Title: DEVELOPMENT: UN Disappointed Over Social Summit
Failures

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 29 (IPS) - United Nations officials have
expressed disappointment that five years after a global summit on
social development, the international community has fallen short
in its commitments to alleviate poverty, cut unemployment and
reduce income gaps between rich and poor.

"The world has clearly regressed in many ways," laments
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, although he admits there has been
"some clear progress" in areas of social development since the
1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen.

But overall, he says, social development has been "severely
tested" since 117 world leaders meeting in the Danish capital
pledged to eradicate poverty, provide full employment and foster
stable, safe and just societies.

A 161-page UN report assessing the "achievements" of the
Copenhagen summit pithily summarises the current state of affairs:
"Inequality is up, poverty is up, insecurity is up, and more
countries have been economically marginalised due to
globalisation."

The study, released last week, says that many governments have
reported levels of poverty, income inequality and unemployment
which are "unacceptable in human terms."

The United Nations predicts that the number of people living in
extreme poverty may rise from the present 1.3 billion to 1.9
billion by 2015. Currently, world population is about six billion
people.

The study says that wars, local conflicts and natural disasters
have also had a devastating negative impact on social development
in many countries.

Caroline Wildeman of the Netherlands Organisation for
International Development Cooperation (Novib), a leading
non-governmental aid agency, told IPS that rich and poor countries
are blaming each other for the lack of social development.

The poor countries say they are not only being denied market
access by industrial countries but are also being deprived of any
form of significant relief from their debt burdens, she added.

At the same time, Wildeman said, the poorer nations also accuse
the rich of reneging on their commitments to provide the targeted
0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as official
development assistance (ODA).

Since that target was set by the General Assembly in 1970, only
four out of 24 of the world's richest industrial countries have
exceeded it: Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

ODA, meanwhile, has continued to decline, averaging about 50
billion dollars annually in the late 1990s, from about 58 billion
dollars in the early 1990s.

Wildeman said that rich countries, on the other hand, are
blaming the poor for the lack of good governance and endemic
corruption in most developing nations.

"In the final analysis," she said, "while the North and the
South are blaming each other, social development has come to a
standstill."

"The situation does not look good," she noted, "but still we
are
optimistic that something positive could eventually come out of
it."

John Langmore, director of the UN Division for Social Policy
and
Development, told reporters last week that the United Nations had
received reports from about 80 of the 188 member states indicating
that each of those countries were now paying more attention to
social development issues, including poverty eradication,
employment growth and social integration.

Langmore said that two countries - China and Ireland - have
registered major achievements in reducing poverty since 1995. Both
had experienced rapid economic growth while increasing the range
and effectiveness of their social policies, he added.

But many other countries had experienced little economic
growth,
renewed internal conflicts or international wars, spread of the
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and a lack of
resources, he said.

The UN General Assembly will be holding a Special Session -
labeled "Copenhagen Plus-Five" - in Geneva in late June to
determine what new actions should be taken to ensure that the
goals
of the Social Summit are met.

A UN Preparatory Committee for the Special Session, Langmore
said, has commissioned 25 papers from within the UN system
suggesting new initiatives to address the goals of social
development.

Didier Le Bret of France, a member of the Preparatory
Committee,
said the credibility of the entire UN system will be at stake at
the Special Session in Geneva in June.

"To maintain credibility, the United Nations must bring to
Geneva concrete initiatives that would help social development
goals become more of a reality than they were now," he said.

Langmore pointed out that new initiatives currently being
negotiated included increasing market access for Third World
products, and reduction of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers.

How far these would be acceptable, he said, would depend on
negotiations between rich and poor countries at the Geneva
meeting.

Meanwhile, the UN study says that the world has "become a more
unequal place, both within and between nations, with increasing
inequalities in income, in employment, in access to social
services
and in opportunities for participation in public and civil society
institutions."

Contrary to the commitment made at Copenhagen to strengthen
cooperation for social development through the United Nations,
resources allocated for this purpose have declined, the study
adds.

"The decline in external assistance, for one reason or another,
is reported to have impacted negatively on social development
programmes in several developing countries," the report points
out.

The burden of debt has also grown markedly, further squeezing
resources available for social development.

The only "clear progress," on the other hand, is greater
awareness of and commitment to social development and continued
progress in literacy and life expectancy.

The study also notes that following the Copenhagen summit,
there
has been increased attention to the goal of full employment and
incremental movement towards equality between men and women.
(END/IPS/DV/td/ks/00)


Origin: Rome/DEVELOPMENT/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------