LACK OF POPULAR SUPPORT FOR GOALS OF SOCIAL SUMMIT AMONG ISSUES DISCUSSED BY PANELLISTS IN PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR ASSEMBLY'S SPECIAL SESSION

Press Release
SOC/4448

LACK OF POPULAR SUPPORT FOR GOALS OF SOCIAL SUMMIT AMONG ISSUES DISCUSSED BY PANELLISTS IN PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR ASSEMBLY'S SPECIAL SESSION

Despite the strong message of equity produced by the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), it had not generated popular support for its goals, said Eimi Watanabe, Assistant Administrator and Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as she addressed this afternoon the Preparatory Committee for the Special Session of the General Assembly on the Implementation of the Outcome of the Summit and Further Initiatives.

The Committee, which began its organizational session this morning, held a panel discussion on the role of the United Nations system in the implementation of the outcome of the Social Summit.

The dialogue on development goals should involve much wider participation and it should not be restricted to governments and non-governmental organizations, Ms. Watanabe continued. It was particularly important to involve youths because they would carry the agenda forward into the next century. The need to guarantee the full participation of the private sector should be examined, as well as improving the involvement of civil service organizations.

The world had not made significant progress on the commitments of the Social Summit, said Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. Except for strengthening cooperation for development, the goals of eradicating poverty and improving education and access to health care had not been realized. There should now be a move from focusing on process to focusing on results, and political will must be turned into action.

Katherine Hagen, Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), said social development had been affected by a rapidly evolving global economy. Those new challenges needed to be faced through a better understanding of their causes and the remedial action required. In addition, the introduction of the euro raised new policy issues regarding employment creation and labour market adjustment. Unanticipated changes caused by the introduction of the currency could affect social development within the euro zone and throughout the world.

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Joanne Salop, Director of Operations Policy and Strategy in the Office of the Managing Director of the World Bank, said if the Summit were being held today, the Bank would stress the connections among people, in particular, social fabric and social capital. It now also considered issues such as post- conflict reconstruction, social analysis and popular participation in development assistance strategies. In the future, the World Bank would focus efforts on learning how to generate social capital, improve and develop the functions of institutions, and achieve gender equity.

Cristian Maquiera (Chile), Chairman of the Committee, introduced the panel members.

The Preparatory Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. tomorrow, 20 May, to resume its general discussion on preparations for the special session.

Preparatory Committee Work Programme

The Preparatory Committee for the Special Session of the General Assembly on the Implementation of the Outcome of the World Summit for Social Development and Further Initiatives met this afternoon to continue its organizational session. It was scheduled to hold a panel discussion on the United Nations system and the appraisal of implementation of the outcome of the Social Summit, held in Copenhagen in 1995. (For background information, see Press Release SOC/4446 of 18 May.)

Panel Discussion

CRISTIAN MAQUIERA (Chile), Chairman of the Committee, introduced the panellists: Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs; Katherine Hagen, Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO); Eimi Watanabe, Assistant Administrator and Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); and Joanne Salop, Director, Operations Policy and Strategy, World Bank.

NITIN DESAI, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said among the efforts of the United Nations to follow-up on the Social Summit was the creation of the three Administrative Committee on Coordination's (ACC) task forces. Those had been created to help shape development activities of the United Nations at the country level. They had helped to identify the types of operational tools that were required for development. The task forces had also aided a growing trend to crystallize the work of the United Nations around the theme of poverty eradication. Such a goal was a major outcome of the Social Summit and a priority for the Secretary-General as well.

The United Nations had also taken steps to mobilize action at the country level, he said. States had been encouraged to create national strategies for poverty eradication by a target date. There was a need to review efforts to eradicate poverty and to see how many countries had set clear target dates. There was also an insistence that countries report on their efforts to follow up to the Summit and implement its goals. That was meant to remind presidents and prime ministers that the goals and commitments were made by them, and it was their responsibility to follow up on them.

At the global level, the Summit had a strong emphasis on questions related to values, he said. It examined the role that values played as a basis for policy. There was now a need to move from focusing on process to focusing on results. The world had not made significant progress on the commitments of the Summit, except possibly in strengthening cooperation for development. The goals of eradicating poverty and improving education and access to health care had not been realized. Now that the process issues had been considered, there was a need to turn political will into action. The

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United Nations needed to have accountability for results, and not just accountability for process.

KATHERINE HAGEN, Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), said the ILO was assigned a lead role in the follow-up on the promotion of productive employment, which was one of the three core issues addressed by the Summit. The ILO had actively promoted increasing awareness of the strategic importance of attaining the goal of full, productive and freely chosen employment as an integral element for fulfilling the 10 commitments adopted at Copenhagen. Higher levels of employment growth and improvements in the quality of employment were crucial pre-conditions for the eradication of absolute poverty, promoting social integration, achieving gender equality and minimizing the cost of structural adjustment programmes.

Regarding the continuation of the implementation of the outcome of the Social Summit, she said there needed to be more effective inter-agency collaboration, in particular, at the country level. The United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) was a step forward, but it should be adapted to the broadened United Nations system with the involvement of the specialized agencies. There should also be initiatives to explore improving inter-agency cooperation so it was more aligned with intergovernmental deliberations. In addition, the work on indicators remained a task that the United Nations system needed to coordinate more effectively. The diversity of initiatives reflected a concern that there still was no full complement of indicators needed to measure progress in the area of social development. The ILO was working to establish a set of 18 key indicators of the labour market.

While the Copenhagen commitments and the Programme of Action remained as valid as ever, there were emerging policy challenges affecting social development which were produced by a rapidly evolving global economy, she said. Those new challenges needed to be faced through a better understanding of their causes and the remedial action required. The increased need for social protection against catastrophes, such as the Asian crisis, was just one example of the new challenges facing the international community. In addition, it was important to look to the introduction of the euro, which raised new policy issues regarding employment creation and labour market adjustment. There might be a need to cope with unanticipated changes which could affect social development within the euro zone and throughout the world.

EIMI WATANABE, Assistant Administrator and Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said the Social Summit had provided a development plan that put human beings at the centre of development. However, the Summit had not generated a movement of people in support of development. Despite the very strong message of equity that came from the Summit, there had not been strong public support for it like there was for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at Rio de Janeiro, and the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. There had also not been the full

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participation of the private sector. There was a need for full participation of all actors: governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and businesses. That needed to be examined, as well as the improving involvement of civil service organizations.

Because the agenda for the Summit was so broad and covered so many sectors, there were no single ministries at the national level to address that agenda, she said. Actions had, therefore, been more diffused and results were harder to trace. A number of problems in the implementation of the Summit goals could be examined in the Preparatory Committee. It could review procedures countries had taken to support the poor and what they had done in terms of social expenditures. The Committee could also consider the issue of debt forgiveness, particularly the need to accelerate debt forgiveness for the least developed States. Also, making micro-credit available for all was an important part of the development agenda.

She said that the dialogue on development goals should not be restricted to governments and NGOs, but it should involve much wider participation. It was particularly important to involve youths that would carry the agenda forward into the next century. The UNDP had taken a number of steps to implement the Summit goals, including the creation of programmes to develop micro-credit systems at the national level. It was also in the process of examining progress made since the Summit in regard to poverty.

JOANNE SALOP, Director of Operations Policy and Strategy in the Office of the Managing Directors of the World Bank, said the Bank was an evolving and learning institution that worked to respond to the problems of its clients with practical solutions. When the World Bank started in 1947, it was not in development business. After the reconstruction needs of the Second World War were met, the World Bank increasingly focused its energy on developing countries. Though its clients shifted, the Bank's focus remained the same. It was very much concerned about financing infrastructure, with a focus on physical capital. More increasingly, however, the human element entered the approach of the World Bank. In the 1980s, it started work on structural adjustment, which was controversial, but the Bank was considering methods to improving it. Later, it focused on the new development agenda, which included poverty reduction, the advancement of women, and the environment.

At the Social Summit in 1995, the World Bank emphasized, among others, the importance of broad-based and sustainable growth in job creation, she said. The priorities it expressed at the Summit remained at the core of the Bank's agenda. Yet, other issues had entered the social agenda, including lending and poverty assessment. If the Summit were being held today, there would be important differences in what the World Bank would talk about in terms of social development. Today, it would talk about the connections between people, in particular, social fabric and social capital. Such a shift marked a further progression in the way the World Bank, as an institution,

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faced issues of development. It now considered post-conflict reconstruction, social analysis and popular participation in development assistance strategy.

The World Bank was still working to extend and deepen the framework of social development, she said. Yet, it needed to extend its work with its clients in assistance and participation strategies. It also had a long way to go with its partners, including United Nations agencies and donor agencies. The World Bank had much to learn about its contributions to social development. Its strengths included operationalizing practical solutions that embodied technocratic knowledge and finance. In addition, the World Bank needed to develop internal synergies and partnerships, with economists working together with sociologists to broaden the understanding of the issues. In the future, it also hoped to learn how to develop social capital, build on developing and improving the functions of institutions, and achieve gender equity.

Exchange of Views

On questions regarding indicators for measuring development progress, Mr. DESAI said the United Nations was moving towards a uniform set of indicators. But many indicators were still not compatible and they measured the same factors in different ways. The intention of efforts was not to create a ridged set of indicators, but to eliminate inconsistencies in them.

In response to statements that poverty issues had not received enough attention, he said that poverty reduction was very complicated. A targeted regional poverty programmes could not be limited to helping only those that were below the poverty line. There needed to be a more complex approach that addressed an overall situation. If you did not address area development needs, countries would end up with incomplete programmes based on subsidies.

Regarding questions on measuring social capital, he said that he defined the term to refer to the network of values and institutions that governed the relationship between people and society. "If you could find a way of measuring trust and tolerance, you could measure social capital", he said. But there were ways of measuring social assistance and programmes and those contributed to developing social capital. There must be attention paid to actions by the United Nations and governments that tear down social capital as well. Especially in regard to indigenous peoples, sometimes social capital existed and others did not realize it.

In response to questions about the constraints against the achievement of social development, Ms. HAGEN said the biggest constraint was the growing amount of inequality among and within countries. While globalization and technological change were creating, in the aggregate, greater economic growth, the inequality between the haves and the have-nots was becoming more pronounced. That inequality was a phenomenon, and the constraint was the absence of political and social will to combat the broader ramifications of

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globalization and technological change. The lack of will power was a by- product of people's difficulty in engaging in direct dialogue about their welfare in a changing environment. Most people had far less access to the decision-making process. The ILO was based on the concepts of freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively. It was only through productive and adequately remunerated employment that the distribution of resources could occur.

Inequality made it difficult for a social dialogue to occur, she said. And that was tied to the issue of mobilizing people in favour of the commitments of the Social Summit. It was also connected to the need of achieving a greater normative consensus on what were the fundamental rights all people should enjoy, as stated in the commitments of the Summit. The ILO was working on a declaration of core principles that was an attempt to consolidate the organization's commitment to human rights in a framework of promoting the social dialogue that was crucial to overcoming immediate global constraints.

Responding to a question on whether her suggestions for action were additions to the Social Summit goals, Ms. WATANABE said that the new suggestions were not meant to replace the Summit commitments. Rather, they were meant to focus attention on a few specific issues. Because the scope of the Summit was so broad, the whole review process might become diffused. The Preparatory Committee might pay particular attention to a more narrow set of concrete goals.

On the question of how to build social capital, she said education was one important step. Education, however, should not just focus on reading and writing. It should emphasize citizenship and teach children the processes of democracy. Participation was also key in building social capital. That did not mean bringing in civil society at the last step in the process. It meant involving people from the original planning stages.

Regarding questions about globalization and the role of the World Bank in economic crises, Ms. SALOP said that was an important area. The Bank was working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on social safety net issues. The IMF was also looking into increasing its work with the Bank on social issues. The Bank had produced a good study on global economic prospects and the impact of globalization, including the social impact. The study was somewhat out of date regarding risks, because it had not anticipated the Asian crisis.

On questions about the connection between the World Bank's poverty assessments, performed in collaboration with clients, she said the Bank had made a major effort in that area in recent years. It had worked with donors, the UNDP and other groups in ensuring that the assessments were reflected in country programmes and country assistance strategies. Yet, that area still

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needed attention. The incorporation of poverty assessments in country assistance strategies was at the top of the agenda of the Bank and its country directors.

Regarding social capital issues, she said interdisciplinary teams would help, but it had been difficult to get economists, anthropologists and sociologists to work together. Social assessments were being performed in one third to one half of the Bank's projects. They were done when necessary and were not required in all cases. The Bank was also working to identify specific interventions in developing social capital that could be performed in order to advise countries. It was important to distinguish between means and ends. The issue of social capital was a means to achieving core goals of poverty reduction, sustainable development and gender equality. Without social capital it would be impossible to have success on the ground in building physical capital.

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