Lobbying
and Campaigning the Only Hope
By Chakravarthi Raghavan
The
1980s saw the Thatcher-Reagan initiated counter-revolution in the North,
and the use of the financial muscle of the Bretton Woods Institutions - the IMF and World Bank - to force the neo-liberal
agenda on the developing world.
The
result is a decade lost for development,
transfer of net resources (public and private) from the South to the North,
a heavy debt burden for generations of the people in the South,
the marginalisation, if not abandoning, of the central Charter role of
United Nations and its specialised agencies in economic and social sectors
and development.
The
second half of the 1980s also
saw the start of the parallel process to lock the developing world into
the neo-liberal order and the neo-liberal globalisation process for takeover
of the South by transnational corporations through the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations. Launched in 1986, the Uruguay Round entered
the developing world like a thief in the night, and
functioning in virtual secrecy created the World Trade Organization which,
behind the facade of a rules-based consensus-decision-making system is
functioning like an occupying power in the South to advance the interests
of major corporations based in the North. The promised benefits have eluded
the developing world.
After
some near-paralysis, the developing world sought to address the problems
through the UN, not frontally, but laterally - in a series of major world conferences on a range of economic , social
and development issues . For example, there were the Rio Earth Summit on Environment and Development, the Beijing
Women's Summit, and the
Copenhagen
Social Summit. These set some
norms and standards for North and South, and adopted recommendations and
decisions to which countries committed themselves at Summit level.
Civil Society, and development NGOs played an important role in all these
- to the
discomfort of the Bretton Woods Institutions and now the WTO . At these summits, there were determined efforts
by the US and the OECD countries to dilute the commitments and
recommendations, assert the role of the Fund/Bank and WTO over the UN
system. But civil society managed to keep the pressure on recommendations
and commitments and set a process for monitoring the implementation and
periodic follow-up meetings -- an important achievement.
The UN sponsored conferences and their recommendations would not have
mattered, if the neo-liberal order of shrinking the State and expanding
mythical Market in the South through liberalisation, deregulation and
privatisation had delivered benefits. In the final analysis, the legitimacy
of any national and international regime
depends on, not only the forms
of democratic decision-making, but on whether it delivers benefits to
the people at the bottom. Judged by the various yardsticks, it has not.
All the glossily produced reports, studies,
graphs and charts, and questionable generalisations from econometric data
of the IMF, World Bank, the OECD and the WTO, and the papers from neo-liberal
think tanks and their academic consultants have not been able to hide
the truth of growing inequalities within societies and
among countries, and the marginalisation and deprivation of the vast majority
of peoples and a sense of insecurity even among middle-classes.
The street protests at the Seattle WTO Ministerial meeting last year,
the protests in Washington at Fund/Bank meetings in April could be dismissed
and explained away -- but not the signs of increasing social disorders
everywhere.
The reality on the ground, and the failure of the policy recommendations
from the Fund and the Bank, demonstrated by the East Asia financial crisis
- and its spread to Russia and Brazil - resulted in the death of the Washington
Consensus.
But the Fund, the Bank and the WTO, the OECD, and the major industrialised
nations and the polices of transnational corporations of the world have not been abandoned. The same old policies are
coming back under new slogans, and repeated assertions about inevitability
and irresistibility of globalisation.
There is nothing inevitable. Policies and norms, and instruments to further
neo-liberal process have been forged by governments and national and international
political processes. They can be changed voluntarily by those benefiting
and in power, or they will be forced to change through social movements
that are growing.
Unfortunately, far from providing an intellectual challenge, the UN is
now in danger of being hijacked by the
Fund/Bank institutions and corporate interests. With some exceptions
from a few individuals, the UN reports are by 'two-handed' (on the one
hand, and on the other) professionals, who either have no clear opinions
to present to governments as options or are afraid of doing so. Only civil
society is better equipped and is not only
undertaking a public mobilisation through lobbying and campaigning, but
providing an intellectual challenge. And therein lies some hope.
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.