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Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
The last chance: double development aid
Emissions trading:
linking climate protection and development
“We need a firm position”
Gloomy outlook for UN code
Governing globalisation
“The cotton subsidies worsen poverty”
4/2004 |
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[ ILO expert commission ]
Governing globalisation
“The current path of globalisation must change. Too few share in its benefits. Too many have no voice in its design and no influence on its course.” This is the conclusion made by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. Its 168-page final report A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, calls for an “urgent rethink” of current policies and institutions of global governance. It makes a series of far reaching proposals insisting on the need for international organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to integrate social aspects in their activities. Fundamental worker’s rights should become benchmarks for international programmes and policies. The Commission was set up at the initiative of International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Director General Juan Somavia two years ago. Making a strong case for reforming the rules governing the international economy, the Commission argues for a significant increase in resource flows from industrialised to developing countries in order to promote economic development in the poorest nations.
Among the criticisms contained in the report is that the response to the challenges of globalisation have so far been characterised by a lack of plan. “What has emerged to date is a fragmented and incoherent system of patchwork in the economic, social and environment fields,” the report says. Hence actions taken by international financial institutions like the World Bank “can be at cross-purposes” with those in agencies engaged in advancing social objectives like the ILO or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The Commission which was co-chaired by Tarja Halonen, President of Finland, and Benjamin William Mkapa, President of Tanzania, included other well-known personalities like the German scientist and former President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, and former World Bank Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz. The proposals are to be discussed at the next ILO sessions and will be tabled to the UN General Assembly later this year. The Commission suggests that serious consideration to be given to existing proposals to create an economic and social security council as well as a council on global governance. The capacity of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) ought to be strengthened and its level of representation upgraded. All organisations should be made more accountable to the public at large for the policies they pursue. (orb)
Further information:
www.ilo.org/public/english/wcsdg/index.htm
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