SECRETARY-GENERAL CALLS FOR PRACTICAL, ACHIEVABLE PROGRAMME TO MAKE GLOBALIZATION A POSITIVE FORCE FOR ALL WORLD"S PEOPLE

Press Release
SG/SM/7479

SECRETARY-GENERAL CALLS FOR PRACTICAL, ACHIEVABLE PROGRAMME TO MAKE GLOBALIZATION A POSITIVE FORCE FOR ALL WORLD’S PEOPLE

Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s inaugural address to Urban 21: Global Conference on the Urban Future, which he delivered yesterday in Berlin:

Let me say what a pleasure it is to be here with you in Berlin. There could be no more appropriate place for us to reflect upon the state of the world's cities.

Berlin's history makes it wise in both quality of life and quality of government; and Berlin today presents a wonderfully diverse and dynamic face to the world. We should all be grateful to Chancellor Schroeder and the federal and local authorities for welcoming us, and for shining an international spotlight on our urban future.

I would also like to thank Germany's partners in the Global Initiative on Sustainable Development -- Brazil, Singapore and South Africa -- and all others whose energy and commitment have made this conference possible.

Just yesterday I visited Hanover, another German city where the future is on display. I found Expo 2000 both inspiring and worrying. Inspiring, because the science and technology being exhibited promise significant improvements in the human condition. But also worrying, because parts of the display -– for instance, the pavilion devoted to poverty and basic needs make it very clear that we need more than new technology and scientific progress.

We also need radical changes in human behaviour and human relations -- in the way we think about each other and our shared lives in an interdependent world.

Increasingly, those lives are lived in cities. Already, nearly half the world's people are city-dwellers. Within just 25 years, two-thirds of us will be, and almost all of that rapid increase will come in developing countries. We have entered the urban millennium.

At their best, cities are engines of growth and incubators of civilization. They are crossroads of ideas, places of great intellectual ferment and innovation. They can also be models of democracy and multicultural coexistence.

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Many of us are fortunate enough to live in cities not just by chance, but because we choose to do so.

But the very same cities can also be places of exploitation, disease, violent crime, unemployment, underemployment and extreme poverty. Most urban poor can find housing only in dilapidated and unsafe squatter settlements or slums. They lack water, sanitation and other basic municipal services. Typically, there are no schools or clinics within easy reach, no centres where the community can meet and no safe places for children to play.

We see drug abuse, pollution and fear. We see tensions between new migrants and established residents, and sharp divisions along class, race or ethnic lines -- or even all three at once. We see people marginalized, and largely disenfranchised. And as always, the most vulnerable are women and children.

Most tragic of all, while the average age of city populations is increasing, the average age of slum dwellers is decreasing. That means it is young people and children who suffer most.

If that is the reality of cities today, can we be surprised that a recurring motif in contemporary literature and cinema is that of life in cities run amok? Some say this is just lurid fantasy, but I see such books and films as cautionary tales.

In any case, reality's message is plain enough: we must do more to make our cities safe and liveable places for all.

One of the United Nations’ priorities must always be concern for the weakest and poorest members of the human family. That is the rationale behind the "Cities without Slums" initiative launched by the World Bank and the United Nations last December. With former President Mandela as its patron, it aims to improve the living conditions of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, through a global alliance of cities and their development partners.

Densely packed tenements and sprawling shantytowns may be miserable places in material terms. But these cities-within-cities are also wellsprings of entrepreneurial energy and self-help.

If only we can mobilize it, this dynamism will improve, not only the life of the slums but that of society as a whole. Nowhere is the role of non- governmental organizations (NGOs) more important than in large cities.

But NGOs can achieve only so much by themselves. Ultimately, urban problems can be solved only by strong and effective local authorities. They are the point where the State comes face to face with the needs and aspirations of city-dwellers, and it is by their performance that the State’s value is most often judged.

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It is to them that citizens look for safety, for social services, and for a voice to represent them in dealings with the national government -– and indeed with the wider world.

To meet such expectations, local authorities need real power. Cities must no longer be run as administrative extensions of central government, or starved of responsibility and resources.

More and more countries are coming to understand that decentralization does not mean strengthening one level of government at the expense of another. A State which treats local authorities as partners, and allows public tasks to be carried out by those closest to the citizens, will be stronger, not weaker. Weak cities will almost certainly act as a brake on national development, whereas strong local democracy can be a key factor enabling a country to thrive in the new global economy.

So the United Nations welcomes the move towards decentralization, and it would also welcome a greater role for local authorities at the international level.

That is why Klaus Toepfer, the Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements -- Habitat -– has sought to improve its own contact with the grassroots by establishing an Advisory Committee of Local Authorities. This can supplement the essential role in the international system already played by parliamentarians -– who in most countries, of course, are also local representatives.

Global and local issues are more and more intertwined. Often, indeed, they are one and the same. Cities find themselves managing problems and opportunities that used to be the sole domain of national governments.

Many cities now have populations and economies larger than many countries. Directly elected mayors of capital cities are often among a country's most influential politicians. Markets, communications and movements of goods, funds and people are all increasingly global. But politics remain local. Local authorities can help bridge that gap.

We must bring to life the vision set out in the Habitat Agenda, adopted four years ago at the City Summit in Istanbul -– which was, perhaps not surprisingly, the first of the great United Nations conferences of the 1990s to admit local authorities, NGOs and other groups, not as observers but as full participants.

But the Habitat Agenda cannot be looked at in isolation from the work of the earlier conferences. Indeed, one of the great achievements of the whole series of conferences was to highlight the linkages among different issues.

In particular, the central message of the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen, which we were reviewing in Geneva last week, is of direct relevance to this meeting. That message was that social and economic welfare are not separate concepts. What matters -- in rich countries as well as poor, in

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cities, towns and villages alike -- is not only quantitative benchmarks, but quality of life. A healthy society is one that takes care of and invests in all its members, and gives them a say in decisions that affect their lives.

My friends, if we heed the accumulated wisdom of the conference cycle as a whole, I think we shall know what to do. We have the resources -– or at least we would have, were they not tied up in weapons spending or wasteful subsidies, or lost to corruption and mismanagement. What is missing, as usual, is political will.

Two months from now, at the Millennium Summit in New York, the world’s Heads of State and government have an opportunity to stand before the world public and inspire them with enlightened leadership. Humanity would be ill served by a summit of speeches alone, especially if they merely re-state known positions and grievances. We need to come together. We need to agree on a common agenda -- a practical, achievable programme that can make globalization a positive force for all the world’s people; that can free people from fear and from want; and that will enable us to bequeath a sustainable future to our children, and our children’s children.

I have tried to help by delivering a Millennium Report that outlines a common vision for humanity in the twenty-first century. Cities figure largely in that vision, but most prominent of all are people -– the men, women and children that the United Nations, and all of us here today, are trying to serve.

The future of humanity lies in cities: in good urban governance and sustainable urban development. We need to make the urban revolution work for people, not against them. I know that is your objective. I wish you great success in your deliberations, and I look forward to working with you in future.

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