable energies and reflects a joint vision of a sustainable energy future that provides better and more equitable access to energy as well as increased energy efficiency. The Policy Recommendations for Renewable Energies are based on experiences and lessons learnt from policies, programmes, projects and other initiatives in the public and private sectors worldwide, providing decision makers with a menu of policy options based on available experience and knowledge. The International Action Programme (IAP) for renewable energies includes concrete actions and commitments for developing renewable energies, which have been put forward by a large number of governments, international organizations, NGOs, the private sector and other stakeholder groups. A study by the Climate Change Working Group of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative, entitled CEO Brief: Renewable Energy, shows a US$1.9 trillion potential for renewable energy markets in the next 15 years, but only if “real concerns” by the financial sector are addressed. The study, the third report by the Working Group, was released at the conference as part of the Sustainable Energy Finance Event, which brought together leaders in the sustainable energy finance sector. One of its main recommendations is for governments to create “tough targets and 15-year schedules for the production of renewable energy.” Speaking at the side event, UNEP’s Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said, “Sustainable development needs sustainable energy, but sustainable energy needs investment.” He also pointed out that affordable finance will be needed to implement the Bonn Conference’s International Action Plan, while agreeing with financiers that governments need to “get real” with the policies to make that happen. The report is available online (www.uneptie.org/energy/media.htm). Contact: Secretariat of the International Conference for Renewable Energies, Bonn 2004, Postfach 5180, 65726 Eschborn, Germany, telephone +49-6196/794404, fax +49-6196/794405, e-mail <info@renewables2004.de>, website (www.renewables2004.de). Paul Clements-Hunt, Head, UNEP Finance Initiatives Unit, 15 chemin des Anémones, CH-1219 Châtelaine (Geneva), Switzerland, telephone +41-22/917 8116, e-mail <pch@unep.ch>, website (www.unepfi.net).
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UNEP FI: Principles for Responsible Investment | ||
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The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) will work with major institutional investors to develop a set of globally recognized principles for responsible investment by September 2005. The principles seek to protect both the environment and long-term shareholder value by integrating environmental, social and governance concerns into investor and capital market considerations. The Responsible Investment Initiative proposes a global alliance of investors to guide responsible investment best practice, and is based on the results of a 14-month study entitled The Materiality of Social, Environmental and Corporate Governance Issues to Equity Pricing, which was launched during the Global Compact Summit held in June 2004 (see Go Between 103). To compile the study, UNEP worked with a group of 21 fund managers and brokerage houses to explore the impact of environmental, social and governance issues on share prices. Some of the key findings include: - Financial research is greatly aided when there are clear government positions with respect to environmental, social and corporate governance issues. In some cases analysts were not able to provide in-depth reports due to a lack of certainty regarding government policy. Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s Executive Director, said, “The short-termism inherent in our markets is a critical challenge when it comes to addressing environmental and broader sustainability issues. Many investors, at best, view environment and social issues as a mid-to-long-term concern and therefore of little relevance to the cut and thrust of modern capital markets. This is why asset owners can play such an important role. While investing in our capital markets asset owners and their advisors are beginning to appreciate the importance of retaining a long-term view that anticipates new opportunities and threats,” he said. The Materiality of Social, Environmental and Corporate Governance Issues to Equity Pricing is based on eleven sector reports by brokerage house analysts and is available online (www.unepfi.net/stocks). Contact: Paul Clements-Hunt, Head, UNEP Finance Initiatives Unit,
15 chemin des Anémones, CH-1219 Châtelaine (Geneva),
Switzerland, telephone +41-22/917 8116, e-mail <pch@unep.ch>,
website (www.unepfi.net). |
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| FAO: Right to Food Guidelines | |||
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On 23 September, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on World Food Security (CFS) adopted voluntary guidelines to “support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security.” The objective of the Right to Food Guidelines, which were negotiated over a period of two years, is “to provide practical guidance” to States in implementing their obligations relating to the right to adequate food. FAO says this should improve the chances of reaching the hunger reduction target of the World Food Summit (see Go Between 92). According to FAO, the guidelines are a “human rights-based practical tool addressed to all States,” and cover a full range of actions that need to be taken at the national level to build an enabling environment for people to feed themselves in dignity and to establish appropriate safety nets for those who are unable to do so. The voluntary guidelines take into account a wide range of principles, including equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, accountability and the rule of law, and the principle that all human rights are universal, indivisible, inter-related and interdependent. “The adoption of these voluntary guidelines constitutes a major breakthrough. This is the first time that an intergovernmental body agrees on what the right to food really means,” said Giuliano Pucci, FAO Legal Counsel. According to FAO, various non-governmental stakeholders and intergovernmental organizations contributed significantly to the preparation of the guidelines, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the North-South Alliance, an NGO coalition. Contact: John Riddle, Information Officer, FAO, Viale delle Terme
di Caracalla, I-00100 Rome, Italy, telephone +39-06/5705 3259, fax
+39-06/5705 3699, e-mail <john.riddle@fao.org>, website (www.fao.org). |
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| World Conference on Organic Seed | |||
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The First World Conference on Organic Seed was held in Rome from 5-7 July 2004, jointly organized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), and the International Seed Federation (ISF). The meeting brought together the seed industry, organic producers, government agencies, scientific institutions, NGOs and the private sector to discuss the production and safety of quality seeds, the compatibility of seed regulations and certification systems, and the relationship between organic agriculture and genetically modified organisms. According to the FAO, less than 2% of the world’s agricultural land is certified organic, and half of that is pastureland. However, with global organic food retail sales reaching US$23 million in 2003 and growing 8% and 12% annually in Europe and the United States respectively, the industry is on the rise. More than 100 countries now export certified organic products. Higher consumer demand, an increasing interest by supermarkets, and government programmes stimulating organic production are the driving forces behind the growth of the organic sector. Many conventional varieties of seed perform poorly under the low-input conditions of organic farming, though, resulting in low yields and other problems. At the same time, the European Union now requires that seeds used in organic agriculture be organically produced, leaving exporters of organic agriculture, especially developing countries, facing serious challenges. The conference sought to provide a discussion forum for knowledge and information exchange between farmers, individuals operating throughout the organic supply chain, scientists, the seed industry and policy makers, and to create a platform for networking and cooperation. Contact: Erwin Northoff, Information Officer, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy, telephone +39-06/570 53105, e-mail <erwin.northoff@fao.org>, website (www.fao.org). Organic Seed Conference, C/O IFOAM, Charles-de-Gaulle-Strasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany, telephone +49-228/92650 10, fax +49-228/92650 99, website (www.organicseedconf.org). |
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FAO: AIDS & Subsistence Agriculture | ||
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According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), HIV/AIDS is threatening subsistence agriculture across southern and eastern Africa, impoverishing agricultural households and potentially cutting off the transfer of vital know-know about traditional crops from generation to generation. FAO has based its warning on a recent study of subsistence agriculture in Mozambique, documenting the loss of many varieties of grains, tubers, legumes and vegetables due to HIV/AIDS, flood and drought. These losses threaten the southern African nation with long-term agricultural decline and consequent ominous implications for its food supply. “This study documents an alarming trend affecting millions of the poorest rural households,” said FAO AIDS expert Marcela Villarreal. “The problem affects not only Mozambique but also countries across southern and eastern Africa, where HIV/AIDS is just as big a problem.” The study (commissioned by the FAO LinKS project, which explores the linkages between local knowledge, gender and biodiversity) shows that 45% of respondents from HIV/AIDS-affected households said they had reduced the area under cultivation and 60% said they had cut back on the number of crops grown. Study author Anne Waterhouse said the results showed that HIV/AIDS is likely to have a “highly negative” impact on local knowledge of seeds since it will impede the passing of farming know-how about traditional crops from generation to generation as infected adults slowly become incapacitated and stop planting many varieties of crops. FAO stresses the importance of not losing traditional crop varieties, which can act as an insurance policy against hunger because they are adapted to local conditions and will produce a minimal harvest even during Africa’s recurrent droughts. Hybrid or “improved” seeds do not withstand drought as well as traditional seeds and they require special care, such as fertilizer and plentiful water that are often beyond the means of the poorest farmers. In Mozambique, more than 1.3 million people out of a population of 18 million are thought to be living with HIV/AIDS. FAO predicts that by 2020 the country will have lost over 20% of its agricultural labour force to HIV/AIDS. In the nine hardest-hit African countries, all in southern and eastern Africa, FAO predicts a loss of agricultural labour due to the disease, ranging from 13% in Tanzania to 26% in Namibia. Contact: Peter Lowrey, FAO Information Officer, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy, telephone +39-6/5705 2762, e-mail <peter.lowrey@fao.org>, website (www.fao.org).
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| ECOSOC's High-Level Segment 2004 | ||
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The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) opened its 2004 substantive session on 28 June 2004 in New York with a three-day high-level segment. The segment served as a policy platform to examine ways to mobilize resources and create the enabling environment required, both domestically and internationally, to achieve the commitments and targets agreed upon in the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries 2001-2010 (see NGLS Roundup 75).
ECOSOC’s high-level segment brought together 35 ministers and high-level policy makers from the least developed countries (LDCs), 16 developed countries, UN programmes and agencies, intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, and private sector representatives. Participants participated in the segment’s three events: a high-level policy dialogue, an Investment Promotion Forum and a general debate, which resulted in the adoption of a Ministerial Declaration. High-Level Policy Dialogue Echoing Ms. Fréchette’s call to action, the keynote speaker, Benin’s President Mathieu Kérékou, said that only mobilization of financial resources underpinned by political will would ensure the implementation of the Brussels Porgramme of Action. On this point, Mr. Kérékou expressed his disappointment in progress made to date. He underscored that official development assistance (ODA) had not increased, as pledged, and support for exports had negatively impacted the LDCs in world markets. Rare preferential treatment for LDCs remained underutilized and, despite praiseworthy efforts, the LDCs continued to bend under the crushing burden of debt, resulting in the weakening of social protection infrastructure, conflict and the continued ravage of the AIDS pandemic. Investment Promotion Forum NGOs were particularly active in the ministerial roundtable breakfast addressing the effectiveness of partnerships in achieving the MDGs. The roundtable, hosted by the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) along with two NGOs—Zayed International Prize for the Environment and the Nour Foundation—focused on the expansion of NGO and civil society organization (CSO) participation in policy dialogue and operational activities of the UN; support of networking activities of NGOs/CSOs, especially those connecting local, national and international actors; and capacity building and training for NGOs/CSOs, including access to funding, in selected priority fields, more specifically those closely related to health and education. General Debate In his opening statement, Anwarul K. Chowdhury—Under-Secretary-General
and High Representative of the Secretary-General for the Least Developed
Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing
States (OHRLLS)—emphasized that an optimal balance of external
assistance and domestic commitment must be struck if poor countries
are to achieve sustainable economic growth that will enable them
to overcome extreme poverty. On one hand, Mr. Chowdhury pointed
out that the LDCs will need to continue domestic efforts for reform
and reorganization by improving efficiency, transparency and accountability,
and facilitating the emergence of governance structures and business-friendly
environments. On the other hand, he stressed that the international
community could no longer eschew its commitment to establishing
an enabling environment for the development of poor countries—not
only through increased and better quality development assistance,
but also through increased investment, debt relief and free and
fair trade. Speaking on behalf of the European Union and associated States, Tom Kitt—Minister of State Development Cooperation and Human Rights of Ireland—recognized that the Millennium and Brussels Declaration had established a results-oriented and time-bound agenda and a political framework for international action. Mr. Kitt stressed that current donor practices provided for co-development with partner countries through nationally owned and driven planning processes, including country-led and participative poverty-reduction strategies, which he said were indispensable in the fight against poverty. Wade Horn—Assistant Secretary for Children and Families of the United States—reiterated his governments’ commitment to the eradication of poverty. While he considered the extent of global poverty to be overwhelming, he asked delegates to remember the progress that had been made over the last years. According to Mr. Horn, the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty, from 1981 to 2001, had fallen by almost half, from 40% to 21%, and gains had been registered in every region except sub-Saharan Africa. NGO Forum Addressing participants, Mr. Chowdhury emphasized that governments need support from NGOs in order to promote the programmes referred to in the Brussels Plan of Action. Moreover, Mr. Chowdhury said a special caucus should be formed that would focus on LDC issues, and within which an informal NGO regional network could be established. Expanding on Mr. Chowdhury’s remarks, Lawrence Correa, on behalf of the NGO LDC Watch, proposed a number of concrete actions for NGOs in the implementation of the Brussels Programme of Action, including the establishment of a network of NGOs to assist and monitor LDC issues, the creation of a New York-based caucus of NGOs linked to the OHRLLS, and the organization of an NGO event based around LDC issues during ECOSOC’s general segment for future substantive sessions. The high-level segment concluded with the adoption of an action-oriented Ministerial Declaration which places the concerns of the Least Developed Countries in the forefront of ECOSOC’s agenda, reaffirms commitments to the implementation of the Brussels Programme of Action and addresses important aspects of resource mobilization for the LDCs. The issue papers on the roundtables themes are available online (www.un.org/esa/coordination/ecosoc/hl2004/CD2004/index.htm). Contact: Hanifa Mezoui, Chief, Policy Coordination Branch, United
Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, One United Nations
Plaza, 14th floor, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/963
8652, e-mail <mezoui@un.org>, website (www.un.org/esa/coordination/ecosoc). |
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| African Union Holds its 3rd Summit | ||
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The third summit of the African Union (AU) was held in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) from 6-8 July 2004, bringing together members from the 53-nation group, with delegates discussing how African countries could work together to promote trade and stability. The question of Sudan’s embattled Darfur region figured high on the summit’s agenda. Since its inauguration in 2002 (see Go Between 92), the AU has played an increasingly important role in addressing conflict situations across the continent.
The 3rd summit of the African Union was held amidst growing tension over the situation in Sudan. On the eve of the summit, the African Union said it would send 300 peacekeepers to the Darfur region of western Sudan, where more than a million refugees have fled attacks by Arab militiamen. The soldiers will be the first peacekeeping force for Darfur, described by the United Nations as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. They will protect refugees in Sudan and in neighbouring Chad. Sam Ibok, Director of the African Union’s Peace and Security Division, said the troops would also protect military observers currently being sent to Darfur. A high-level event was held on 5 July to find new ways of combating hunger in Africa. The one-day meeting, entitled “Innovative Approaches to Meeting the Hunger Millennium Development Goal in Africa: Africa’s Green Revolution: A Call to Action,” was co-convened by the Government of Ethiopia and the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger, in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the AU, among others. Speaking at the event, the Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Jeffrey Sachs, said Africa’s heavy debt burden was untenable and told African leaders they should refuse to pay their huge debts if rich nations did not cancel them. “The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable,” Mr. Sachs said. “If they won’t cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction. You do it yourselves.” The African Union estimates sub-Saharan Africa’s foreign debt at US$201 billion. Mr. Sachs also called on the developed world to double aid to Africa to US$120 billion annually and meet commitments made in 1970 to spend at least 0.7% of gross domestic product on grants and loans. The United States and other rich nations spend billions of dollars on arms but only a minute fraction of that on fighting poverty, he said. In his address at the opening of the summit on 6 July, Mr. Annan warned of the deadly conflict in Africa, and possible consequences: “I have just visited Darfur and the refugee camps in Chad. The ruined villages, the camps overflowing with sick and hungry women and children, and the fear in the eyes of the people should be a clear warning to us all: without action, the brutalities already inflicted on the civilian population of Darfur could be a prelude to even greater humanitarian catastrophe—a catastrophe that could destabilize the region.” He called on the international community to redouble its efforts to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of the people suffering in the region. Besides working together to end violence, the Secretary-General
said, “We must also work together to fight the poverty, disease,
ignorance and lack of life-sustaining services which afflict the
lives of millions every day. After all, no amount of aid, no degree
of diplomacy, and no number of peacekeeping operations can, on their
own, lift Africa out of poverty, halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, or
end deadly conflict,” he stressed. “This new spirit of democratic empowerment in Africa must find a home in every African country. For that to happen, politics must be inclusive, and a careful institutional balance must be preserved—including regular free and fair elections, a credible opposition whose role is respected, an independent judiciary which upholds the rule of law, a free and independent press, effective civilian control over the military, and a vibrant civil society.” Mr. Annan also made reference to his newly formed Advisory Panel on International Support for NEPAD (see article page 1). Also on 6 July, the Secretary-General spoke during the AU session on gender. “Increasingly, Africans understand that their continent cannot develop unless its women exercise real power—in the home, in the local community, in the nation, and in the Union itself. Indeed, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development has set women’s advancement, along with the eradication of poverty, as its two key long-term objectives. But let us be clear: inextricably linked with both of those is the need to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS. The epidemic is proving a devastating obstacle to development, while taking an increasing and terrifying toll on Africa’s women. But women also have an indispensable part to play in all aspects of the struggle against it. “No less important is recognition of the role of women in the work for peace and security. Time and again, women have played a constructive and essential part in peace processes. They are gradually finding a place at the negotiating table, in the implementation of peace agreements, in post-conflict rehabilitation, reconstruction and disarmament. It is high time they were included in those processes in a more formalized way, at all levels and at all stages,” he stressed. Key decisions included the adoption of the vision and mission and strategic planning documents of the Union, the continuing integration of the NEPAD structures into the framework of the African Union, and the declaration and action plan on gender equality in Africa, which recommends the creation of an African Women’s Committee, which will serve as an Advisory Body to the Chairperson of the African Union Commission on gender and development. It also called for periodic reporting by the Heads of State on steps taken to implement the Declaration. More information is available online (www.africa-union.org/AU%20summit%202004/Assm%20en%20decl.htm). Contact: African Union Headquarters, PO Box 3243, Roosevelt Street, W21K19 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia telephone +251-1/51 77 00, fax +251-1/51 78 44, website (www.africa-union.org)
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| 2004 Social Forum: A human rights approach to poverty reduction | ||
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The 2004 Social Forum of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights was held in Geneva from 22-23 July, addressing the theme of “Poverty, rural poverty and human rights.” The Forum included a number of debates, in particular on the problem of defining “poverty” and on the main characteristics of a human rights approach to poverty reduction strategies (PRSs).
Operating within the framework of the Sub Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the two-day Forum brought together representatives from international organizations, academic experts, grassroots organizations, social movements and NGOs. It provided an opportunity for a number of actors not often represented at the UN to present their concerns, and participants were able to outline a number of guiding principles on human rights in the context of poverty reduction strategies (PRSs). Four panels were held over the two days: “Poverty and human rights: empowerment of people living in poverty;” “Rural poverty and extreme poverty: special groups;” “The role of human rights in the development of operational strategies to address poverty;” and “Recommendations on elements for incorporating human rights into poverty reduction strategies.” Since 1990, the Commission on Human Rights has considered the relationship between human rights and extreme poverty. In 2004, a set of draft guidelines developed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights were released. Human Rights and Poverty Reduction: A Conceptual Framework places people as active rights-holders at the centre of poverty reduction efforts. José Bengoa (Chile) Chairman of the Forum, said at the opening session that the Social Forum must be a cultural movement going towards poverty eradication. He quoted Nelson Mandela, saying, “Poverty is the modern version of slavery.” During the panel discussions, a number of questions arose: How to think about poverty in the context of human rights? Does poverty mean a lack of control over economic resources? Is it necessary to make a distinction between poverty and extreme poverty? According to Siddiq Osmani (Professor of Development Economics at Dhaka and Ulster Universities), in order to work effectively towards poverty reduction, strategies that are based on a clear definition of poverty need to be elaborated. Leandro Despouy, (Special Rapporteur on the Independence of the Judiciary) argued that there is not a single definition for poverty. Instead, he suggested that criteria are needed. Poverty is the negation of all human rights; it is cumulative, increasing, and inherited generation after generation, he stressed. Chaloka Beyani, Professor of International Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics (LSE), underlined that the poor have no hope, no self-esteem and no self-confidence, adding that this is why the conception of poverty has to do with basic rights, recognized as being a fundamental value for a level of minimal human dignity. The Forum sought to analyse the link between poverty reduction and human rights and what could be achieved to reduce poverty based on this analysis. It outlined a number of features essential for a human rights approach, including: empowering the poor; active and informed participation; non-discrimination and equality; accountability of States; progressive realization Paul Hunt (Special Rapporteur on the right to health and former Rapporteur on the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights) reminded participants that a human rights solution is only a solution among others. He suggested that in order to use human rights to fight poverty in an efficient way, one question must be asked: How to make a human rights approach operational? He pointed out that the application of a human rights approach to poverty reduction is complex; there is no such thing as a single strategy, and the various types of poverty that exist must be taken into account. Kari Tapiola, Executive Director for the Rights Sector of International Labour Organization (ILO), suggested that economic security is a key element in the fight against poverty. Indeed “economic insecurity and deprivation feed xenophobia and racial and religious discrimination.” He stressed the creation of decent work as a central pillar of national action. Taking into account the remarks made, the Social Forum, through its recommendations, recognizes “the existing separation between approaches and decisions of international economic organizations and those of human rights bodies and organs,” and formulates a call to establish “dialogue and coherence among those institutions.” The Forum also noted that poverty is massive (millions live in extreme poverty and are unable to overcome it); visibility is needed to raise awareness of the many difficult situations worldwide; a gap is growing between countries and social groups; poverty is one of the main sources of violence and conflict and represents a major form of exclusion and human rights violation. The Social Forum’s provisional conclusion and recommendations were presented during the 56th session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, also held in Geneva from 26 July-13 August 2004. Next year’s theme will be “Poverty and economic growth—challenges to human rights.” The Sub-Commission has recommended that the Social Forum be held for a duration of five working days instead of two. Contact: Secretariat of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, OHCHR, Palais Wilson, 52 rue des Pâquis, CH-1202 Geneva, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/917 9328, fax +41-22/917 9011, website (www.unhchr.ch). |
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| UNCTAD Past and Present: Our Next Forty Years | ||
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On 14 September, Rubens Ricupero, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), gave his farewell speech in the form of the 12th Raúl Prebisch Lecture. Mr. Ricupero’s term of office as UNCTAD Secretary-General ended in September 2004 after nine years. His lecture focused on UNCTAD, past and present. Below are extracts from his speech.
“Raúl Prebisch’s [the founding father of UNCTAD and its first Secretary-General] most enduring legacy was his ethical commitment to a genuine development that would lift out of poverty the world’s marginalized and excluded masses. “To guide us in this struggle, he left us a method, a systematic critical attitude with which he evaluated dominant theories and paradigms in the light of their concrete, practical results and in the context of the differences in economic and social structures of underdeveloped societies. “How to forget, for instance, what he wrote about technical progress constituting the essence of the development process, or about the need to redress the imbalances in trade between the centre and the periphery in order to allow this progress to flow freely? The deterioration in the terms of trade that is a consequence of the imbalances, the necessary adoption of industrialization policies to correct them, the prescription of a strategy not only of import substitution but also of manufacture export as the best recipe for fighting the trade gap—these are some of the examples of Prebisch’s themes still at centre stage of current debates. “The founding father of UNCTAD was a man profoundly involved with the history of his times. His strong, even passionate convictions never stopped him from being attentive and receptive to history, from recognizing the signs of the times and evolving and growing accordingly. This is one of his most lasting legacies: the need to be innovative and bold, to keep mind and eyes open in facing the problems of the here and now. “There is still no better way to decipher the nature of things to come than to look at how they have changed in our lifetime. “UNCTAD met for the first time in the mid-1960s, at a time when oil was priced at US$2 a barrel, less than mineral water. No one paid much attention to what then appeared to be a permanent situation. After the two oil shocks of the 1970s, however, the world would never be the same again. Oil crises, constant volatility in prices and periodic threats of shortages would return to haunt it again and again. There is perhaps some irony in the fact that the only concrete expression of the effort to stabilize or improve commodity prices that somehow managed to survive, OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] sometimes had a destabilizing effect on the world and on development—not because it was unreasonable to seek more stable, fairer prices for oil, but because of the lack of political will on the part of the mighty to achieve this goal through a process of international cooperation that would also have addressed the predicament of other commodity producers in poor countries. Speaking of more recent developments, Mr. Ricupero said, “At the same time, other huge, powerful forces were at work, transforming the fundamental dynamics of human society. One is the demographic transition that is driving massive migrations of people from South to North. A second force, more cultural in nature, is the scientific revolution in the treatment of information and its extraordinary achievements in the technology of satellites, cell phones, telecommunications, computers and software. In a typically Schumpeterian way, it gave a strong push to productivity and renewed the vitality and self-confidence of capitalism, particularly its quintessence, American capitalism. Helped enormously by the political demolition of ideological barriers, technological innovations in telecommunications and electronics combined with the role of transnational corporations to create the most recent incarnation of globalization. “It would be utterly simplistic to reduce globalization to its economic dimension. It is, on the contrary, a macro-phenomenon of historic significance and very broad comprehensive character, encompassing, as we have seen, many political, cultural, scientific and demographic aspects. In essence, it expresses the acceleration of a trend that began gathering momentum towards the end of the Renaissance, with the great maritime voyages of discovery and exploitation: the unification not only of markets but of the whole planetary space for the mutual knowledge and cross-fertilization of exchanges between the different branches of human civilization that had lived more or less in isolation from one another or, in some extreme cases, whose very existence had long been ignored. “Among all the forces contributing to that acceleration, there is no doubt that the most decisive have been the changes that are making communications easier, quicker and cheaper. “Perhaps one of its most spectacular manifestations is outsourcing,
opening the possibility to people in India, for example, to offer
and provide services of a personal nature over distances of thousands
of miles. It is no coincidence that this period is witnessing the
re-emergence of China and India, two of the most accomplished non-Western
civilizations, which were for a long time overshadowed by the political
and economic rise of the West. As Professor Angus Maddison has shown
in his quantitative measurement of economic achievements from a
historical perspective, the two Asian giants together accounted
for the greater share of the preindustrial output of the world economy.
As late as 1820, when the effects of the Industrial Revolution had
still not been fully felt, China alone accounted for not less than
one third of the world’s gross domestic product. In that regard,
one could compare India and China to two giant whales that took
a long, deep dive into the ocean of the world economy. Now that
they are resurfacing, it is no surprise that they will make big
waves. The important thing, however, is that more and more people
are able to surf on the crest of those waves. “Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 brought to a brutal end the brief post-cold war era that began with the demolition of the Berlin Wall, a more sombre period has been ushered in by the renewed predominance of security and political-military priorities over economic considerations. One initial result has been the continuous reinforcement of the might of the State and its indisputable prevalence over the market and civil society. The internal logic of the process has also been turned upside down. Now, self-defence, the obsession with security that is as absolute as possible, even at the cost of pre-emptive attacks, has made the search for international political cooperation look like a second-best option, if an option at all. The pendulum is again swinging back towards heterogeneity and dissent, even among former allies. Walls, separation fences, barriers are again being erected everywhere. In the face of the mortal danger posed by a murderous and monstrous variety of international terrorism, impelled by utter contempt for the most sacred values of the lives of mothers and children, it is not difficult to understand why self-reliance, which formerly prevailed only in market fundamentalism, has now spread to the political arena. The net and paradoxical result is that consensus-building, international cooperation and multilateral solutions to common problems have become more difficult at the very time that they are more vitally needed and more unavoidable than ever. “Take, for instance, the future of the multilateral trading system. For years and years we have been told how this system was inexorably breaking down into three regional blocs, centred on the EU, the US and Japan, each with its own currency. Actually, what has been taking shape before our eyes is something quite different: a huge bloc formed by China, Japan and other Asian countries on the one hand, and the US on the other; inside this heterogeneous group, the Asians export to the gigantic ‘black hole’ of the American market and finance its enormous external deficit through the purchase of dollars and Treasury bonds. As someone has remarked, there are today only two groups among developing economies: those able to finance their growth through exports to the United States, and the rest, the legion of countries still plagued by Prebisch’s infamous ‘trade gap,’ which they are forced to finance through debt. This is certainly not the coherence that we need between the trade and the financial systems, but it is the closest we have come to it. “Look now at manufacture exports from the South. The share of manufactures in developing countries’ exports grew steadily, from 20% of their exports in 1980 to nearly 70% in 2000. That would probably have seemed an impossible dream at the time of the first UNCTAD conference in 1964. The problem is that such a remarkable performance has been concentrated in a dozen countries, most of them Asian, and in many cases it was the result of integration into the production and distribution systems of transnational corporations. The downside of entering markets through the international production system is the uncertainty associated with it, as companies can easily relocate or restructure activities—which is particularly true when the country concerned contributes only marginally to value added through cheap labour. As UNCTAD has demonstrated, only those countries that have managed to acquire the capability needed to add value—rather than simply assemble imported inputs—can secure long-term benefits from their involvement in the international production system, increasing their share in world trade at the same time as they increase their share in world manufacturing value added. That had not been foreseen in 1964, when production was understood to be an essentially endogenous or national process. The Final Act of UNCTAD I called for ‘a modified international division of labour, which is more rational and equitable and is accompanied by the necessary adjustments in world production and trade.’ “As he [Mr. Prebisch] was growing old in the 1980s, in the middle of what he described as ‘the second crisis of capitalism,’ he grew more strongly committed than ever to the cause of equity and solidarity within and among societies. At the end of his contribution to Pioneers in Development, he affirms that the time had come ‘to search for a synthesis of both socialism and genuine economic liberalism, and thereby restore that essential philosophic unity of economic liberalism with political liberalism.’ “This brings us back to the central concern and responsibility of UNCTAD: development. More than ever, we have to do our best to avoid a repetition of what happened during the cold war: to relegate development needs to the back burner, at best, or to subordinate them to the legitimate search for security, or worse, to ideological prejudices. “As I near the conclusion of this presentation, I will not attempt to prescribe in detail what the priorities should be of UNCTAD’s work in the uncertain future ahead. There is a time to be analytical, and a time to concentrate on the essence of things. “For me, there are two essential themes that should structure and encompass all the innumerable activities of this organization. The first was the subject of our last conference in São Paulo: how to contribute to greater coherence between the external economic environment and national efforts and, in that context, how to ensure that the monetary-financial system on the one hand, and the trade system on the other, reinforce and not undermine one another. This is a task that can be faced only through a sustained effort of enlightened international cooperation. “But above all else, the central concern of UNCTAD must be with the ethical and human dimensions of development. Perhaps precisely because I am not an economist, for me the very essence of development is to be found beyond the economic realm. (...)If there is indeed a pattern to history, it is the certainty that we evolve in the direction of growing complexity. And in the final analysis, to develop is to learn how to manage increasingly complex societies, not exclusively in economic terms, but in terms of equity, human rights, environmental protection, gender equality; in sum, the legacy of the Enlightenment, the best hope from a purely human perspective for transforming in depth the quality of relations among human beings.” |
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| Millennium Development Goals: Civil Society Takes Action - 57th Annual DPI/NGO Conference | ||
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There is no time to lose in ending extreme poverty and putting the world on a more humane and just path, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed at the opening of the 57th Annual UN Department of Public Information (DPI) NGO Conference, aimed at mobilizing broader public support for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). People everywhere wanted a fair chance for themselves and their children, Mr. Annan said, adding that if the MDGs were not met, “we all will be poorer.”
The UN Department of Public Information, in partnership with the NGO/DPI Executive Committee, held its 57th Annual Conference from 8-10 September in New York. The three-day conference, entitled Millennium Development Goals: Civil Society Takes Action, brought together some 2,700 participants, including high-level officials from the UN system, government representatives, media representatives, academics, experts with field experience and NGO representatives from across the globe involved, or looking to be, in the implementation, monitoring or promotion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Conference provided NGOs with the opportunity to assess the current status of the MDGs, focus on the obstacles that threaten the realization of these Goals, share innovative approaches to partnerships and learn of civil society campaigns that are most effective in stimulating broader public awareness and support for sustainable and replicable North-South programmes. The Conference also marked an important step in United Nations/civil society consultations leading up to the Millennium Summit review process (+5), expected to take place in September 2005, as participants shared lessons learned, best practices and reflected on ways to further contribute to the MDGs on a national, regional and international level. The Conference included seven plenary sessions and 31 interactive workshops covering a wide range of topics relating to the MDGs, including practical themes—such as the benefits of partnerships, media approaches for campaigns, forging links, interactive dialogues—but also more issue-based themes like girls’ education, economic security, poverty and hunger, youth and the MDGs, local treatment of HIV/AIDS, and health and development policies. In his welcome address, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was quick to recognize the significant contribution to the MDGs made to date by NGOs. He underscored that NGOs had been innovative, had put pressure on governments to deliver on their commitments and had brought real change into people’s lives. Mr. Annan also drew on the distinct nature of the Goals and the sense of urgency underlying them. He noted that the Goals were different from other past development pledges in three ways: first, the goals were measurable; second, they had unprecedented political support; and third, the Goals were achievable. Eveline Herfkens—the Secretary-General’s Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign—also addressed participants in the opening session. Ms. Herfkens emphasized that without civil society there would have been no Millennium Development Goals; they were the ones who insisted on a rights-based approach to development, demanding government action and claiming participation. On a country level, she argued, it had been civil society spurring action. The Goals were a global compact built around mutual commitments and demanded mutual accountability by all countries, she stressed. Therefore, rich countries had to meet their commitments reflected in Goal 8—increase aid and aid effectiveness, debt relief and trade opportunities, while eliminating agricultural subsidies which destroyed markets on which poor farmers in poor countries depended. Ms. Herfkens pointed out that the number of rich countries that set themselves targets for Goal 8 was increasing. Chairing the opening session, the Under-Secretary-General for Communication and Public Information, Shashi Tharoor, told participants he was encouraged by the progress to date and acknowledged the positive impact civil society had made in the MDG process. However, Mr. Tharoor stressed that if the Goals were to be more than a mere possibility, greater resources would need to be mobilized from both domestic and external sources; moreover, governments, the private sector and civil society would have to maintain their focus and increase their efforts. In the closing session of the first day, Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals, worried that he had not seen concrete efforts by the developed countries towards meeting their commitments of 0.7% gross national product (GNP) in development assistance. The breakthrough towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, Mr. Sachs warned, had to be made this year. He stressed that nothing was more important for global security than for the rich world to finally follow through on the 0.7% pledge for development assistance. A safe world, he said, would come when everyone’s lives were taken seriously. The morning session on 9 September focused on Strategies to Overcome Obstacles to the MDGs. Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist for The New York Times and moderator of the session, said there was some confusion between the question of the Goals themselves and what they represented. One of the issues was how to overcome the resistance to achieving them. He said there had been tremendous progress in recent decades, and one of the lessons to be learned from that progress was the need for security. In addition to security, another factor was good governance. In overcoming obstacles to achieving the Goals, he said he saw two kinds of strategies. The first involved large organizations. The other approach emphasized local efforts and local NGOs. He stressed that he was a strong believer in the second approach. Mr. Kristof said he also felt there was too much effort on conferences as opposed to specific efforts in specific places. Bineta Diop, Executive Director of Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS), Senegal, said that the African continent had been at the forefront of the “MDGs,” yet there were only few participants at the Conference from Africa. Four years ago, 53 African States had agreed to forge a unique partnership between the private sector and civil society in a commitment to achieve eight goals. Today, it had become clear that sub-Saharan Africa had not achieved any of those goals, Ms. Diop stressed. She said that a major obstacle was the existence of conflicts raging on the continent. The African leaders were organizing themselves, as evidenced in the home-grown, home-based New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), in an attempt to alleviate poverty. They had also transformed the Organization of African Unity into the African Union, with a new mechanism to stem conflict. One expressed aim was to promote investment in Africa. But, she asked, was there really hope in Africa? When one conflict was resolved, another one lay ahead on the horizon. Women, in particular, were suffering. If Goal number eight, which emphasized the role of the international community in addressing major global development concerns such as trade barriers, was not implemented, then genuine partnership between North and South, between government and society and the private sector would not succeed, she warned. Ms. Diop appealed for more attention to the human dimension of human security, noting that people’s rights and economic wellbeing were the keys to building a safer world. Emyr Jones Parry, Permanent Representative of the UK to the United Nations, reviewed the challenges facing donor countries, noting that the first challenge was getting delivery right, even in the toughest places. Delivery must be sped up and the “deliverers” must not shy away from obstacles, he said, adding that new and better approaches were needed to link development with global security. Without security, there could be no enduring development, and without sustainable development, security would not prosper; the two went together, he said. Stressing the need to mobilize resources for development to pay the bill, Mr. Jones Parry urged donor countries to live up to the promises they made at Monterrey and elsewhere. The volume of aid was not the only issue, but also its efficiency and effectiveness. Political will and national ownership needed to be built as well. Noting that the MDGs could not be delivered through a one-size-fits-all approach, he said governments had to shape their national plans to meet the requirements they determined, and the donor and international system had to work to make that happen. One of the distinct features of the Conference was the public hearing, which served as a platform for NGO representatives to put forth recommendations and ask questions relating to the MDGs. During the hearing, civil society representatives urged action, beyond the meeting, to forge stronger, results-based partnerships between themselves, governments and the United Nations. In terms of concrete steps, participants suggested the creation of a website to help NGOs—in both developed and developing countries—bridge the gaps in knowledge, and the possible elaboration of new development paradigms to safeguard people with special needs. Questions were also asked about what civil society could do to prevent the “power brokers” from hijacking the partnerships, and how the Goals could make a difference to war-weary women. Addressing the participants at the public hearing, Mark Malloch-Brown—Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Chair of the United Nations Development Group—responded to some of the questions coming from NGO representatives. Mr. Malloch-Brown acknowledged that the Goals were modest in some ways, but they amounted to the first time that world leaders would end up living up to the commitments they signed onto. He said that one lesson that intruded on the political consciousness of the West after “9/11” was that not only could the rich hurt the poor, but the poor could also hurt the rich. Through civil society, in a short generation, it would be possible to realize a genuine sense of global responsibility and global action, he stressed. Also speaking at the public hearing was Kavita Ramdas—President of the Global Fund for Women—who drew important links between security and the MDGs. She argued that there would not be more security when governments such as Senegal and Ethiopia were denied funds to achieve the Goals, while at the same time being supplied with arms. Ms. Ramdas stressed that there was no justification for these types of double standards with the Goals. She also added that gender equality and justice were measured by women’s position, role and status in all aspects of society, from the family to the highest institutions of governance. In her closing remarks, Joan Kirby—from the NGO/DPI Executive Committee and Co-Chair of the Conference—summarized some of the major outcomes of the panels and workshops. Ms. Kirby made reference to the need to change power relationships and put women in leadership positions for the attainment of the Goals. Add, youth, she said, “and then we have a dynamite proposition.” Ms. Kirby also recognized that the Conference had worked to reinforce the notion that development and security are interdependent and that this needed to be further acknowledged by governments in order for the Goals to be reached. An interactive website developed for the Conference—available in English, French and Spanish—provided access to live audio and video webcasts of the conference panels. Another feature of the website included online discussion areas and message boards to enable participants to share comments and ask questions during the proceedings. Contact: Paul Hoeffel, Chief, NGO Section, UN Department of Public Information, Room S-1070 L, New York NY 10017, USA, telephone +1-212/963 6842, fax +1-212/963 6914, e-mail <info@UNdpiNGOconference.org>, website (www.undpingoconference.org). |
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| CALENDAR | ||
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Disarmament Biological Weapons Chemical Weapons Landmines Nuclear Weapons - Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 33rd session, 8-26 November, Geneva Education - Fourth Meeting of the High-Level Group on Education for All, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 14-16 November, Brazil Sustainable Development - 7th Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention,
25-29 October, Geneva |
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