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Back to Basics, Maybe?
By Alejandro Kirk
Some time next year the United Nations will organise a ''high level consultation,'' aimed at bringing together, for the first time, ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs of all UN member countries, along with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to discuss the tricky issue of Financing for Development.
Oscar de Rojas, former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN is the Executive Coordinator of the meeting, which will actually be a conference but cannot be officially called that.
As of now there is no venue nor date for the meeting, although almost everyone believes that Chile will be interested in hosting it mid 2001. One high-ranking Chilean official confirmed to Terra Viva that the meeting would take place there.
To de Rojas, the ''consultation'' is possible only because developing countries of the Group of 77 are more mature now and have left behind some ''traumas'' of the 1970s, when it would have been ''just impossible to organise a meeting with the IMF and the World Bank in the framework of the United Nations.''
This time, says de Rojas, ''we are not doing just that; the presence of the Bretton Woods institutions became a condition sine qua non to achieve the acceptance of industrialised countries,'' traditionally reluctant to engage in debates where their financial policies are to be put in the frying pan.
The Venezuelan diplomat thinks that the meeting will be the first significant UN forum since the failed attempts, more than 20 years go, to launch a process of global economic negotiations on the international economic and financial order. He recalled the figure of the late Venezuelan diplomat Manuel Perez Guerrero, former Secretary General of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development).
Perez Guerrero's name did not come about by chance. Oscar de Rojas was one of his youngest disciples and made a career as one of Venezuela's diplomatic experts in international trade and finance before shifting to the United Nations a year ago. A career diplomat, he occupied two key ambassadorial posts (at the UN in New York and Geneva), usually reserved for politicians.
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Has the world lived up to its 1996 commitments..?
Solidarity 2000 starting 17th of June!
MS's big summer event Solidarity 2000 will start very soon now, with a week-long variety of debates and arrangements. The activities range from encounters between young people from Balkan, Africa and Central America to big conferences on the planet's social development and environment.
Judge by yourself:
The 1996 Copenhagen Social Summit final report in English, French and Spanish.