Annan’s Millennium Report a ‘vision from the North’

On the eve of the three-day UN Millennium Summit, the UN Secretary-General's Millennium Report has come in for criticism from the Geneva-based South Centre.

by Someshwar Singh

Geneva, 5 Sep 2000 -- It is the second time in barely two months that the UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan has been criticized for aligning himself with the North and embracing its priorities more than standing up to the realities and needs of the majority of the world’s countries from the South.

There was widespread condemnation of the report “Better World For All” brought out just before the Social Summit in Geneva. Even church groups were moved by the apparent bias in the report, which was issued jointly by the heads of the OECD, IMF, World Bank and the UN.

And now, on the eve of the three-day UN Millennium Summit - a special session of the UN General Assembly that opens in New York on 6 September - Mr Annan’s Millennium Report, “We the Peoples”, has come in for criticism from the Geneva-based South Centre.

Meant to guide the participation of the Group of 77 member states in the Millennium Assembly debate, the South Centre report argues that the “development agenda,” which has been hijacked by the North, should be reinstated as the principal and priority over-arching challenge to be dealt with and resolved effectively by the international community.

“During the recent past,” says the report, "the North has managed to rewrite the international development agenda on its own terms, and converted it into a selective ‘project’ (often technical assistance oriented) or ‘problem-oriented’ agenda, rather than one which tackles systemic issues."

"While for years it was argued by the North that it was itself affected by developing countries’ problems and that their resolution was a task for North and South alike, now, the North mainly emphasizes the developing countries’ own responsibility for their national development, and imposed increasing number of bilateral and multilateral conditionalities in order to shape the pattern of development, the political process and the choices made in developing countries.”

Analysing some of the traits of the modified development agenda of today, the report points out that the focus on poverty seems to have replaced development as the principal concern of the international community. “The issue of poverty has become almost a slogan that threatens to trivialize the issue."

Indicators of poverty are selective and oversimplified, and are usually reduced to a single global figure, i.e how many people live on $1 a day.

“In this approach, hundreds of millions of poor persons and children who die prematurely in the South from famines, diseases, natural calamities and disasters, and civil strife, can appear as a positive statistic and an indicator that the extent of global poverty is being reduced,” says the report.

“It is highly significant that poverty is often made to appear as an independent variable, divorced from structural, economic and deep-rooted causes. Since it is thought that the reduction or eradication of poverty can be left largely to the dynamics of the market, remedial rather than preventive measures are proposed.”

The countries of the North have skilfully occupied the moral high ground in the world arena, positioning themselves strategically to lecture the South, its government and peoples, says the report.  “The wide lexicon of words applied to the South today projects a poor image of its countries and peoples. Many of the labels, some with negative moral and political implications and overtones, are applied skilfully in what is often tantamount to low intensity political warfare against developing countries with considerable assistance from global media based in the North.”

Thus, while the South is cast as a villain, the North’s image is that of a paragon of morality and enlightenment, the report points out.

“In the process, the North diverts attention from the international development agenda and its own responsibilities.” For instance, the “developed countries pursue with missionary zeal the observance of human rights in the South. Yet, the efforts by the South to include the right to development, food, education, health and medicines, housing employment, and a steady income - which billions of human beings do not enjoy - as a human right, this is regarded by advanced countries as unacceptable, presumably because this also involves responsibility on their part.”

Referring to the recent attention to the cost and availability of the HIV/AIDS medicines in the South, the report says that ordinary people in the North and South have understood, perhaps for the first time that death and misery for hundreds of millions of people and children is directly attributable to “policies and actions taken in national legislatures, administrations, or corporations in the North and in international negotiating fora where agreements are hammered out. To fail to help in implementing measures that would prevent the death of tens of millions of persons each year is a crime against humanity; and an example of globalized immorality.”

The South, says the South Centre, has become hangers-on to the “globalization train” driven by the North, but without any say as to where the train is going or how and why. “The United Nations can and should provide the institutional context for this process. At present, however, many of its outputs and documents tend to be politically toned down when addressing the nature and impact of globalization.”

Commenting on the global rules and regimes, as determined through the Uruguay Round of the WTO and the Bretton Woods Institutions, as well as through the UN in recent years, the report says “these rules and regimes generally ignore the development challenges facing developing countries. The structures, institutions and rules of the game erode developing countries’ political and economic sovereignty and identity, while strengthening those of the powerful at their expense." -SUNS4734

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