A WATERSHED IN NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS

There are a host of disturbing signs that North-South relations require immediate attention, writes Omary Mjenga, secretary of the Tanzanian Secretariat of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy, an initiative launched by Finnish and Tanzanian governments. In this article, the author writes that increasing numbers of people in the South view the current process of globalisation as no less than a modern imperialism, which uses every mechanism possible to shape the global order to suit the preferences and needs of the major advanced industrial nations. Moreover, this new imperialism is largely unhindered, indeed is even aided and abetted, by the multilateral mechanisms developed over the past five decades. If ever there was a time for the collective voice of the South to make itself heard, it is now, when the multilateral institutions to the United Nations still retain some legitimacy. If developing countries are to exert some influence over international or global relations and to affect the shape of global and national governance of economic policy, they need to summon the political will to improve rapidly their intellectual and technical capacity to take up the challenge.