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Summit of Shame or Progress?
Days before the Copenhagen + 5, Geneva 2000 summit on social development, The Danish Association for International Cooperation (MS) had brought together civil society representatives from nine countries in Africa, Central America and Asia, to review commitments made in Copenhagen in 1995.
The meeting in Copenhagen came up with a declaration titled “The World at Crossroads: South-North Declaration for Social Development” .
At the Copenhagen + 5 summit, Danish artists, are preparing to stage Thursday a demonstration titled “silent death + 5” in which they will depict the bodies of dead children as a way of showing that they hold politicians responsible for the failure to reduce poverty .
The two events reflect a new direction in Danish development view, different from those taken by their European counterparts. “We will fight for everything in this document,” says MS secretary general Bjorn Forde of the declaration.
In the five-point declaration, MS and the civil society groups have urged the international community to develop measures that will reverse the negative economic trends in developing countries and ensure that the poor benefits from globalisation .
“Most tools that world bank and IMF have sold to us in the south are not having any positive impacts on the poor,” says Edward Oyugi who runs Social Development Network (SodNet), a non-governmental organisation based in Kenya .
The group is also concerned about diminishing aid and conditionalities tied to development funds. “ There is a need to look at the whole issue of resources envelope,” says Uganda’s Robert Ekongot .
Forde argues that market economies must be regulated to prevent them from producing market societies, which he says are responsible for the widening gaps between the rich and the poor. “Market societies may be performing well, but they are not performing for the people,” he says .
He warns that performance of the international community has not only been poor but that nothing may change after Geneva 2000. “If this call is not heard, and acted upon, we are afraid that Geneva 2000 will end up in the history books as a summit of shame. Poor countries and poor people deserve more than that. They deserve the leaders of the world to make the meeting in Geneva a genuine summit of progress,” he says.
The declaration also calls for debt cancellation and trade policies which encourage employment generation, from northern countries while at the same time demanding good governance from developing countries .
Read TerraViva
The IPS renowned international newspaper will publish a special edition in Geneva, at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (Copenhagen+5). Follow the conference on line day by day from June 26 through July 1, with exclusive reports by a team of 13 IPS journalists from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, North America and Latin America.
A selection of the IPS Coverage from Geneva will also be carried by TerraViva Daily Journal (New York) and TerraViva Europe (Brussels),.
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.