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Q & A With de Rojas
The joint launching of an economic assessment this week by the UN Secretary General, the OECD, IMF and World Bank created uproar among NGOs this week.
Is this meeting part of a process by which those institutions are making inroads in the UN?
Of course they will have a key influence as participants. But the main question is not a Secretary General's report, but whether developing countries will arrive to the conference well prepared, or as they in the international jargon say, 'get their act together.'
Are these institutions participating in the preparatory process?
Both the World Bank and the IMF have assigned an official to work with me to prepare data and the documentation for the meeting. But they are working under my supervision and according to our terms of reference, not to dictate an agenda.
What will be the balance of forces at the meeting?
I cannot say, but I do know that the financial agencies will have a voice, not veto power in the preparatory process.
De Rojas said that non-governmental organisations and other civil society representatives, such as trades unions and business will be heard on the road to the meeting. In November, in New York, the preparatory committee will conduct hearings with NGOs and unions, to be followed by businesses, including banks, in December.
What level of participation are we talking about?
I know that some NGOs will come and expose their views about taxing international capital transactions (the Tobin tax) or debt cancellation. Businesses will probably expose their reasons to prefer sometimes stable strong dictatorial governments rather than unstable democracies to invest their money. All these opinions are part of the equation.
What will be civil society's influence in setting the agenda?
It depends on what member states decide, but they will be certainly invited to participate in the preparatory committees to take place in February and April or May.
NGO representatives consulted by Terra Viva agreed with de Rojas in seeing this meeting as ''an important step forward'' as one of them said, because since the failed push by developing countries in the 70s, industrialised countries, particularly the United States, have staunchly refused to hold debates on financial policies in the framework of the United Nations.
Nominally part of the UN system, the IMF and the World Bank have however a structure different from organs like the General Assembly, where each country has the same rights.
The Bretton Woods institutions - just like the European Commission - are ruled by voting rights proportional to the financial contributions from the different state members, thus ensuring policies close to the world's main economic powers.
In negotiating the 2001 high-level consultation, developing countries compromised on the issue of governance, considered by them as an undue interference in their sovereignty, de Rojas said. But the trade off is that industrialised countries compromised in accepting a political discussion of the so-called financial architecture, up to now considered a closed domain for the rich and (not always) beautiful.
Read TerraViva
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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.