NGLS Roundup, no. 57, September 2000

FIVE-YEAR REVIEW OF THE WORLD SUMMIT FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT


The United Nations General Assembly held its 24th Special Session entitled "The World
Summit for Social Development and Beyond: Achieving Social Development for All in a
Globalizing World" (WSSD+5), from 26-30 June 2000 in Geneva. 

Despite going into the meetings with over 50% of the outcome already agreed, negotiations
proved difficult and concluded a day late. In the end, governments were able to agree on a
number of significant initiatives including:
-- Reducing by 50% the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015
-- Reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates among young Africans by 25% by 2005
-- Conducting an analysis of proposals for new and innovative sources of funding for social
development and poverty eradication programmes
-- Achieving a 50% improvement in adult literacy by 2015
-- Providing universal access to high-quality primary health care not later than 2015
-- Recognizing the critical importance of access to essential medicines at affordable prices
for people in developing countries
-- Calling for action to address the debt problems of middle and low-income countries as
well as highly indebted poor countries (HIPC)
-- improving preventive and early warning capabilities to address the excessive volatility of
short-term capital flows by such means as a "debt standstill" mechanism
-- Calling for improved transparency of financial flows and the strengthening and enforcing
of regulatory frameworks to monitor financial operations
-- Promoting ways of giving indigenous people greater responsibility for their own affairs
-- Exploring ways to combat the use of tax shelters and tax havens
-- Inviting the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to launch a global campaign to
eradicate poverty

The meeting brought together Heads of State, Prime Ministers and senior officials from
approximately 130 governments, as well as representatives from around 500 NGOs. It
provided an opportunity for governments to reaffirm their will and commitment to implement
the Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development,
held in Copenhagen (Denmark), and to reiterate their determination and duty to eradicate
poverty. 

Theo-Ben Gurirab (Namibia), President of the General Assembly, affirmed in his closing
statement to the Special Session that the list of renewed commitments was led by the
Assembly's deep-seated concerns about economic growth and democratization; full
employment; debt cancellation; women's empowerment and gender equality; and multilateral
trade based on social justice and equity. 

"Let us now summon all the necessary political will," he said, "mobilize the requisite resources
and focus on people-centred priorities to defeat poverty, hunger, want and fear from the face
of the earth, once and for all."


OVERVIEW OF OUTCOME
Negotiations centred on a three-part document: a political declaration reaffirming the
Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the Social Summit; a review and assessment
of implementation of the Social Summit Programme of Action; and new initiatives and actions
to implement commitments made at the Summit (see NGLS Roundup 52).

In the declaration, governments presented their overarching view of the political climate for
implementation of the outcome document, as well as the socio-economic trends within which
the new initiatives are framed.

In large part governments used the process of "globalization" as the lens through which to
understand facets of development such as trade, education, financial flows, financial
cooperation, labour, social integration and the marginalization of particular groups and
regions. 

A number of speakers said that globalization, while generating benefits, was also disruptive for
a large category of people in poorer countries. The Vice-Minister of Health and Welfare from
the Republic of Korea, Lee Jong-Yoon, reminded delegates of the 1997 financial crisis that left
many Koreans jobless. He noted that the crisis had forced the government to reassess its
economic and social systems, however, and highlighted the importance of establishing social
safety nets. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Vice-President of the Philippines, also addressed the
social dimensions of globalization and underscored the need for more protection of the rights
of migrant workers and for effective collaboration to tackle such issues as drug trafficking;
trafficking in women and children; terrorism; environmental degradation; marginalization of
persons with disabilities; disease; and armed conflict. Anthony Dessources, Minister for
Planning and External Cooperation of Haiti, said that globalization had only worked for a
small number of countries. He called for regional integration and cooperation as a possible
positive response. On behalf of the European Union (EU), Eduardo Rodrigues, Minister for
Labour and Solidarity of Portugal, said that "the international community needs to identify
those key aspects of social policy that underpin economic development in a globalizing world;
and to begin to develop a framework of social principles to ensure that the goals of
Copenhagen are integrated into national and international policy making."

While governments did acknowledge the serious challenges of globalization and continuing
rapid technological advances--including widespread financial crises, insecurity, poverty,
exclusion and inequality within and among societies--they affirmed that these processes
offered unprecedented opportunities for social and economic development. In the political
declaration, governments expressed considerable concern about the need to further integrate
and garner full participation for developing countries in the global economy. The declaration
goes on to acknowledge that social development, while requiring economic activity, also
requires reduction in inequality in the distribution of wealth and a more equitable distribution
of the benefits of economic growth within and among nations. 

The Chair of the PrepCom, Ambassador Cristian Maquieira (Chile), opened the Special
Session by saying only the UN had a sufficiently broad mandate to tackle all the relevant
problems related to the shortcomings of globalization and to maximize globalization's benefits.
He declared it was necessary "to integrate social rules into the heart of the doctrine of
globalization," and noted that commitments benefiting the North would not function if they
did not also serve the interests of the South.

Cross-cutting themes that appear throughout the outcome document and that were highlighted
during negotiations include: the importance of civil society and communities in policy
formulation and programme implementation; the vital nature of input from local levels of
government and local actors; national-level responsibility for social development; the
inter-relatedness of development issues such as trade, health, gender, education and
governance; the potential of taxation as a tool to promote development; identification of key
groups of people with particular needs such as migrants, refugees and the internally displaced;
and identification of key groups of countries with particular needs such as land-locked, transit,
small island developing states, least developed countries (LDCs), highly indebted poor
countries, and Africa.


KEY AREAS OF DEBATE
Financial
The WSSD+5 process was an opportunity for governments to come up with new initiatives to
address the global financial system and its related impacts on social development in light of the
Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998. In this regard, governments highlighted the importance of
reducing the negative impacts of international financial turbulence through a number of
measures including improving preventive and early warning capabilities to address the
excessive volatility of short-term capital flows by such means as a "debt standstill" mechanism.
Governments also agreed to increase transparency of financial flows, strengthen or enforce
regulatory frameworks, and take measures to protect basic social services during financial
crises. In light of the financial crises of the late 1990s, which some argued illustrated once
again how little control developing countries have over their domestic economies,
governments took a decision to "ensure the effective involvement of developing countries and
countries with economies in transition in the international economic decision-making process
through, inter alia, greater participation in the international economic fora, ensuring
transparency and accountability of international financial institutions to accord a central
position for social development in their policies and programmes."

Despite insistence by the United States that it would not negotiate "democratization" of the
Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs), the outcome document does call for transparency and
accountability of the international financial institutions (IFIs) with regard to their programme
and policy relationship to social development. Regarding positions on the democratization of
the BWIs, the Group of 77 (G-77) noted irony in the fact that those governments speaking at
length regarding the value of democratic processes at the country level would not agree that
such a process was also essential in the international financial institutions.

Tax Matters
Over the past several years, discussion around a Tobin Tax--or what some now refer to as a
currency transaction tax (CTT)--has emerged and numerous NGO networks, eminent
economists and national parliaments have advocated its use as a potential source of significant
revenue for social development as well as a means to curb excessive speculative foreign
exchange transactions. During Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings for the Special
Session, several NGOs worked with key governments such as Canada to insert specific
language regarding the CTT initiative. Given the staunch opposition of the US and Japanese
delegations, many wondered whether or not language on this proposal would reach the final
negotiating stage in Geneva, or be deleted before then. Despite limited support from the G-77,
with a lack of opposition from the European Union, the Canadian proposal on the CTT was
able to survive albeit in considerably weakened language. In the end, governments agreed to
"conduct a rigorous analysis of advantages, disadvantages and other implications of proposals
for developing new and innovative sources of funding, both public and private, for dedication
to social development and poverty eradication programmes." While the paragraph itself did
not mention the CTT specifically, the Canadian delegation--speaking also for Norway in its
final remarks during adoption of the outcome document--stated that it welcomed the
opportunity to take a closer look at innovative mechanisms including a CTT.

Governments negotiated other aspects of taxation and agreed to explore methods for dividing
the liability of multinational corporations to pay taxes on profits among the jurisdictions in
which they operate; explore ways to combat the use of tax shelters and tax havens; and
prevent tax avoidance and promote treaties for avoiding double taxation.

Debt
On the issue of debt, the final document largely reiterates language and outlines initiatives
already agreed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the HIPC
initiative on debt relief. However, in paragraph 5-bis the document does call for action to
address the debt problems of low and middle-income developing countries, which are not dealt
with in the HIPC process. In its closing remarks the United States delegation said international
efforts on the debt needed to concentrate on successful implementation of the HIPC initiative.
Paragraph 5-bis, the US argued, went well beyond the confines of the HIPC initiative, so the
US dissociated itself from the consensus on that language.

The outcome document also identifies a "temporary debt standstill" mechanism as a possible
tool to reduce negative impacts of international financial turbulence on social and economic
development. Some NGOs present in Geneva, while unsure of the application of the
mechanism, interpreted this as the first legitimization of a moratorium by debtor countries ever
found in a UN-negotiated agreement. 

During the Special Session Leslie Luck, Chair of the Australian delegation, reiterated
Australia's commitment to the HIPC initiative and called for strengthening partnerships
between countries and financial institutions to "develop strategies to manage change and to
ensure that the benefits of globalization are spread as widely as possible." Australia, which in
April 2000 announced it would provide 100% debt forgiveness, underscored the necessity of
bilateral debt forgiveness in addition to multilateral contributions.
Echoing the position of a number of countries, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Vice-President of
the Philippines, called for improved measures to not only address the external debt problems
but also to reverse declines in official development assistance (ODA). 

Structural Adjustment Programmes
Much of the discussion under the commitment to ensure that poverty eradication, employment
promotion and enhancement of social integration are taken into consideration when
negotiating Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) centred on dialogue about the design,
implementation and reform of such programmes. The United States proposed that both
governments and IFIs needed to improve dialogue on SAPs in consultation with relevant civil
society actors. The G-77 opposed the suggestion to consult with civil society. In the end
governments worked with the Chair's proposal and agreed that governments and international
financial institutions needed to improve their dialogue to fully integrate social and economic
frameworks in order to protect social policies and programmes. Such dialogues, it was agreed,
would benefit from consultations by governments with relevant actors and organizations of
civil society. A related decision encouraged the development of nationally owned poverty
reduction strategies as a way to facilitate governments' dialogue with development partners.

In order to undertake assessment of the social impact of SAPs before, during and after their
implementation, governments chose to establish participatory mechanisms which could involve
the UN system, including the BWIs, regional development banks and civil society. This was
regarded as a step forward in the reformulation of economic reform strategies that have been
shown to contract economic activity and reduce the level of key social service spending.

In light of much research that has demonstrated the disproportionate impact of SAPs on
vulnerable groups, particularly women, governments agreed to ensure that gender issues are
taken into account in the formulation and implementation of structural adjustment
programmes. 

Gender
While gender concerns were built in to many of the new initiatives, one commitment deals
specifically with achieving equality and equity between women and men. 

Some observers said it was ironic that governments negotiated the five-year review of
implementation of the Fourth World Conference on Women and identified further initiatives in
that regard (Beijing+5) just two weeks prior to Geneva, but had such difficulty deciding what
to do with that outcome. Governments debated whether to "take into account," "take fully
into account" and "implement," "uphold" or "recommit to" the outcome of Beijing+5.
Dissension arose because the United States delegation opposed "upholding" the outcome, as it
had submitted a formal reservation on the outcome document of Beijing+5. It said that it was
concerned that paragraphs therein "characterize globalization and debt as significant obstacles
to achieving gender equality," and that "most aspects of equality for women have no direct
link to international and financial issues." NGOs, particularly the Women's Caucus, took
advantage of the presence at the Special Session of US Health Secretary Donna Shalala to
raise their concerns on this matter with the US government. In the end, governments agreed to
take fully into account and implement the outcome of Beijing+5. 

A decision was taken to ensure gender mainstreaming in the implementation of each
commitment made at the Summit. Governments said that they would strengthen national
efforts to promote the empowerment of women by, among other things: closing the gender
gap in primary and secondary education by 2005 and ensuring free, compulsory and universal
primary education for both girls and boys by 2015; achieving a 50% improvement in levels of
adult literacy by 2015, especially for women; eliminating all forms of violence against women,
in the domestic as well as in the public sphere; promoting programmes to enable women and
men to reconcile their work and family responsibilities; and encouraging men to share equally
with women household and family responsibilities.

One area of particular concern was the development and use of gender-related analysis and
statistics. In this regard, governments agreed to provide support in the pursuit of data
disaggregated by sex and age for use by national governments. 

Social Principles
One of the more contentious issues throughout the WSSD+5 process was the establishment of
social principles. The European Union wanted a working group to develop guidelines for the
implementation of sound principles and good practice in social policy. These guidelines would
have been used to integrate the goals of the Social Summit into the social and economic
policies of national governments, international financial institutions and other relevant
international institutions. The G-77 objected to the proposal, which it said would result in
Northern governments imposing a development paradigm on Southern governments. In the
end, all governments acknowledged that there was no single universal path to achieving social
development. Instead of developing a standard set of guidelines, they recognized the
importance of sharing, on the basis of equality and mutual respect, information on national
experiences and best practices in social development.

Labour
Negotiations on labour issues proved contentious, especially those concerning labour rights,
globalization and corporate responsibility. As in discussions on social principles there was a
North-South divide on issues, particularly between the G-77 and the European Union. This
was evident in negotiations on labour rights: the EU argued that "realization of the principles
in the International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and
Rights at Work is a fundamental prerequisite for social and economic development," whereas
the G-77 viewed this suspiciously as a basis for protectionist trade measures. There was also
significant debate as well as confusion about reference to corporate social responsibility as no
previously agreed "language" existed in an international consensus document. Due to a lack of
previously agreed definitions of corporate responsibility, some delegations within the G-77
interpreted this as a "Trojan horse" for Northern-defined standards of labour rights. 

Governments situated the goal of full employment within a macro-economic context by saying
that macro-economic policies should aim for greater employment generation and reductions in
poverty levels, while striving for and maintaining low inflation rates. 

It was agreed that many governments still needed to ratify and implement various ILO
conventions for the purpose of improving work conditions around the world. Those
highlighted centred on: basic workers' rights, namely freedom of association and recognition
of the right to organize and bargain collectively; elimination of all forms of forced or
compulsory labour; abolition of child labour; and the employment rights of women, youth,
persons with disabilities, migrants and indigenous peoples. The private sector was encouraged
to respect basic worker rights as reaffirmed in the Declaration on the Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work. 

Governments took a specific decision on child labour by agreeing to support and participate in
the global campaign for immediate elimination of the worst forms of child labour.
Governments recognized the special needs of migrant workers by agreeing to ensure that they
benefit from the protection provided by relevant national and international instruments and to
take concrete measures against exploitation of migrant workers. Governments also agreed to
consider a major event on the informal sector in 2002.

With regard to migrants, who tend to be particularly vulnerable to the global economy and
abusive work conditions, governments agreed to protect their human rights and dignity
regardless of legal status, although some initially challenged that this should pertain only to
documented migrants. It was also agreed that national and international measures to prevent
the illegal trafficking and transport of migrants, including the establishment of clear penalties,
should be identified and promoted.

Health 
HIV/AIDS and its impact on social development dominated many of the discussions
surrounding health issues. Of particular importance to NGOs and delegations from Southern
Africa, which has been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic, was the issue of gaining
access to essential medicines that both treat and prevent HIV/AIDS. Due to the agreement on
trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs) negotiated within the World Trade
Organization (WTO)--which gives pharmaceutical companies full control over the production
and distribution of the vaccines and drugs they develop--developing countries in desperate
need of access to certain medicines have been unable to produce them at affordable prices.
Negotiations proved difficult for South Africa and the G-77 as they tried to have essential and
life-saving medicines excluded from patenting, as well as to have governments recognize that
intellectual property rights (IPRs) under TRIPs should not take precedence over other human
rights including the right to the highest attainable standard of health care. Jacob Zuma, Deputy
President of South Africa, emphasized that the "incidence of poverty provides fertile ground
for the exacerbation of this [AIDS] pandemic" and called on the international community to
"integrate the ethics of human development into trade negotiations and ensure that the existing
trade and patent regimes are not skewed in favour of the corporate sector at the expense of
the most vulnerable sectors of our populations." 

Based on a proposal from Canada, governments agreed to make an implied connection
between human rights and health care without being explicit on the right to essential and
life-saving medicines. However they did recognize the critical importance of access to essential
medicines at affordable prices. In large part due to pressure from the United States and
European Union, governments acknowledged the contribution of IPRs to promote further
research, development and distribution of drugs. Governments also agreed that Member States
may freely exercise, "in an unrestricted manner," the options available to them under
international agreements to protect and advance access to life-saving, essential medicines.
However, this was done within the context of the TRIPs agreement. Governments also
encouraged the 25 African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS to adopt time-bound targets
to reduce infection levels.

Other decisions taken regarding health included encouraging enterprises, especially
pharmaceutical companies, to invest in research on diseases in developing countries; inviting
the UN to integrate the health dimension into its policies and programmes such as health and
environment, health and employment, health and food security, and health and
macro-economic policy; and supporting programmes to decrease consumption of tobacco,
exposure to tobacco smoke and abuse of alcohol in each country.

US Health Secretary Donna Shalala called on the international community to "expand access
to health care for everyone, teach prevention and stop the worldwide pandemic of infectious
diseases--especially HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We must finish our worldwide effort
to eliminate polio. And we must stop the marketing of tobacco to children." She also
emphasized the need to empower women and to work with civil society: "When women have
access to knowledge, health, economic opportunity and civil rights children thrive, families
succeed and countries prosper . In order to achieve positive change, we must continue to
work together. The days of government dictating solutions are over. Today we know that the
best answers come through partnerships among NGOs, the private sector, government and
local communities."


NGO ORGANIZING
The week in Geneva began with controversy surrounding the launching of the Better World
for All report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. NGOs said they were outraged by the
report, which was jointly produced by the United Nations, Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
NGOs said that collaboration of the UN with what they described as three
Northern-dominated institutions reinforced Northern perspectives on poverty, and placed the
burden of poverty reduction squarely on the backs of the poor and Southern governments.
Meena Raman of the Third World Network called the report's analysis "highly unbalanced and
controversial....There should have been a voice from the South," she said, "a voice of the
developing countries should have been present there."

Among the report's seven targets to address poverty are: reduce the proportion of people
living in extreme poverty by half between 1990 and 2015; enrol all children in primary school
by 2015; reduce infant and child mortality rates by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015; and
implement national strategies for sustainable development by 2005 to reverse the loss of
environmental resources by 2015. 

NGOs noted that no goals or targets were identified to hold industrialized countries to
commitments they had made. NGO caucuses, while acknowledging the key role of national
governments in poverty reduction, said in a joint statement that in 1995 during the Social
Summit, governments agreed that an international enabling economic and political
environment were essential for social development. NGOs nicknamed the report "Bretton
Woods for All," and argued that it undermined the 1995 agreement by failing to identify any
targets, such as official development assistance (ODA) levels for donor countries and the
international community. 

Konrad Raiser, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, expressed in a letter to
Mr. Annan NGO disappointment about the participation of the United Nations in the report. 

"By identifying yourself with the goals and the vision promoted by this report," he said, "...you
have cast doubt upon the will of the United Nations to reaffirm the Copenhagen commitments
and translate them into effective strategies for the eradication of poverty." Mr. Raiser called
the report a "propaganda exercise" for international financial institutions.

In a letter in response, Mr. Annan said that "the report contains our targets and objectives--these are the aims of the United Nations, as expressed at Copenhagen and elsewhere, for
which our partner organizations now express their support as well. It would be truly ironic if,
after years of trying to get them to do so, we were now not to accept their  yes' as an answer.
I should also add that all of our inter-governmental bodies--at the United Nations and the
Bretton Woods institutions alike--have asked us to cooperate more effectively among
ourselves, especially in development-related work. Indeed, some of our respective governing
bodies have begun to convene regular joint meetings. We all serve the same people, and we all
agree that the needs of the people are to be best served. This report was a response to that
demand--and to repeat, it enshrines UN objectives and UN targets. Finally, I should note that
the report is not a policy document but a compendium of desirable targets and objectives. And
while all of the co-sponsoring organizations now agree on the objectives, there may well
continue to be differences among them regarding how best to achieve them."

Mr. Annan, asked during a press conference about the NGO criticisms, stressed that the UN
could do very little alone. He emphasized that partnerships with the Bretton Woods
Institutions, private sector and civil society were the only means by which the UN could have
any impact. The UN, he said, continued to stand by the target of 0.7% gross domestic product
(GDP) for ODA, although it was not identified as a key target in the Better World for All
report.

Mark Malloch-Brown, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) which contributed to the report, followed up on the Secretary-General's response.
He explained how the report originated from a request by the Group of Seven (G-7) wealthiest
countries. 

"This is an effort to create an annual bench-marking exercise," he said, "which will be put in
front of the [Group] every year. And when you see the weak level of attendance by heads of
government from the developed countries at this conference, you know that a bench-marking
advocacy tool of this kind has to be a plus." 

NGOs questioned this line of thinking and suggested that targets the G-8 countries had agreed
to, such as debt cancellation, would form a better basis for their bench-marking exercise. 

Aside from activities related to the Better World for All report, NGOs were active in a variety
of ways during the official conference. They organized themselves primarily through caucuses
and working groups, some of which carried over from the PrepCom meetings. Caucuses met
on an issues and constituency basis including gender, debt, and the currency transaction tax, as
well as in regional groups.

Covering the inter-governmental meetings proved challenging for NGOs, which had to cope
with frequent overlap of the Plenary, the Committee of the Whole, working groups negotiating
the outcome document, and contact groups debating contentious paragraphs. An especially
effective tool for sharing information was a daily morning briefing organized by NGOs. They
used the briefing to report on the status of negotiations and hear from NGOs on delegations.
The briefing was also an opportunity to announce caucus meetings and strategize around
particular issues such as responding to the Better World for All report.

During the Special Session, NGOs had the opportunity to make formal statements to both the
Committee of the Whole and the Plenary. When addressing the Plenary as the Special Session
approached its conclusion, NGOs emphasized some of their most salient concerns. Several of
the nine NGOs (five regional and four international) that spoke identified debt, unemployment,
and the unevenness of the benefits of globalization as considerable obstacles to social
development. 

"The crushing burden of external debt," said Yao Graham of Third World Network, speaking
on behalf of the Africa Caucus, "has undermined the capacity of African governments to
provide even the minimum of resources for social development." He went on to charge that
the enhanced HIPC formula did not provide an adequate framework for dealing with the
problem and noted that global unemployment and under-employment totalled 900 million
persons. Fachson Shamenda of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions stressed
that globalization needed to be redefined and changed so that it would work for working
people. 

Alida Smeehes of the European Women's Lobby and representing the European Caucus
pointed out that both the North and developing countries face the challenges of globalization. 

"Governments should recognize growing poverty and inequalities within their own countries,"
she said, "and reaffirm the role of public expenditures which should be regarded as an
investment." 

Hector Bejar of Social Watch, who spoke on behalf of the Latin America Caucus, noted that
most of the commitments made in Copenhagen had not been fulfilled. This was true of his
region, he said, where "instead of a decrease in poverty there had been an increase in the
wealth of a few."


THE GENEVA 2000 FORUM
The Geneva 2000 Forum, which was held in various UN venues close to the General
Assembly Special Session, ran from 22-30 June 2000. The Forum was hosted by Switzerland
and was intended to provide an opportunity for all sectors of civil society, the private sector,
inter-governmental organizations and governments to participate in a large, open debate on
social development. It was attended by over 3,000 NGO representatives (of which nearly
1,000 were from developing countries and Eastern Europe), about 600 representatives of
inter-governmental organizations, some 500 government representatives, and nearly 100
parliamentarians and representatives of local authorities. A total of about 500 meetings were
held during the nine days of the Forum, including a two-day symposium organized by the
Swiss government.

Forum events covered a diverse range of issues related to stocktaking since the 1995 Social
Summit and new initiatives for social development. A full report of the Forum, commissioned
by the Swiss government, can be obtained from the Geneva 2000 Forum Secretariat (see
contact details below). Some of the main issues highlighted at the Forum are summarized
below.

"Globalization with a Human Mask"
On 29 June, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) held a
one-day conference to present findings of the Institute's report prepared for WSSD+5 on
Visible Hands: Taking Responsibility for Social Development. Speakers who had contributed
to the report said that since the Social Summit, too much confidence was still being placed in
the "invisible hand" of unregulated markets, which have no capacity to imagine or create a
decent society for all. Only the "visible hands" of governments and public-spirited people can
do that, they argued. With growing inequalities, persistent poverty and free market-driven
economic catastrophes such as the East Asian crisis, they noted, there had been some changes
in the rhetoric of international institutions and national ministries that drive the current model
of globalization. But if present trends persist, UNRISD Director Thandika Mkandawire
argued, these are more likely to result in superficial changes rather than a dramatic
people-centred reorientation of policies. These trends, he said, could be likened to
"globalization with a human mask."

Speakers said the kind of economic expansion that had occurred in the last few years had been
erratic, unstable and regressive in its distributional impact on different groups. Thus prospects
for achieving the aims of the Copenhagen Declaration, they warned, were not promising if the
present tide of global liberalization continued. 

The report stresses that a widespread increase in economic opportunity--which is dependent
on an appreciable increase in growth--is needed to deal with growing poverty, unemployment
and social disintegration. However, it casts doubt on some well-founded assumptions
including the idea that further liberalization of trade and finance is a necessary element in
stimulating economic growth. The report says the evidence since the 1960s suggests that it is
more likely that faster growth leads to more trade rather than the other way around. Moreover
there is little evidence that open trade promotes greater convergence in incomes, both within
and between countries. The report cites a study suggesting that free trade can actually
promote divergences in income, and another of 100 developing countries for the period
1975-1989, which found no relationship between the openness of capital account regimes and
the growth of gross domestic product.

Mr. Mkandawire noted that one of the most visible new departures from the prevailing
neoliberal orthodoxy in recent years has been an emphasis on poverty and "targeting the
poor." However, he described this as merely an "add-on" to macro-economic policies that
have remained essentially unchanged. He warned that this may lead to a "zero sum game"
whereby providing public services and support to the poorest implies reducing access of other
groups to the same benefits. This leads to the creation of a dual structure of social services:
one aimed at the poor and funded by the state, the other aimed at everyone else and provided
by the private sector. However, withdrawing access to public services from all but the poorest,
said Mr. Mkandawire, stands in sharp contrast with the experience of developed and
middle-income countries in providing universal access as one of the most effective ways to
ensure middle-class support for the quality and maintenance of public services.

Several speakers said it was peculiar that the same governments that had been told a few years
ago they were incapable of targeting industrial policy, because of corruption and lack of
technical and administrative capacity, were now told to target the poor through measures such
as means-testing. These measures, they said, were much more complex than simply identifying
an economic sector that requires government support. So while "universalism" is promoted by
international financial institutions in the economic sphere--all economic players (whether they
are transnational corporations or small domestic firms) should compete on an equal footing
irrespective of economic power and scale--paradoxically the same universalism in the social
sphere is discouraged.

Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara, Deputy Director of UNRISD, drew attention to the continuing
inability of the international community to resolve the debt crisis although debtor
governments, particularly in the poorest countries, often pay more in interest to foreign
creditors than they allocate to basic social services. She remarked that the HIPC initiative
inaugurated by the World Bank and IMF after the Social Summit had, four years later,
"achieved little." Ms. Hewitt de Alcantara went on to note that the conclusion of a paper
prepared for the UNRISD report, which focused on the Ugandan experience with the HIPC
initiative, was that after many years of negotiations and compliance by the Ugandan
government with "Byzantine conditions," the total debt stock of the country will have been
reduced by only about 19%. Annual benefits from the HIPC programme were not sufficient to
cover even one-fourth of the cost of providing universal primary education in Uganda. "After
reading a paper like this," she said, "it is hard not to see why international movements such as
Jubilee 2000 denounce the HIPC approach--even in its most recent, slightly less stringent
form--and demand an across-the-board cancellation of debt." 

Speakers throughout the UNRISD conference covered other dimensions of the track record
since Copenhagen. These included: a generalized erosion of national tax bases linked to
globalization (see below); the crisis of pension schemes in many countries; a trend toward
voluntary codes of conduct for transnational corporations, which speakers insisted should not
preclude the need for new binding regulations; and new threats to democracy--whether due to
civil wars and ethnic strife or the rise of "technocratic governments" that give undue
preference to the interests of international financial markets and institutions over the needs and
aspirations of their citizens. However, Ms. Hewitt de Alcantara insisted, "the record of the
past five years is not entirely negative." Among positive developments mentioned in the
report, she highlighted "the growing force of human rights thinking in the international
community and the growing recognition that adequate health, education, housing, employment
and social protection are essential rights--guaranteed in every convention and covenant since
1948." She said the international human rights framework is the mobilizing basis around which
many new initiatives are being built, and is "a very powerful tool for change." 

The report also emphasizes the growth of civil society movements around the world as a
positive development. Even if new civil society formations do not amount to a "global civil
society" as such, it argues, "what has emerged is a raucous and intelligent combination of
research, idealism and cheap technology, now armed with human rights law. With this
combination of energy, technology and development experience, [civil society groups] now
have a voice that governments, corporations and international agencies ignore at their own
peril."

Progressive Taxation and Globalization
On 26 June NGLS held a workshop on Financing Social Development: Progressive Taxation
and Globalization. Participants discussed issues related to raising revenue for social
development in a context of increasing tax competition between states, brought about by
globalization and financial liberalization. Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah of Harvard University
(United States) explained how countries have been lowering their tax rates on income earned
by foreigners within their borders in order to attract both portfolio and direct investment. Tax
competition in turn threatened to undermine individual and corporate income taxes, which
have traditionally been the main source of revenue for modern welfare states. This has led to a
tendency to shift the tax burden from highly mobile capital to less mobile labour and small
enterprises. When further increases in taxation of labour becomes politically difficult,
governments have tended to reduce aggregate social expenditure. This systemic feature of
globalization, said Mr. Avi-Yonah, amounts to a "crisis of the welfare state" in both developed
and developing countries--at precisely the time when more public resources are required to
buffer the social dislocations caused by globalization.

Julian Disney of the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) stressed that another
potentially major cause of shrinking state revenue was the growth of tax-free Internet services
and electronic commerce, particularly in the United States. He said this was not only a
growing concern from the point of view of resource mobilization, but could also be seen as a
major "distortion" in the global trading system, or "a new form of protectionism." He also
noted that the tendency to tax labour more heavily than capital distorts artificially economic
incentives away from employment creation.

Many speakers stressed that the apparent disconnect between a globalizing economy on the
one hand, and fiscal jurisdictions that remain fundamentally national or subnational in scope on
the other, calls for greater proactive efforts in the area of international tax cooperation. Mr.
Disney noted that while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) had taken a number of initiatives to enhance international tax cooperation and
address what it termed "harmful tax competition," it would be more desirable and effective to
develop a UN standard that could apply to all Member States than just the 29 OECD
members. Some proposals made at the workshop concerned better coordination between tax
jurisdictions to secure more equitable tax contributions from transnational corporations, such
as agreements on minimum corporate tax rates or taxation of corporations on a global unitary
basis, with appropriate mechanisms to allocate tax revenues internationally. However, the bulk
of discussions focused on a currency transaction tax, or Tobin Tax, which a Canadian initiative
had formally introduced on the WSSD+5 agenda (see above).

Catherine Matheson of the United Kingdom-based NGO War on Want said that most foreign
exchange trading is concentrated in only eight cities. Recent estimates suggest that some US$2
trillion is traded daily in currency markets, of which she said only 5% is necessary for financing
trade in goods and services--the rest being speculative activity. She said that a 0.25% currency
transaction tax rate would have no discernible effects on longer-term investments and the
viability of trade; yet it could raise up to US$250 billion per annum, which could be used for
social development and poverty reduction around the world.

Bart Bode of Cooperation Internationale pour le Developpement et la Solidarite (CIDSE)
stressed that a key element in advocating the technical feasibility of the tax--which would not
require a central tax authority at the global level--is the new system of interbank
foreign-exchange netting and settlement to be in place in 2001. Through this system, he said, a
currency transaction tax could be reliably applied and enforced on virtually all the world's
foreign exchange markets, if at least the governments issuing the four or five main
"vehicle-currencies" (such as the US dollar, the Euro and Japanese Yen) agree to cooperate
on applying it.

Many participants said the major challenge in the international Tobin tax campaign is
mobilizing sufficient political will in favour of such a tax. Robin Round of the Halifax Initiative
in Canada explained how her organization, in cooperation with other NGOs, trade unions and
local community groups, had engaged in a nation-wide campaign culminating in a 2-1
parliamentary vote in favour of the Tobin Tax in 1999, thus putting the issue high on the
Canadian political agenda.

Other participants explained how different groups around the world are coalescing in informal
international networks to better coordinate their national actions, including the mobilization of
parliamentarians. It was noted that, following the Canadian parliamentary vote and the launch
by 100 Brazilian parliamentarians of a Parliamentarian Front for the Tobin Tax, three members
of the European Parliament and one United States Congressman have launched an
International Parliamentarians Call for a Tobin Tax. The objective is to gather over 1,000
parliamentarians from five continents to sign the appeal and to place this issue on the agenda
of national parliaments as well as at the G-7 and IMF.

Participants at the NGLS workshop noted that the June 2001 UN meeting on Financing for
Development (FFD) included in its preliminary agenda "Exploring innovative sources for
financing for development: considering innovative global instruments, including tax
cooperation and global public goods financing mechanisms." In view of the fact that the FFD
process is open to participation of NGOs in consultative status with the United Nations
Economic and Social Council (all other NGOs can apply for ad hoc consultative status to the
next PrepCom to be held 12-23 February 2001 in New York), many participants said they
would contribute to the initiative. However, there was a general understanding that the most
important political work in this area still had to be done at the national level.

Budgets As If People Mattered
On 27 June the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) held a workshop on
people-centred budgeting, based on a UNDP report prepared for WSSD+5 entitled Budgets
As If People Mattered: Democratizing Macro-Economic Policies. UNDP Director and
workshop Chair Stephen Browne said in his introduction that "budgets should have always
been on the social development agenda, but they have not been because for too long they were
the exclusive preserve of finance ministries often working in close collaboration with the
Bretton Woods Institutions." 

It was also noted that various processes linked to globalization, such as systematic trade tariff
cuts and the current race to attract foreign investors through tax incentives, were reducing
state revenue at the time when more resources were needed to buffer economic instability and
insecurity. Kamal Malhotra of UNDP said that efforts made in some countries to achieve more
pro-poor and gender-sensitive budgeting practices were very important, but it was equally
essential to keep insisting on coherence between social objectives and the choice of
macro-economic policies. "One must move beyond thinking of budgets in a sectoral way," he
said. "The macro-side deals with raising revenue, so we need a comprehensive approach" to
avoid a situation where different sectors try to better prioritize resources while the overall
pool of state revenue is shrinking.

Nilfer Cagatay, consultant with UNDP, said that the prevailing "add-on" approach to social
policy meant that social impacts of macro-economic policies came literally as an
"afterthought." Indeed, they tended to be analyzed "ex-post"--that is, only after a
macro-economic policy had been implemented--and are typically followed by insufficiently
resourced measures to buffer the consequences. She said that "for the moment, policy tends to
be formulated in the interests of the powerful, particularly the owners of financial capital,
because of a constant worry about how they will react." Ms. Cagatay contrasted this with
what she called a "transformatory" approach, whereby people's human rights are at the centre
of policy, within an understanding of a society's distributional relations including income and
power inequalities. This would imply systematic social dialogues in determining policies, she
insisted, with efforts designed to overcome "technocratic barriers" that prevent the public from
understanding budgeting processes. Because "budgets affect the balance of power in society,"
she said, "they are in reality fundamental political documents."

Examples of people-centred budgeting cited by workshop participants and described in the
UNDP report included a participatory budgeting process pioneered since 1989 in the
municipality of Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Its 1.3 million inhabitants
had been facing a severe debt crisis inherited from the earlier government and financial chaos
resulting from poor tax collection from corporate capital and investment incentives given to
large multinationals. Despite these factors between 1989 and 1996 water services increased
from a coverage of 80% to 98% of households; the percentage of population served by the
municipal sewage system increased from 46% to 85%; and the number of children enrolled in
public schools doubled over the same period. According to the UNDP report "participatory
budgeting has been quite remarkable in transforming the erstwhile clientelistic,
 vote-for-money' budgeting reality into a fully accountable, bottom-up, deliberative system. It
has been driven by the needs of the city's residents through the participation of citizens in
decisions concerning distributive justice, effectiveness of decisions, and accountability of the
municipal executive and their own participatory institutions." 

However, UNDP also noted that the sustainability of the initiative had been endangered since
Brazil was hit by contagion from the East Asian financial crisis in late 1997. The Porto Alegre
area was subsequently confronted with fiscal crises and structural adjustment-induced
cutbacks. Nevertheless, the report says, success of the Porto Alegre budgeting process has
been widely acknowledged not only in Brazil but internationally. 

Copies of the Geneva 2000 Forum's full report              can be obtained from Geneva 2000
Forum Secretariat, PO Box 125, CH-1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland, telephone +41-22/749
2570, fax +41-22/749 2589, e-mail <info@geneva2000.admin.ch>, website
(www.geneva2000.org).


CIVIL SOCIETY ALTERNATIVE SUMMIT
From 22 to 24 June some 600 participants representing around 200 civil society organizations
from 65 countries gathered in downtown Geneva to participate in an "alternative" civil society
summit. The alternative summit was timed to immediately precede the official Social Summit
review and was held in response to the Bangkok Appeal, which had been launched during
NGO events held parallel to the February 2000 tenth session of the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD X) in Bangkok (Thailand). Signatories of the Bangkok
Appeal had called on all NGOs, trade unions and social movements working on globalization
and social development issues to participate in the Geneva meeting. This was in order to
consolidate future international civil society campaigns on trade and financial institutions, debt,
structural adjustment, and taxation of capital; as well as to deepen the debate on issues that
still divide civil society movements, such as the question of trade and labour standards (see
NGLS Roundup 54).

According to one of the alternative summit organizers, Christophe Aguiton of the
French-based NGO Association pour la taxation des transactions financieres pour l'aide aux
citoyens (ATTAC-France), the objective was not to hold a "counter summit" but an
"alternative summit" to "emphasize our difference" without opposing the objectives of the
WSSD+5. The alternative summit was a working meeting that divided up into various regional
strategy sessions on 22 June, and into thematic workshops on 23 June. These included
sessions on: issues at stake at WSSD+5; farmers' struggles; labour and environmental
standards; women and globalization; the Jubilee debt campaigns; the future of trade union
movements; public services; future campaigns around the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank;
and the taxation of international financial transactions.

The alternative summit's plenary session on 24 June was dedicated to a review of regional
initiatives (including setting-up of an open-ended network of European social movements and
NGOs) and additional amendments to a final resolution. The final resolution comprises an
analytical section, an integrated framework on common campaign positions, and a calendar of
upcoming events. These include: the G-8 annual meeting in Okinawa (Japan) in July 2000; the
annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Prague (Czech Republic) in September
2000; an international civil society meeting to take stock of progress on the debt campaign in
Dakar (Senegal) in December 2000; and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (Brazil) in
January 2001. The World Social Forum is timed to serve as an alternative to the World
Economic Forum held annually in Davos (Switzerland), in which major corporate and political
leaders participate each year. Porto Alegre was chosen as the venue because of its innovative,
people-centred social policies (see above). 

June 25 was called a "Day of Common Action," under the common theme "For a Genuine
Peoples' Social Agenda." An international public gathering in downtown Geneva, with
speakers from NGOs, trade unions and social movements from around the world, was
followed by a peaceful demonstration where some 7,000 people marched from the centre of
Geneva to the location of the UN General Assembly Special Session at the Geneva UN
headquarters.

The final resolution of the alternative civil society summit, as well as workshop reports and
follow-up details, can be found on the website (www.attac.org/geneve2000).


SECRETARIAT FOLLOWS UP
The following is an interview conducted by NGLS with John Langmore, Director of the
Division for Social Policy and Development (Secretariat for WSSD+5).

NGLS: Maybe we can start talking about the political climate of WSSD+5 and you can make
comparisons between Geneva and 1995. You've said that there are over 30 new initiatives to
come out of the Special Session and we're wondering if that says anything about the climate
for social development. 

JL: I think it does. At both conferences there was clearly a shared concern about social
development, which was considerably greater than you would assume by reading the daily
newspaper. It is clear that there has been a considerable increase in the concern about the
impact of globalization on global inequality and the effect that is having on marginalizing many
countries and many groups within countries. Globalization is obviously great for the US and is
not too bad for Europe either, and might be pretty good for some other countries. But it is
having no effect on the majority so far, and there is a much greater recognition of that
inequality now than five years ago. I was significantly encouraged by the fact that there was a
shared concern about those issues in Geneva, and while that didn't lead to great financial
concessions it did lead to agreement about more issues than one might have expected a year or
two ago.

NGLS: Let's go on to talk about how NGOs worked in Geneva. We know that they worked
on specific issues like TRIPS and the CTT. Maybe you can speak a little bit about the role
they played and the impact they had. 

JL: I think they had a considerable impact. I don't know whether the inquiry into new and
innovative sources of funding which covers the CTT would have gone on without their work.
But I am absolutely sure that the fact that they lobbied delegations like the US and Japan and
the EU and various countries within the EU and developing countries contributed measurably
to creating a climate where it was possible to get agreement on that. I have no doubt about
that at all. I'm not sure how important their work on TRIPS was but I am sure that the fact
that they were there in such numbers and that they organized briefing sessions and that they
went around and met delegations and so on...all of that is enormously important in creating a
political climate within which countries have to move in order to feel that they remain even at
the centre. It just keeps things moving forward. It is intangible [and] difficult to measure just
what impact it does have, but I have no doubt about its importance.

NGLS: On the CTT, we saw NGOs working with G-77 countries like Brazil, the Philippines
and a few others. How important do you feel it is for Southern NGOs to make those
connections with their governments and to bring them into the discussion?

JL: It's enormously important. In relation to the CTT, a lot of those governments really hadn't
thought the issue through, so to have NGOs going to them saying that this is important and
why and getting them to think about that I think is very important. I know Brazil had some
uncertainty earlier on but they weren't opposing it by the end, and I imagine that whatever the
discussion was with the NGOs led to their greater ease with it, and in the end they were
broadly supportive.

NGLS: We're seeing an increase in Southern NGO participation in the UN system and getting
their networks mobilized. We think we might see that around the Financing for Development
[FFD, UN high-level inter-governmental event scheduled for 2001].

JL: I hope more of them will do that because there is a disproportionate influence of Northern
NGOs.  

NGLS: Let's move on to the outcomes. Perhaps you can identify four or five key decisions
and talk about how they are going to fit in to the follow-up work programme.

JL: I think the financing questions are very, very important, and that's not just new and
innovative sources of financing but improvements in national revenue raising and international
cooperation to contain tax avoidance and tax minimization and the controlled use of tax
havens and all that. That whole set of issues, and there is a whole paragraph with sub-points, is
very important and it feeds into Financing for Development. The fact that there was an
adoption of a poverty reduction goal is politically important because it provides a rationale for
all sorts of other activities and campaigns. By itself it doesn't achieve very much unless other
things immediately follow from it. Another area that is very important is employment, which is
the ILO's principal responsibility. While there weren't any major conceptual advances, there
were some significant agreements like preparation of a global employment strategy in
conjunction with the holding next year of a world employment forum. There are words about
getting a better balance into macro-economic policy, and the Special Session said that
employment growth and poverty reduction should also be essential goals. If that was really
taken seriously, it would mean that most countries in the world would have to change their
macro-economic policies, so there has to be a serious effort now by many parts of the system
to explore what that really means and there will be real resistance to that in the IMF I am quite
sure.

NGLS: That is a particularly interesting issue because even though there are some gains made
in the language on macro-economic policy and stabilization, one sees in the commitment on
Africa and the LDCs quite explicit language about structural adjustment programmes. 

JL: The IMF principally remains committed to stabilization, and stabilization is in a major
sense anti-development because it is about stability and not about development or growth and
there has to be growth if you want to reduce poverty. So, there are some enormously
important battles still to be waged, and the Special Session gives us improved language for
conducting that battle.  

NGLS: Maybe you can talk about how you are planning to "conduct that battle" and how the
Secretariat's work programme and the Commission on Social Development's multi-year
programme are going to take up those issues.

JL: The Commission's multi-year programme has not yet been determined except for next year
when it will be on social protection. There are a number of issues that it could be on. One for
consideration is obviously about the integration of economic and social policy which includes
the macro-economic question. I don't know whether the delegates would agree to adopt that
as a major theme because it is very controversial, but it is a centrally important theme for them
to consider. We'll also go on quietly commissioning papers and promoting discussion and
discussing these things with the Fund and the Bank. The Bank of course has moved quite a bit,
but it obviously hasn't moved enough. I don't know how else we tackle it. One explicit thing
we are doing is preparing letters for Nitin Desai [Under-Secretary-General for Economic and
Social Affairs] to send to all the agencies, which draw attention to what was agreed in
Geneva. Letters will be going to the Fund and the Bank and the ILO and all the other agencies
about parts of the outcome document that relate to their responsibilities, inviting them to
implement those decisions and also to report to the next Commission about what they've done
and are planning to do. We'll send letters like that every year.

NGLS: You're also getting a group together to study the CTT.

JL: We have been talking quite widely about who might go on this and we're now getting
quite a reasonable list of possibilities. We need to get it set up very quickly if it is going to do
its work and report its recommendations to be considered by FFD.

NGLS: There are a couple of other issues as well as how the Secretariat is planning to follow
up that also interest NGOs. One has to do with corporate social responsibility.

JL: One of the disappointments of Geneva is that there wasn't more agreement on that--it was
stopped by the G-77. The politics of that are very difficult. A number of proposals were on the
table to get more focused work underway on corporate social responsibility. They were
stopped by the G-77, which said we don't understand. I think that they really feared this was a
stalking horse for labour rights. It was not and that was not the intention at all. The intention
was a much more transparent one of trying to start work that would lead to a rather more
elaborate set of guidelines for corporate social responsibility than the Global Compact, which
is after all a very general document. 

NGLS: So you don't feel like you have room to act on corporate responsibility.

JL: Not enough. What we had proposed in response to what [the European Union] had
initially proposed was to begin work on guidelines. That was being resisted by some of the
employers, but I think employers persuaded one or two friends within the G-77 to stop it. So
be it, they won then.

NGLS: For NGOs wondering what their next move is on corporate responsibility, particularly
for Southern NGOs, what should their strategy be?

JL: They need to do a bit of education because clearly some of the G-77 delegates were simply
unfamiliar with the discussion about corporate social responsibility. So they need to have a
better understanding and education about what that could mean.

NGLS: Concerning the language on debt: the US had troubles with 5-bis and the paragraph
that suggests that not only HIPC debt needs to be addressed. Do you think this is a significant
advance, and if so what room is there to work on this?

JL: There is a small advance. But this was never the conference where there was going to be a
major advance on debt because there had already been a major conceptual advance in 1999.
The issue in 2000 is implementation of what was agreed in Koln and Washington DC last year,
and that implementation is lacking. Now Geneva extended a little bit the discussion about the
need to extend the HIPC beyond the HIPC countries but it is not a big advance. In my mind it
would have been difficult to achieve that in the Geneva setting. It was a conference about
social development, and of course debt is vital to social development but you have to seize
your opportunities where you can. Debt was so high on the agenda in the past 12 months that
one did not think that this was the meeting to get more done. That was one reason I pushed
very hard on the revenue questions because they haven't been on anyone's agenda, and they
absolutely must be. You try tactically to get progress where you're able.

NGLS: What about the debt standstill mechanism?

JL: I think that's very valuable. That's another of the significant advances in that whole
paragraph on financial stability and there are other references in the document, but to have got
agreement that debt standstill is one way of coping with financial crises is a very significant
advance. It just explicitly widens the armoury of instruments that are available to countries
when a crisis occurs. They can say that this was agreed in Geneva, so we will use it.

NGLS: We think NGOs will be using it as well and pointing to it as the first legitimization of a
moratorium on debt repayments. 

JL: And they should. It is related very much to crises. But what is a crisis? If a country's
export prices collapse and debt repayment becomes more than 50% of the value of its exports--that's a crisis quite clearly.

NGLS: Does the Secretariat feel it can work on defining what a "crisis" is and identifying who
would be eligible to use such a mechanism? Where does that play out?

JL: Throughout the system. We're not planning to do a paper on that, but it is one of the
paragraphs to which we will be drawing the attention of the Bank and the Fund so that they
are explicitly aware of it. There is a really important question about the extent to which the
Fund and the Bank, and the WTO for that matter, take seriously what the General Assembly
agrees. Do they treat the General Assembly like governments treat a national parliament, so
that if something gets through the national parliament it is the direction that the government
must adopt? They tend not to, but they ought to. The UN has a responsibility to encourage
and urge and advocate--it can't command because the system doesn't work like that. But if it
could it should get the Fund and the Bank to adopt those policies.

NGLS: There are a number of places throughout the document that talk about enhancing
cooperation between the UN and Bretton Woods Institutions that already exist and making it
more systematic. 

JL: It took Jim Wolfensohn [President of the World Bank] three years to read [the outcome
documents from WSSD]. We want people who make decisions about issues touched on in
Geneva to read them in the next couple of months!



This edition of NGLS Roundup was prepared by the United Nations Non-Governmental
Liaison Service (NGLS). The NGLS Roundup is produced for NGOs and others interested in
the institutions, policies and activities of the UN system and is not an official record.