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Mozambique Chronology:1-30 June 2000

   A coalition of more than 80 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), churches and people's movements expressed outrage following the Geneva 2000 Social Summit recently, which analyzed the report, "A Better World for All" presented to a special session of the UN on poverty reduction.

    The document was produced jointly by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN.

    The coalition accused the Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO) of causing world-wide poverty and criticized UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan of being "sucked into a propaganda exercise with the financial institutions."

    It also accused the report of "patronizing the poor people living in the South" and "reinforcing Northern perspectives".

    The furore arose at Geneva 2000, a week-long meeting in late June organized by Switzerland to review progress made since the 1995 World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen. Geneva 2000 coincided with the special session of the UN on Poverty Reduction.

    "A Better World for All" presented poverty-cutting goals, including enrolment of all children in primary schools and a two-thirds cut in child mortality by 2015.

    At the conclusion of the Copenhagen summit in 1995, UN member states adopted a Declaration and Programme of Action, which represented a new consensus on the need to put people at the centre of development.

    The 118 heads of state or government pledged to make the conquest of poverty, the goal of full employment and fostering of stable, safe and just societies their overriding objectives.

    Critics in southern Africa argue that although the 1995 summit discussed important issues of poverty reduction, it was not followed by practical projects to erase the chronic global problems of poverty, unemployment and social disintegration.

    At Geneva, the joint document of the financial institutions to the UN was attacked as contradictory and backward to the spirit and action of the 1995 initiative.

    "The introduction of a 'pro-poor growth' concept puts all responsibility for coming out of poverty on the backs of the poor in the South, as opposed to empowering people living in poverty to demand their rights," the NGO critique stated. "This is a clear violation of the recognition in Copenhagen that social development can only be achieved in an enabling economic and political environment."

    The IMF and World Bank in particular have been criticized for failing to alleviate world poverty, their stated goal, through debt relief and other structural adjustment programmes. Anti-globalization activists argue that the operating rules of the two Bretton Woods organizations are rigged in favour of massive multinational corporations at the expense of the poor.

    Annan's office issued a statement defending the UN's role in the report saying it had brought a commitment from financial organizations to social goals and poverty reduction.

    The special session's goals aimed to reaffirm the commitments and strategies adopted at the 1995 Copenhagen summit, to review progress and decide on further initiatives to accelerate equitable social development.

    While globalization has largely by-passed most of the people in southern Africa, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.

    "Despite all the talk of globalisation, the bulk of the world remains largely untouched by it. It is estimated that half the world's population has never even made or received a telephone call," Annan said.

    Calling for another urgent summit in 2005, not waiting until 2015, the NGO statement from Geneva demanded the wealthy nations to honour their commitments at Copenhagen instead of reneging on them as was done recently at the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations meeting in Japan.

    They also called for: an urgent analysis of the root causes of poverty and gender inequality within the macro-economic framework of globalization;

    a reversal in the decline of overseas development aid (ODA) and set a deadline of 2005 to meet the UN target of 0.7 percent of GDP for developed nations;

    a pledge for immediate and full debt cancellation for poorest countries so resources can be released for investment in social development; and

    an introduction of a currency transfer tax (CTT) to counter the instability of global capital transactions to mobilize further resources for social development.

    It is hard to detect much social progress since 1995. Indeed, alarmingly, the number of people in poverty has actually increased in the last five years and regional unemployment rates are still unacceptably high.

    According to the UNDP's 1999 Human Development Report, the assets of the three richest billionaires in the world are valued as greater than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries and their 600 million people.

    Despite its critics, the Copenhagen and Geneva summits have pushed major change in the way the world sees and acts on social issues.