SECRETARY-GENERAL, ADDRESSING GLOBAL FORUM ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, STRESSES NEED FOR ADVICE ON HOW TO MANAGE GLOBALIZATION SO THAT ALL CAN BENEFIT

29 July 1999

Press Release
SG/SM/7082

SECRETARY-GENERAL, ADDRESSING GLOBAL FORUM ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, STRESSES NEED FOR ADVICE ON HOW TO MANAGE GLOBALIZATION SO THAT ALL CAN BENEFIT

19990729 Kofi Annan Says Forum Can Be Excellent Vehicle for Carrying Work of Mahbub ul Haq

Following is the text of opening remarks by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the First Global Forum on Human Development, in New York today:

Welcome to United Nations Headquarters.

This Forum has a double purpose. It is intended to celebrate 10 years of the Human Development Report. But it is also the first in a series of meetings to be held annually, bringing together leading experts and practitioners in the development field.

I am delighted to see many Ministers and policy makers from national governments here today, as well as many outstanding researchers and academics. I hope you will find it useful to exchange ideas with each other. We at the United Nations certainly hope to learn a great deal by listening to you.

It is fitting that this first Global Forum, like the tenth Human Development Report, is dedicated to the memory of Mahbub ul Haq, in the month which has seen the first anniversary of his untimely death.

As you know, the Report was Mahbub's brainchild. And this Forum can be an excellent vehicle for carrying on his work. It will be, if it helps us all to keep on rethinking our efforts for development -- and even our definition of what development is -- in a bold and inquiring manner.

The United Nations has never attempted to impose a "party line" on the Human Development Report. Its authors have always been free to think the unthinkable, and to publish the inconvenient.

Long may they be so. It is that freedom which, in 10 short years, has enabled them to make such an impact on the theory and practice of development.

But this gathering is not an occasion for complacency or self-congratulation. For while we have undoubtedly made progress in development thinking, the results which matter remain patchy at best. I refer, of course, to life as it is actually lived, by ordinary people in developing countries.

During the first decade of Human Development Reports, the number of people in the world living in absolute poverty has substantially increased. There are 3 billion poor people in the world today, and 2 billion able bodied young people without jobs. It will be time enough to start congratulating ourselves when we have reversed this scandalous trend.

During these same 10 years, the gap between rich and poor countries -- and between rich and poor people in many countries -- has been growing wider. Many people blame this on globalization. This year's Report shows, however, that the reality is much more complex.

Globalization has, in fact, brought new opportunities to many people. But if we simply lie back and let it happen, it causes many casualties as well -- and the opportunities may be swept away by a violent backlash.

One of the things we look for, from experts like you, is advice on how to manage globalization -- how to catch it at the flood and channel it so that all can benefit.

I think we all agree there is a need for better management, or governance, at the global as well as the national level.

We need to manage capital flows, so that years of hard-won progress are not suddenly wiped out, and so that fears generated in one region do not suddenly destabilize another.

We need to manage industrialization and urbanization, so that they do not do irreversible damage to the global environment.

We all know that there are global "public goods" to be secured, and "public bads" -- or as I call them, "problems without passports" -- to be resisted: from global warming, through infectious diseases, drugs and international crime, to terrorism and weapons proliferation. At the national level we look to the State to deal with such problems. How do we do it at the global level, while preserving respect for national sovereignty?

Or again, we all agree that development requires investment -- public and private, domestic and foreign. But how do we persuade those who control financial resources to deploy them in ways that will enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty? That is one of the great questions of our time, on

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which the United Nations is preparing a conference in 2001. But we need ideas now.

During the 1990s we held a whole series of great conferences on different aspects of development -- the global environment, human rights, population, social development, women, and human settlements. All of them produced excellent ideas, and many pledges and commitments -- most of which, alas, remain unfulfilled. How are we going to get those pledges implemented?

It is very easy, as we approach the new millennium, to paint a bleak picture of the future awaiting humankind. But there is nothing inevitable about this. We have many ideas about what ought to be done. What we need to be told now is how to do it.

That, I believe, must be the focus of next year's Millennium Assembly and Summit, and of the other meetings leading up to them, including the non-governmental Millennium Forum. People like you are our only hope: if you do not produce ideas, who else will?

These three days give you a great chance to make a start. If you make good use of them, they should be very exciting for all of us.

Now I shall sit down and let you get on with it.

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