DEVELOPMENT: Forum on Globalisation Focuses on Extreme Poverty

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain, May 21 1997 (IPS) - The King of Spain inaugurated Wednesday the 22nd World Assembly of the Society for International Development (SID), an inter-disciplinary forum seeking to strengthen the positive characteristics of today’s globalisation process.

Roughly 1,000 people participated in the inaugural session of the meeting in this northwestern Spanish city. The King was accompanied by Queen Sofia, the secretary-general of SID, Roberto Savio, Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes, the head of the autonomous government of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, and the president of the Hispanic chapter of SID, Rafael Martinez.

The Assembly was convoked to explore, debate and plan “the crucial effects of globalisation, and how they will determine the future of development policies at an international level,” said Savio.

The SID, he added, must answer questions regarding the new millenium, because while there are a number of routes toward globalisation, those with positive characteristics must be followed and strengthened.

King Juan Carlos called the SID “the most suitable forum for dialogue among the various social agents, and through which spaces of cooperation and integration around shared objectives can be opened, in a language accessible to all those who participate in the undertaking.”

Global development, Juan Carlos added, is necessary for the extension and universalisation of democratic values. That is so “because it foments freedom, is realised in terms of equality, educates solidarity and occurs within the scope of a harmony that assimilates the advantages of diversity.”

The general comptroller of Paraguay, Daniel Fretes Ventre, underlined that globalisation would make “national sovereignty, as it is understood today,” obsolete, and give it a new character.

Thus, “the marginalisation of nations with governments stubbornly determined to maintain a scheme of unsustainable independence is an inevitable consequence,” he said.

New political conditions, economic spaces and playing rules will arise, which must “confront their first great challenge: extreme poverty,” he added.

The president of the state of Sao Paulo chapter of Brazil’s Social Democratic Party, Deputy Clovis Volpi, said “it is possible to reduce poverty while at the same time promoting development.”

Volpi pointed to Brazil’s economic stabilisation plan, whose implementation has been paralleled by a rise in the income of the poorest sectors of society. “In Brazil’s six largest cities, the proportion of the population living in poverty dropped from 42 to 28 percent, and five million people left poverty behind in just one year,” he stressed.

The changes imposed by globalisation “demonstrate that governments must be capable of acting in an integrated manner, with creativity and division of responsibility, to avert an increasing impoverishment of society.”

The SID Assembly is meeting until Saturday, with intellectuals, donors, government ministers and international functionaries from all five continents participating in a number of workshops.