Development
"Dangerous report" presented at UN Social Summit

afrol.com, 29 June - Trade union leaders attending the Geneva social summit have described a new UN development report as "a dangerous swing of the pendulum" claiming that while it asks the right questions, it was providing the wrong answers. The report "2000 - A Better World for All" is a joint publication by the United Nations, the OECD, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. It was released this week in Geneva to coincide with the Summit.

"We are concerned that this report shows that the pendulum of development thinking is swinging back towards the discredited structural adjustment policies of the 1980s," said Bill Jordan, General Secretary of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). "It is as though the Asian financial and economic crisis had never taken place."

The ICFTU leader is heading a 60-member team of trade unionists from all five continents who came to lobby government delegates at the Summit and seek to incorporate worker-friendly and development language as well as verifiable commitments in the documents that will be adopted.

The UN's joint sponsorship of the report with some international institutions that are heavily criticised for actually contributing to worsening poverty in the world has given rise to great controversy. 

"The new report accurately pinpoints the problems facing the world today - extreme poverty, gender discrimination, child mortality, and death in childbirth," says Bill Jordan, who will address an international trade union gathering on "Globalising social justice" tomorrow in Geneva . "However, it is less than convincing in the answers it provides."

The new report omits entirely the importance of fundamental workers' rights in any sustainable strategy for economic and social development.

For example, it refers briefly to the fact that the Indian state of Kerala halved poverty in less than one generation. What it fails to mention is that Kerala did so by successful measures to eradicate child labour and put children back into school. This provided Kerala with the educated young workers it needed to achieve sustainable economic development and social progress.

Similarly, the report speaks of the need to reduce social inequalities. It does not say how that can be achieved. In particular no reference is made in the report to respecting trade union rights. Yet it is only when trade unions can operate freely that workers actually receive a fair share of their countries' economic growth. Nor does the report accept the role of trade unions in contributing to achieving economic development. 

What the report does recommend includes tariff reduction, liberalisation, anti- inflationary measures, and policies geared at attracting foreign investors. 

"Also, the report does not make one reference to the utterly dismal performance of industrialised countries in meeting their aid targets," says Bill Jordan. "All the blame is laid at the developing countries' door while the richer countries are entirely let off the hook." 

"There are some things we welcome in the report - above all, its recognition of the need to improve the unacceptably low status of women in the world today as part of economic development policies," he concluded. "However, these positive points are overshadowed by the report's failure to recognise the role of fundamental workers' rights, and its pretence that industrialised countries bear no responsibility for the worsening plight of the world's poorest peoples." 

The ICFTU is the world's largest international trade union organisation. It groups 216 national trade union centres from 145 countries representing 124 million workers world-wide.

Source: ICFTU

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