/MILLENNIUM SUMMIT/ POLITICS: UN Projects New Global Vision for 21st Century

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 11 2000 (IPS) - A summit meeting of world leaders – including 100 heads of state and 48 heads of government – ended with a pledge to alleviate poverty, promote democracy, eliminate weapons of mass destruction and strengthen the United Nations to achieve its global objectives in the new century.

A nine-page ‘Millennium Declaration,’ adopted by acclamation late Friday, sets out a global vision for the 21st century, including commitments and targets to fight disease, hunger, ignorance, poverty, injustice, violence, terrorism, and environmental degradation.

“You have sketched out clear directions for adapting this Organisation to its role in the new century,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told world leaders.

“But ultimately, you are yourselves the United Nations,” he reminded them. “It lies in your power, and therefore it is your responsibility, to reach the goals that you have defined. Only you can determine whether the United Nations rises to the challenge,” he told the concluding sessions of the summit.

The meeting, described as the largest single gathering of world leaders, was also attended by five vice presidents, one crown prince, six deputy prime ministers and 21 ministers – besides an army of over 5,500 journalists from the far corners of the globe.

The only three non-participating countries were North Korea, Fiji and the former Yugoslavia. The North Koreans pulled out of the summit in protest after its delegates were frisked en route to New York by American Airlines security officials at the Frankfurt airport in Germany. The US State Department later apologised for the mistake.

The Millennium Declaration says that the central challenge facing the international community is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world’s peoples.

As more and more countries are being called upon to open up their markets, lift tariff barriers and promote democracy, globalisation has offered great opportunities, the declaration admits. But these benefits, it warns, “are very unevenly shared and its costs unevenly distributed”.

“Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer, or who benefit least, deserve help from those who benefit most,” the declaration adds.

World leaders also pledged to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than a dollar a day, and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

“But judging by current trends,” an Asian delegate told IPS, “the international community may find it difficult to meet these commitments – unless there is a massive flow of development assistance to the world’s poorer nations.”

In fact, the poorest of the world’s poor – about 1.3 billion people living on less than a dollar a day – is expected to keep growing. By the next decade, the number of people living in extreme poverty may rise to 1.5 billion out of a global population of more than 6 billion people. And by 2015, the UN predicts, the number will rise even higher, to 1.9 billion – provided there are no concerted efforts to fight poverty globally.

“You have said that your first priority is the eradication of poverty,” Annan told the world leaders. “You have set specific targets related to that goal, and you have prescribed measures for achieving them. If the measures are really taken, we all know the targets can be reached,” he added.

Last year, the United Nations also complained that despite pledges made at a major international conference to reduce world hunger by half, the number of people facing starvation really increased by about 4 million.

The 1996 World Food Summit in Rome pledged to halve the number of undernourished people from 826 million to about 413 million by the year 2015. But far from achieving any reductions, the number of people living in hunger increased: from 826 million in 1996 to more than 830 million in 1999.

Noam Chomsky, a world-renown author of several books on international relations, says the Millennium Summit has provided “a nice wish list: it calls on governments to do lots of good things like devote resources to eliminate poverty and protect the environment.

“But the issues that matter can’t simply be solved by most of the countries of the world because they need to be addressed by the richest countries, primarily the United States,” he argues.

He says the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol (on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases), is refusing to fund UN peacekeeping missions and owes over 1.5 billion dollars in unpaid dues.

“The summit calls for increased aid, but aid from wealthy countries has actually decreased since 1990 – substantially from the US,” he notes.

In 1970, the UN General Assembly set a target of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) as the quantum of official development assistance (ODA) that each of the rich countries was expected to provide developing nations. But so far, only four countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – have met or exceeded the ODA target.

On a per capita basis, however, Denmark provides about 323 dollars in aid per person, Norway 299 dollars, Luxembourg 265 dollars, the Netherlands 194 dollars and Sweden 177 dollars. At the bottom of the table are the United States with 32 dollars in aid per person, Italy 40 dollars, Austria 56 dollars, Spain 35 dollars and Portugal 26 dollars.