DEVELOPMENT: Third World Summit in Cuba to Map Out Strategy

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2000 (IPS) - The 133-member Group of 77 (G-77), the largest single coalition of developing nations, is holding its first major summit meeting next month to take stock of – and find answers to — some of the key social and economic problems facing the world’s poorer nations.

Scheduled to take place in the Cuban capital of Havana Apr. 10-14, the summit will map out a strategy to help resolve a rash of problems hampering Third World economic development, including globalisation, debt, declining aid and transfer of technology.

“We hope the summit can effectively allow for a full consideration of the legitimate interests and concerns of all the member States of the G-77,” Ambassador Arthur Mbanefo of Nigeria, chairman of the G-77, told IPS.

The weeklong summit is expected to adopt two documents: the first would be a “forward-looking” declaration setting out a programme of action for the future; the second would be an “action-oriented” document setting targets and time-frames for implementing decisions taken at the summit. So far, over 60 heads of state or government have confirmed their participation in the summit which is being hosted by the Cuban government.

The decisions taken at the summit will eventually be incorporated in a broader UN action plan for the 21st century to be adopted at the Millennium Summit in New York in September this year. The participants in this summit will include world leaders from virtually all of the UN’s 188 member states.

Pointing out that South-South co-operation would be one of the key themes of the Havana summit, Mbanefo said: “The member countries of the G-77 recognise that no one will do for them what they are not prepared to do for themselves.”

Among the proposals to be approved at the summit is the establishment of an international financial institution that will ensure the full participation of developing nations in international economic policy decision- making.

Currently, most developing nations complain that all key decision- making is in the hands of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both of which are dominated by Western donors. Since voting power at the IMF is based primarily on the financial contributions made by donors, the United States now holds 19 percent of the voting power while the 15 members of the European Union (EU) have a stranglehold on 37 percent of the votes.

The G-77 is seeking either a radical restructuring of the World Bank and the IMF or the creation of a new international financial institution with a more transparent and democratic structure where the majority of the world’s nations will be included in the decision-making process.

The meeting will reiterate the strong G-77 commitment “to assert the centrality of the role of the United Nations” by calling for a reversal of “the trend to focus decision-making on the critical international economic issues in institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO)”.

The G-77 has always sought a greater role for the United Nations primarily because of its democratic character (one member, one vote) which allows all 188 member states to participate effectively on the basis of sovereign equality. The Group will also pursue this objective at two upcoming meetings in New York: the Millennium Summit in September and the proposed UN Conference on Financing for Development in 2001.

According to a draft Programme of Action obtained by IPS, the G-77 summit will also call for “an open, rule-based, equitable, secure, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable multilateral trading system” underscoring the need to provide market access for goods from developing countries.

The summit will be critical of “disguised protectionist measures in the form of new concepts seeking to link domestic standards relating to environment, labour laws and other issues, through the application of arbitrary trade measures and bilateral pressures against developing countries.”

The Programme of Action says that globalisation has increased the vulnerabilities of those countries of the South which are in the process of being integrated into the world economy. “As the recent financial crisis has illustrated, financial liberalisation in the absence of adequate institutional arrangements to manage the process, combined with speculative flows of capital, has generated significant instability in the international economy,” the document warns.

The summit will also invite the Chairman of the G-77 to convene periodically, a Forum of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) of the South, to address exclusively issues such as globalisation, trade liberalisation and international co-operation.

Additionally, the summit will propose the establishment of a High Level Advisory Group of eminent personalities and intellectuals from the South to address the issue of globalisation and invite the Chairman of the G-77 to take necessary steps for the establishment of this group.

The summit will also seek to establish a financial facility for the promotion of knowledge and technology in the South and the creation of a Think Tank or a Consortium to meet regularly with a view to formulating concrete proposals on the existing potentialities of the South in the field of science and technology.

“The issue of knowledge and technology is of crucial importance to development,” Mbanefo said. The challenge is to exploit that untapped potential through focused South-South co-operation, he added.

The heads of state will also propose the convening of a high level conference on South-South co-operation in 2003 in a further attempt to strengthen existing economic links among developing nations.