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Exclusion from Globalization
UNDP News Front
Said to Be a Greater Threat
than Exposure to It
March 1, 2000
United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said this week that while globalization has its casualties, it is not an enemy of development. "The main losers in today's very unequal world are not those who are too much exposed to globalization. They are those who have been left out," he said.
Speaking at a Global Meeting of UNDP Resident Representatives in Glen Cove, New York, the Secretary-General said the most decisive factor differentiating those countries now benefitting from globalization from those who are not, is the quality of national governance.
He said that the countries that would succeed in mobilising resources at home and abroad to bring about balanced and sustainable economic growth would be those where: the law is clear and impartially enforced. both public and private bodies are transparent and accountable. where natural resources are conserved and exploited in the interest of future generations as well as the present one. people at every level of society feel safe from arbitrary violence; feel they have some say in decisions affecting their lives; and know that their children have a real chance of living better than they do.
"That puts an awesome responsibility on the men and women in positions of leadership in the developing world today - in civil society, including private business, and also, of course, in the State", he said.
The Secretary-General said that posterity would judge leaders above all by what they did to encourage the integration of their countries into the global economy, and to ensure that it would benefit all their people. They would be judged, he said: "By whether they enabled their people to board the train of globalisation, and made sure that everyone had at least standing room on it, if not a comfortable seat - or whether they missed it, or allowed many of their citizens to be crushed to death in the struggle to get on board.
"By the same token, posterity will judge us by what we did to help developing countries board that train in good order. In other words, by what we did to help them improve their capacity to govern, in the broadest sense of the term. And that includes everything from free and fair elections, through internet access, to girls' education, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, soil and water conservation, and better preparation to limit the effect of natural disasters."
A majority of UNDP Resident Coordinators from its more than 130 country offices are attending the meeting (28 February - 3 March).
UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said the meeting would help to align the organization behind its goal of sustainable human development, taking account of "the extraordinary revolutions underway, the decline in development assistance, the power and dangers of globalization, the opportunities that the communications revolution offer us, but also the extraordinary opportunity of the surge of private investment into developing countries."
Among these challenges, he said was the need to leverage the power of the Internet which would transform the way UNDP does business and the way developing countries grappled with the issues of development.
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