DEVELOPMENT: Guyana Initiates Move for a New Global Human Order

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 2000 (IPS) - The 189-member UN General Assembly will soon have a new item on its overcrowded agenda: a proposal for the establishment of a ‘New Global Human Order’ (NGHO) aimed at creating a modern development vision and strategy for the 21st century.

“Contrary to what some may fear, it is not a call for another UN talk-fest,” says Ambassador Samuel Insanally of Guyana. “As we are all painfully aware, there are enough of these.”

The proposed global human order, he points out, is a serious attempt to find common ground on which future international co-operation can be solidly founded.

A brainchild of the late Guyanese President Cheddi Jagan, the initiative calls for the establishment of a just and more humane system of international relations.

A draft resolution introduced in the General Assembly last week expresses deep concern over the growing disparities between rich and poor, both among and within countries, and about the adverse implications thereof for the promotion of human development throughout the world.

The resolution, which calls for a UN role in the creation of the global human order, seeks the involvement of all actors, including governments, the international community, the private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other members of civil society, in reaching a broad- based consensus for action towards the achievement of the goals of development and poverty eradication.

“Our main objective now is simply to initiate a dialogue aimed at securing a reconciliation of the many divergent views on development, and at promoting the creation of a shared vision and strategy for the future,” says Insanally.

Addressing the General Assembly last week, Insanally said that during the last two decades there has been a gradual but definite displacement of development from the international policy agenda.

This displacement has occurred primarily in the context of two important and inter-related developments, namely, the ideological and political ascendancy of economic neoliberalism with its emphasis on the role of the market, and secondly, the accelerated pace of globalisation which has itself been increasingly under-pinned by a market liberalising logic.

“We are of the view that the time has come for the international community to create an alternative vision of development based on a more balanced relationship between the market and state,” he said.

Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has been labouring, decade after decade, to devise an international strategy for development – and decade after decade – these painfully negotiated agreements have proved resistant to implementation, Insanally said.

In the 1960s, the United Nations forged a Declaration and a Programme of Action for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). And again, in 1990, the General Assembly adopted a Declaration on International Economic Co- operation.

“It is fair to say that these several documents fully captured in their language the aspirations of the developing countries for economic and social progress. Yet, as we know, they have all proved disappointing in their results,” Insanally said. “Development continues to be a defiant will o’ the wisp, forever dancing before our eyes but always elusive,” he added.

Since 1990, the United Nations has also hosted a series of international conferences dealing with environment and development, population and development, human settlements, food, human rights, children, women, and social development. In the mid-1990s, the United Nations also produced an ‘Agenda for Development’ and an ‘Agenda for Peace’.

“Regrettably, these many efforts failed to yield the desired results, leaving us to wonder, as the French would say, whether the game was worth the candle or whether we are engaged in a mere charade,” Insanally said.

The Guyanese ambassador argued that two of the reasons for the shortcomings were: the lack of political will and financial resources. No one, he said, bothers to ask the crucial questions: how do we develop the necessary political will, and how can be mobilise the needed resources?

Insanally said that even the heads of four important European states, namely Britain, Netherlands, Sweden and Germany, have stressed the fact that “there is an emerging consensus on the right framework to build a global order based on equal worth and social fairness”.

“We are committed to a new international social impact,” the four leaders said in an article published in the International Herald Tribune last month. “We recognise that in an increasingly interdependent world, the aims of wider prosperity and a strengthening of civil society cannot be pursued within the nation-state alone.”

These sentiments, Insanally said, are not dissimilar from those embodied in the proposal for a New Global Human Order.

“Why then can we not come together in this Tower of Babel to agree on a common understanding and a common agenda for the United Nations?” Insanally asked.

The global human order is not merely a philosophical concept but a practical agenda for development, he said. Among its concrete proposals are: – A comprehensive and definitive solution to the debt problem. – – The fashioning of a new Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy to cater to the needs of developing countries, and to enable them to participate meaningfully in the global economy. – – The mobilisation of new and additional resources to bolster existing provisions for development programmes. – – The strengthening and, if necessary, the shaping of global institutions to respond to the needs of the rapidly globalising world and to reinforce global governance by providing for greater inclusion of developing countries in the decision-making process. – – The development of a more central role for the United Nations in global economic policy-making, and the provision of adequate resources for the Organisation to fulfil its mandates. – – A review of the role of the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to focus more on human development and to bring them into a more harmonious relationship with the United Nations.