/MILLENNIUM SUMMIT/DEVELOPMENT: South Centre Rebukes Annan Report

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 4 2000 (IPS) - An inter-governmental organisation of developing countries has denounced the Millennium Summit report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, saying its analyses and prescriptions are too broadly attuned to the dominant views and interests of the industrialised North.

The South Centre, a research organisation with support from 46 countries, affirms that the Annan report, titled “We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century,” ignores the views and concerns of the developing nations of the South.

The Secretary-General distributed the document last April with the intention that it would serve as the basis for discussions among heads of state at the Millennium Summit this week at UN headquarters in New York.

Another recent report by Annan, about poverty in the world and proposals to overcome it, also triggered objections by representatives of governments of developing nations and of civil society organisations involved in the issue.

This poverty study, presented at the UN Social Summit in Geneva in June, was prepared jointly with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD), a bloc of industrialised nations.

The South Centre extends its criticism to UN agencies as well because “they no longer seem able to present at the global level the analyses and viewpoints common among countries of the South, as they tried to do in the past.”

“The resulting gap has to some extent been filled by critical comment from a small number of highly active NGOs (non- governmental organisations), from the South as well as from the North, which have been championing the developing countries’ cause,” according to the centre.

The South Centre’s document of criticism, which includes analyses by experts and personalities linked to the institution, was sent to Annan over the weekend by director Vicente Sánchez. The text is considered a contribution of the countries of the developing South and the Group of 77, which represents them in the UN.

The inter-governmental group maintains that the Millennium Summit should “recast the global scenario by focusing on the need for genuine multilateralism, pluralism and democracy… and reinstate development as the principal priority and overarching challenge to be dealt with by the international community.”

“Hegemony in the field of economic and political thought and action is not conducive to pluralism and dissent. Moreover, those countries whose voices are loudest in championing democracy worldwide do little to facilitate its application in the international system and in the workings of the international organisations,” charges the South Centre.

“Globalisation has been forced into an institutional, conceptual and policy framework designed and favoured in particular by governments of the North,” portraying it as an immutable and irreversible law of nature, says the document.

The UN tends to tone down the political content of its documents that address the nature and consequences of globalisation.

The South Centre’s declaration proposes to redefine and redesign globalisation “to free it from its current political, ideological and intellectual monopoly exercised by the North, often in pursuit of narrow, even parochial interests.”

Annan’s report gives a broad description of the many challenges and negatives facing the international community at the start of the 21st century, but is “cautious and circumspect both in linking these challenges and ‘bads’ with the system, structures and global biases which give rise to these, and in suggesting how to overcome them.”

The South Centre also criticises Annan because nothing is said in his report about how to attain the “laudable objectives and ambitious time bound targets” it encompasses.

Even worse, “the blame for underdevelopment in the South and related problems is attributed to developing countries themselves, and responsibility for overcoming the problems is also assigned to them, but based on a set of prescriptions that are externally dictated.”

From the South’s perspective, the report is “invasive and intrusive, and highlights armed intervention in and sanctions against developing countries,” thus establishing considerable limits on their sovereignty.

The Annan report includes barely a footnote on the international development programme intended to improve the global economic situation, and the nations of the industrialised North are but “shadowy figures” in the document, with scarce mention of their responsibility in solving the world’s problems.

Another of the defects of the Annan report, says the South Centre, is that it omits reference to some of the UN’s “key functions and its decisive role in the system of international organisations.”

Power seems to have been accepted as the principal factor in prioritising global issues, the Centre’s statement says.

“In recent years, the extensive influence of current orthodoxy and homogenisation of thinking worldwide has stifled analysis and debate, and this is reflected in the ‘We the Peoples’ report.”

The Millennium Summit can serve as the starting point to address these problems because it “provides the opportunity to debate many of the underlying issues and to help clarify the nature of the challenges facing the international community,” concludes the South Centre.