GLOBALISATION: If These Two Could Agree

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 25 2004 (IPS) - If the presidents of Finland and Tanzania could agree what globalisation should mean, then activists must be right to be hopeful about the rest of the globe.

The two presidents did, at least at the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation, which they co-chaired at the request of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The commission’s report released in London this week calls for a strengthened United Nations system to bring in fairer globalisation.

It must be hard to find two countries as divergent as Finland and Tanzania, let alone agreement between two such on a matter that has split the world. The two are at almost opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, and their profile is a study in contrast.

The per capita income of Tanzania’s 35 million people is about 600 dollars in terms of purchasing power parity. Among Finland’s five million it is close to 26,000 dollars. Average life expectancy in Tanzania is 44.5, in Finland it is 78.

HIV infection grips 7.8 percent of Tanzania’s adult population, and 1.5 million people live with HIV and AIDS. In Finland that number is 1,200, according to official figures.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen and Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa came to a fine agreement in meeting rooms of the commission. But it is far less certain that they will find meeting ground where it really matters.

Take the agreement the commission reached on greater facilitation of the movement of money and people. Will some of Finland’s many euros take flight from Helsinki to Dar es Salaam? Can a few million Tanzanians, a few thousand even, now move to Finland?

And move to stay. “We cannot think that a migrant worker simply comes from somewhere when he or she is needed, and disappears when that is no longer the case,” Halonen said.

But she was short of what specifically Finland would do to follow up the presidential agreement with Tanzania. “A president is a president,” Halonen said at the launch of the report in London. That means that what a president does will invite “immediate feedback” within the country. So, hold the flights for now.

“We have to think what a small northern country like Finland can do,” Halonen added. Finland is “a winner with the Nokia phenomenon” but “we know how unfair globalisation is,” she said.

She spoke of equality but said that too would not be enough. “Equal rules for unequal players ensure unequal outcomes.”

But Halonen had little to offer by way of what Finland could do by way of example arising from the new-found presidential agreements with Tanzania. Finland is not the European Union, the European Union is not Europe, and Europe is not the world, she argued. She spoke of working with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other UN leaders to bring change.

Mkapa, in his turn, spoke emphatically of divergences after co-chairing the globalisation panel with Halonen for two years. “At one level we are increasingly interconnected, and at another level we are increasingly drifting apart,” he said at the London launch.

“This is an untenable situation, and soon a mutually damaging rupture will occur.”

Closeness is not all good, he said. “The closer we get to one another the more we see and experience the unfairness of the system, exacerbating underlying political, social, economic and cultural frustrations, uncertainties and in some instances outright anger,” Mkapa said.

“In many developing countries, particularly in Africa, there is a greater sense of both urgency and despair,” he said. The commission is making the plea that “the poor must be brought from the margins into the mainstream.” If not from Tanzania to Finland.

The most Mkapa could say about his Finnish co-chair of the commission was by way of including her in an observation that “it is encouraging that a growing number of people in rich countries and in the corporate world share these concerns and have shown the willingness to act.”

Again, what Mkapa did not say was more eloquent. People in rich countries, yes. But the countries themselves, no. Showing a willingness to act, yes. Action, no.

If these too could agree – if only these two could agree – you could for a start have some Nokia phones made in Tanzania.