SOMAVIA LAMENTS
LACK OF COORDINATION
Five years ago, Juan Somavia, as Ambassador
of Chile at the UN and Chairman of ECOSOC, chaired the first Social Summit
which was the brainchild of former Chilean president Patrico Alywin. Now,
as Director General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), he
is still a major player in shaping global social and economic policy.
IPS Geneva Bureau Chief, Gustavo Capdevila spoke with him recently about
trendas sinec Copenhagen and his expectations for the future. Excepts
of the interview follow.
IPS: How has the international environment
changed since the first Social Summit five years ago?
Somavia: I think that the
diagnosis (in Copenhagen) was right. And the medicine was right; it’s
just not been applied. And those that have the power to take decisions
and to make things happen the way they were defined in Copenhagen, haven’t
moved in that direction.
IPS: What have been the main changes in the global environment
and how have they affected implementation of the commitments?
Somavia: (Since Copenhagen) poverty has grown, and employment has
become more precarious and social integration doesn’t advance. I think
that it’s much clearer today that the level of uncertainty and insecurity
associated with the present model of globalisation, as well as the inequality
that it has generated are much more structural than it appeared at first.
The second thing since Copenhagen and now was the fact that there
was a crisis in between. It was a major financial crisis. So you have
the Asian crisis in which the region that has utilised the model to a
certain advantage, was the region that was suddenly absolutely hit by
it. And you have the Russian crisis, and then you have the impact of the
Asian and the Russian crisis on Brazil and Latin America. You have this
‘bola de nieve’ you have a domino effect.
IPS: Is there a central lesson from these financial upheavals?
Somovia: It became extremely evident that you cannot go beyond than
certain limit in deregulating financial markets. And that we obviously
went beyond that limit. And we did not take the measures so that hot capital
could not have this impact on development. That is a key thing. You cannot
deregulate for the national level and you un-regulate at the global.
The third thing is that it became very evident in the process is
persisting structural insecurity and inequality, compounded by the financial
crisis. What we said in Copenhagen was absolutely true – that the social
pillar of the global economy is not there….So we have to eradicate poverty;
we have to promote gender equality and non-discrimination; we have to
promote ownership. So what we have, in fact, is
a language change – not yet a policy change.
This language is embraced by the whole multilateral system including
the Bretton Woods institutions, they’re talking the Social Summit language.
The other element that also becomes clear in all of this is that
the shift of power from let’s say, "democratically accountable public
actors" , governments and the State in general to private actors
accountable to the market. Anybody who does not have an interest in the
market is excluded from the accountability of society.
‘’ You Cannot Build Globalisation on the Backs of People’’.
IPS: But how do we move forward from analysis of the problem
to taking the actions to solve it?
Somavia: I think that essentially we need a rules-based International
system. What type of global governance do we want and according to what
rules? What is clear from my point of view is that you can’t have strong
rules on trade, strong rules on finance and weak rules on the social issues,
or in the environment issues. So you cannot fortify the financial architecture
or the trade system and weaken the social and environmental dimension.
You can’t build globalisation on the backs of people and the environment.
IPS: OK, that is what everybody say they want to see happen. Now the question is: Is it possible?
Somavia: Clearly one way of making this possible is to balance finance,
trade, social and environment and consequently, you need to decide what
are the foundations to make that happen. We are not yet there, so that’s
something that we have in front of us.
My experience today continues to be basically the one I had when
we organised the Social Summit. That is you went around the world and
you asked people to tell us what are the social problems, (and they) would
say "poverty" and "social exclusion". And they would
say "the solution is work". And in my whole experience, ever
since I was preparing myself to head ILO, . of all of the insecurities
the present situation generates for people the one thing that I know for
sure is that they want work. That is a good step out of poverty and a
good step into social integration. I think that this continues to be their
demand, a demand for decent work.
IPS: But do we need what you called ’’ a global rules–based
system’’ to create decent work?
Somavia: What I ask of the global economy is: why is it that you
are making it so difficult to deliver decent work for people? What is
it that this global economy requires to be changed in order for us to
be able to deliver decent work for people? Because this is the global
aspiration, and it’s not just any work. You can subsist , you go hungry
any night, but you subsist; a culture of subsistence is the reality.
Somavia: I like very much Lionel Jospin’s formulation which has widespread
currency right now - "Yes" to a market economy; "No"
to a market society". You cannot organise a society according to
market rules. Among other things education and health cannot depend on
the market. Workers rights to social protection are not things that can
depend on the market. These are essential elements of the construction
of a stable society and for which people have fought enormous social struggles
to make the idea that these are public goods - that these are things that
a society has to deliver to its people.
So making markets work for everybody does not mean that you have
to make the market address every issue. We are now all understanding that
the limits of the market and consequently that the market is an instrument
to make the lives of people better. And the lives of people are not an
instrument to make markets with.
‘’Globalisation
Did Not Invent Poverty””
Somavia: Regarding the role of information technology, developing
countries can leap-frog and jump. I personally believe that the really
big problems that we will have to solve are those of the Digital Divide
before we have even solved those coming from the Industrial Revolution.
Because globalization did not invent poverty .
IPS: Can, or should the
process of globalisation be turned back?
Somavia: Even if some perceive globalisation as irreversible, what
is not irreversible are the policies which have accompanied globalisation
– the macro-economic policies, the financial policies, the trade policies,
the development policies. There’s nothing irreversible about them. And
if those policies are not delivering the goods for people, they need to
be fine tuned, adapted and changed. Macro-economic policies should be
much more oriented towards generating work. They’ve been far too highly
concentrated on financial equilibrium; which, nobody denies is important
but everything requires a balance.
With respect to trade policies, the fact is that international trade
serves around 15 or 20 of the developing countries; the rest of them are
excluded. So if it is so highly concentrated, how can we say that it serves
the developing world?
IPS: Finally, what is the role of the UN system in all of this?
Somavia:We need to move away from just using the language of the
Summit to integrated thinking itself. I myself have three times been President
of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a body which is supposed
to oversee the coordination of the multilateral system. But the coordination
of the multilateral system does not really exist.
(END)
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Has the world lived up to its 1996 commitments..?
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The 1996 Copenhagen Social Summit final report in English, French and Spanish.