By Francis A Kornegay, Senior Researcher on Foreign Affairs at the non-governmental organisation Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Without a reformed United Nations and a democratised International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the chances on success with the Millennium Development Goals look bleak, writes Francis A Kornegay, Senior Researcher on Foreign Affairs at the non-governmental organisation Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa

The interesting thing about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) put forth by the United Nations (UN) is that they are intimately caught up in the contested development finance policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

These are the very Bretton Woods institutions which, along with the UN, are under mounting pressure to undergo major institutional transformation. In essence, the question of the compatibility of MDG 8 with the policies of the World Bank and the IMF toward developing countries is fundamentally a question of global governance.

Thus the question is whether or not the poorer and least developed countries of the global South can indeed meet the MDG targets in the absence of a thorough-going institutional renovation of the western-dominated international system.

The MDGs were adopted by acclamation in September 2000 by the UN General Assembly through a ‘‘procedural innovation’’ called ‘‘consensus’’.

Veteran development critic Samir Amin noted last year that this fact was testament to an international balance of power that allows the US, the European Union (EU) and Japan–the global G7 ‘‘economic directorate’’–to exert hegemony over a ‘‘domesticated UN’’.

Amin went on to observe that while the goals are commendable, they are in definition ‘‘extremely vague’’. Further, ‘‘debates concerning the conditions required to reach the goals are often dispensed with’’ while it is ‘‘assumed without question that liberalism is perfectly compatible with the achievement of the goals’’.

The importance of meeting these targets by the developing world, especially Africa, has in fact been reflected in debates over the terms of reference that should inform the institutional restructuring of the UN.

While the UN Security Council ranks high on this agenda, it has been the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) that has received at least equal if not more emphasis by Africans.

Former Sierra Leonean diplomat James Jonah has critiqued the recommendations of the UN High Level Panel report on reforming the UN in ‘‘A Dialogue of the Deaf: Essays on Africa and the United Nations’’ edited by Adekeye Adebajo and Helen Scanlon.

He writes that ‘‘Africa should be disappointed that in evaluating (ECOSOC), the High Level Panel conceded much to the position of some western powers.

‘‘Ignoring the great debate sponsored by the G 77 on the need for global negotiations, the report asserted that it would not be realistic for ECOSOC to become the world’s central decision-making body on matters of trade and finance, nor for it to direct programmes of the UN’s specialised agencies or the international financial institutions,’’ Jonah writes.

According to him, the outcome document of the 2005 UN world summit on the reform of the organisation made no specific reform proposals for ECOSOC except for blandly stating that, in order for ECOSOC to perform its functions, its organisation of work, agenda, and current method of work should be changed.

The High Level Panel warned that ‘‘recommendations that ignore underlying power realities will be doomed to failure or irrelevance’’. Hence, we are back to the ‘‘international balance of power’’.

Yet, the High Level Panel was mindful of legitimacy when it noted in its report that ‘‘recommendations that simply reflect raw distributions of power and make no effort to bolster international principles are unlikely to gain the widespread adherence required to shift international behaviour’’.

Jonah’s focus on the ECOSOC – which has inspired the African Union’s Economic, Cultural and Social Council (ECOCSOC) – is particularly germane when relating the MDGs to the World Bank and the IMF.

This is because he points out that ‘‘it is no secret that western industrialised powers favour the Bretton Woods institutions… for essential decisions on economic and financial matters, and tend to sideline ECOSOC’’.

This is because weighted voting in the Bank and the Fund has allowed the preponderance of influence to lie with the rich world to the detriment of developing countries.

Jonah notes that this imbalance was raised by South African finance minister, Trevor Manuel (chairperson of the development committee of ministers that oversees the World Bank) in April 2005.

Which begs the question: can the developing world meet the MDG 8 targets in the absence of the democratisation of the World Bank and the IMF while ECOSOC remains marginalised?

In fact, the ‘‘international balance of power’’ shows signs of shifting toward a post-western order characterised by the emergence of key southern powers.

Thus there is concern in the west about the relevance and future of the Bretton Woods institutions as more and more countries seek to move out from under their indebtedness to these agencies of developmental neo-colonialism.

The South is beginning to broach possibilities of alternative arrangements such as a ‘South Bank’ and/or an Asian Monetary Fund (which was once raised and shot down during the Asian currency crisis) as accompaniments to new interregional alignments taking place between Africa, Asia and South America—alongside notions of an Asian Economic Community.

The North, meanwhile, is scrambling to contain the post-western power erosion implications of this momentum as reflected in the G 8’s routine outreach to China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.

This is all by way of pointing out that the fate of the MDG benchmarks, which address none of these power-political dimensions but which are affected by them, are caught up in a much bigger picture which has to do with establishing the terms of global governance.

Thus, non-governmental organisations like Oxfam and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN) which monitor the MDGs have had to focus on ‘‘Options for democratising the World Bank and the IMF’’ while critiquing what is seen as the Bretton Woods institutions’ failure to deliver to low-income countries.

In the absence of ‘‘democratisation’’, the IMF in particular has been criticised for not being flexible enough when demonstrating a longer-term focus on poverty reduction, for downplaying the need for more official development assistance (ODA) while operating as a ‘‘gatekeeper’’ for poverty-focused aid needs.

In fact, many of these criticisms and recommendations have become boringly repetitious.

In the absence of changes in the global governance power equation, inter-linked with serious institutional reforms, the MDG exercise may be more of a distraction than a help to poor countries–and this does not factor in the new developmental burden: climate change!