Noble plan needs more than leaders' signatures
THE question being asked as the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development drew to a close last night was, 'Where do we go from here?' The grand master plan for tackling world poverty has been drawn up just as the master plan for helping the environment was put together in Rio.
Ten commitments have been signed by every one of the 121 world leaders present in Denmark but, as one pointed out, it amounts to an 'a la carte' package from which they will be able to pick and choose at will.
They cover these areas: - eradicating poverty, full employment, human rights and non-discrimination, women's rights, education, African development, structural adjustment and debt, use of national resources, economic social cultural and legal development and finally, international co-operation.
But the mechanisms to bring about action in any of these areas hardly exist. In other words, the UN has bitten off more than it can chew and, in the eyes of many of the 2,000 non-governmental organisations present in Copenhagen, looks likely to choke as a result.
The dilemma on what happens now was summed up by a cartoon in a Danish newspaper yesterday which showed a European postman walking into an impoverished African village of starving people. He was reading out a telegram saying '121 heads of state give you their greetings'.
The view of the most cynical in Copenhagen is that nothing has been achieved - all those commitments were drawn up months before the event at the UN in New York, they had been discussed, indeed known about for years.
But that is to perhaps be over-simplistic. What has happened is that the eyes of 121 leaders have focused on world poverty, it has risen higher up the global agenda.
Opinions have moved during the seven-day meeting. Oxfam, the leading British charity, threatened to leave Copenhagen altogether last week, so frustrated was it at the seemingly meaningless rhetoric.
But this was its policy adviser Patricia Feeney yesterday: 'Against the predictions of the world's press, the summit has made an important contribution to poverty eradication.
'The main achievements is the overwhelming consensus that macro-economic policy cannot be divorced from development or investment in the health, education and well-being of people. For the first time the world community has affirmed the principle that social development and human rights form part of the same continuum.' UN Secretary-General Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali has to decide which UN agency will do the follow-up work to make sure that what was agreed to is observed.
He is expected to choose the UN Development Agency. The UN's Economic and Social Council will also be involved as will the World Bank and IMF.
The rest depends on political will. As one Scandinavian diplomat commented yesterday, 'That is the problem. We haven't really found a feasible solution. Basically we will leave it up to the individual governments to show good will.'
