VIEW POINT (Spotlight Weekly)

UN's 21st Century Action Plan

Targeting Globalization

The Secretary General of the global body points out the need to spread the benefit of open global market among all the nations -- both poor and rich

By A CORRESPONDENT

Urging world leaders to make globalization work for people in every nation, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has offered his 21st Century action plan, a detailed report that sets the agenda for the United Nations Millennium Summit. The plan calls on all Member States to commit themselves to ending poverty and inequality, improving education, increasing security, reducing HIV/AIDS, and protecting the environment.

"We must put people at the center of everything we do," said Mr. Annan. "No calling is more noble, and no responsibility greater, than that of enabling men, women and children, in cities and villages around the world, to make their lives better. Only when that begins to happen will we know that globalization is indeed becoming inclusive, allowing everyone to share its opportunities."

The Secretary-Generalís report will be considered by a special Millennium Summit on 6-8 September 2000, a rare meeting of Heads of State and Government from around the world, scheduled on the eve of the first UN General Assembly of the new millennium. The report, "We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century," is the most comprehensive presentation of the UNís mission in its fifty-five year history, containing numerous specific goals and program initiatives Mr. Annan will ask world leaders to consider.

Central to Mr. Annanís proposals is the view that globalization is an extraordinarily powerful force offering both unique opportunities and challenges for nations and people. ìThe benefits of globalization are

plain to see: faster economic growth, higher living standards, accelerated innovation and diffusion of technology and management skills, new economic opportunities for individuals and countries alike,"

Mr. Annan writes in his report. But these benefits "remain highly concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and are spread unevenly within them". And while there are now "strong and well enforced rules facilitating the expansion of global markets", efforts to secure "equally valid social objectives", such as labor standards, the environment, human rights or poverty reduction, have "lagged behind".

As a result, globalization has ìbegun to generate a backlashî. The challenge, Mr. Annan concludes, "is clear: if we are to capture the promises of globalization while managing its adverse effects, we must learn to govern better, and we must learn how better to govern together".

There are still billions of people whose lives are not free of fear or want, despite the enormous progress made in the past fifty years, Mr. Annan contends. The report observes that globalization has eluded Africa, where many of the worldís poor live, including up to 40 million children who will be orphans by 2010, largely because of HIV/AIDS. In addition, growth is anemic, trade and investment are low, and national debts are crushing.

The report also notes that less than 10 per cent of all health research is spent on the health concerns of 90 per cent of the worldís people, leaving millions vulnerable to chronic illness or death from easily preventable sicknesses like pneumonia, diarrhoea, tuberculosis, malaria and others.

On issues of conflict and peacekeeping, Mr. Annan observes that nations must address both old and new threats. He explains that there are still too many nuclear weapons, as well as a growing proliferation of small arms that serve to prolong and deepen already vicious conflicts. He adds that peace operations must be strengthened, while sanctions should be better targeted, to make them ìless harsh on innocent populations, and more effective in penalizing delinquent rulersî.

But perhaps the most alarming chapter of the report deals with the environment. In addition to freedom from want and from fear, Mr. Annan writes, the world now faces an urgent need to realize a third freedom, which the UN's founders could not have anticipated: "the freedom of future generations to sustain their lives on this planet". "We are failing to provide that freedom," he says. After detailing the multiple threats of climate change, water shortages, soil erosion and the destruction of forests, fisheries and biodiversity, he concludes by calling for a "new ethic of stewardship" and a system of "green accounting" - to ensure that environmental costs and benefits are integrated into economic policies.

But these benefits "remain highly concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and are spread unevenly within them".