GLOBALISATION: Change Is in the Air, Says ILO Chief

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 24 2004 (IPS) - Recommendations alone do not bring change, but the ingredients for change recommended by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation are all there, ILO director Juan Somavia told IPS Tuesday.

The report by the commission released in London Tuesday seeks a strong role for the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations in bringing change towards fair globalisation.

The commission headed by President of Finland Tarja Halonen and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa was set up by the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The commission also makes other far-reaching recommendations.

The report makes specific recommendations for giving nations a stronger voice within the multilateral institutions, so that the democratic push can give people a more equitable voice within institutions taking decisions on global issues.

“A number of things have brought change historically,” Somavia said. “Enlightened self-interest, social pressure, political leadership, crises and catastrophes…there are indications now that all of these are coming together.”

It is difficult to say when exactly they will come together, Somavia said. “It normally happens when there is a sufficiently wide group of people fighting for the same ideas.”

Somavia said he is encouraged by his own experience in Chile. “I was opposed to the Pinochet regime,” he said. “It lasted so long because of the division of the opposition. But when the opposition united, it took only some years for it to go.”

So it is developing in relation to globalisation, Somavia said. “A lot of countries are not comfortable with the easy things are going, and they are moving towards convergence.” And this convergence could find expression through social movements and a political push, he said.

But change can come also because institutions can be willing to change, Somavia said. The commission has done its work now, he said, “and now there is a lot the United Nations system can do to respond.”

The issues the report raises by way of development and creation of decent work “need to be presented by the UN system,” he said. “A lot depends on the UN system itself to make itself more relevant,” he said. A more fair representation would make for “more transparency, efficiency and accountability”, and that would lead to a better “global growth strategy.”

It would also make for a move from “parallel monologues” towards dialogue of the kind that the commission report achieved, Somavia said earlier at the launch of the report.

And that dialogue must include centrally the issues people find at work, he said. Whether it is in developed or in developing countries, every single person relates to globalisation through the way it affects life at work, he said. “Decent work is the biggest democratic demand.”

The commission recognises the role that business can play here, Somavia said. “It is enterprise that creates jobs.” But that too needs decent working conditions, fairness in international institutions, and strong national institutions, he said.

“What you do at home makes a great difference to what you can do to increase benefits.”

There is a connection between the local, the market institutions and their insertion into the global economy, Somavia said. This process needs “sequencing” for its insertion into the global economy, he said.

Democratic decisions at the state level would play a key role here, he said.

Local institutions and local capital need to be linked to the international community. Much of the debate on globalisation has talked of the global “but left behind the local,” Somavia said.

The issues that decent work raises are also political issues, he said. No politician can go to people without talking about decent employment, Somavia said.

This has been the first commission to be chaired by two Presidents, he said, because “this is a political issue that needs to be solved.”

The report produced by the commission is a hopeful one, he said. The members of the commission were not like-minded people, and each on her or his own would have produced a different report. But together they “created a tension” that led people to think differently about the questions being discussed.

The report takes a common sense approach to questions, he said. What it recommends is “difficult but doable.”