Special panel of experts seeks new collective vision of development.

Timed to complement the Secretary-General's policy initiative--"An Agenda for Development"--and to help realize the collective vision of development it contained, the World Hearings on Development, organized by General Assembly President Samuel Insanally of Guyana, were held at Headquarters from 6 to 10 June.

Participants included more than 30 prominent scientists, historians, environmentalists, economists, industrialists, former national leaders and media specialists from both the developing and developed world.

The gathering's objective was to promote frank and far-ranging discussion on development issues and, in Mr. Insanally's words, to "search for fresh ideas for advancing a new campaign towards a development strategy for the year 2000 and beyond".

Each day's hearings were devoted to a broad theme: the linkage between development, peace and security; the challenges of fulfilling the UN imperative of putting people first in growth and development; the impact of globalization on an increasingly interdependent world; the need for new forms of international cooperation in areas such as trade, external debt, and development financing; and international policy coordination and the role of the UN system.

Experts testified on specific themes and answered questions posed by a panel of senior Government representatives. The hearings emanated from a 1993 Assembly resolution (48/166) which invited the Assembly President to promote broad--based discussions and an exchange of views on "An Agenda for Development".

In an address delivered by his Special Adviser, Ismat Kittani, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said that the twenty-first century must be the age of development. He believed that the experts' presence at the UN represented a commitment to what he termed "the greatest challenge of our next 50 years".

In a welcoming speech, President Insanally told participants that the UN was the only forum in which development issues could be merged with political issues, and that development must be given priority, not only as a contribution to the maintenance of peace and security, but also as an essential requirement of all the world's people in and of itself.

`A rich palette of ideas'

At the conclusion of the World Hearings, President Insanally said he had encountered "a rich palette" of new ideas and proposals on the nature of development in a changing world and the UN role in the process. Clearly, he said, development was seen to be people-centred, which required a stronger focus on poverty and on the social sector, including education, health and social safety nets.

Grass-roots participation was an essential component in the process, as was the concept of "self-help", although international cooperation and assistance were essential as well. Peace, security and development were, in the eyes of the experts, inter-related and mutually supportive. It was also widely agreed that high military expenditures were detrimental to economic and social development.

The market had been recognized as an efficient instrument for development, but there was increasing appreciation that the States and the market forces could be mutually reinforcing partners. In the financial area, the stagnation of official development assistance (ODA) was a major cause for concern. A World Trade Organization aiming at universality was seen as a landmark in international cooperation.

Coordination and coherence in the UN system was seen as critical to its success in meeting the needs of a changing world. Linking the Bretton Woods institutions more closely to the UN, so that they would pay increasing attention to the broad, global objectives set out by the international community, remained a major task.

Expert views

The following is a brief overview of experts' statements made during the World Hearings:

Emma Bonino, Deputy Speaker, Member of the Italian Parliament Presidency and the Foreign Affairs Commission, said that ODA should no longer be used as an instrument for achieving goals of the donor countries. it would be more useful for development to have multilateral cooperation under the UN aegis.

Margaret Catley-Carlson, President of the Population Council, said that the biggest globalized change of all was the "demographic transition", which entailed a society's change from a situation of high to low birth and death rates. The international community could help in the transition by lowering infant mortality, educating more of the world's children, and discouraging discrimination against women.

Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, Professor at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, said that the population dimension had not been fully addressed in the "Agenda". Education should not be a precondition for democracy, because illiterates exercised their rights in the same way as did educated people.

Kazuo Chiba, Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and former Chairman of the Council and of the Contracting Parties of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), said that the "Agenda" would serve as a good basis for future discussion, but ways and means to resolve the issues of development had yet to be determined.

Ella Cisneros, President of the Together Foundation for Global Unity, Caracas, Venezuela, said that globalization was a process of internationalization of a new system being created, although nobody yet knew its name.

Cho Soon, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Planning of the Republic of Korea, said the process of globalization referred to integrating the world into a single market. It was driven by rapid technological progress, particularly in the fields of telecommunications and information, by the upsurge of activities of transnational corporations and by political change characterized by the demise of socialism as a development model.

Pierre Defraigree, Director for North/South Relations at the European Commission, cited two important positive trends: first, development was really taking place; and second, thanks to the UN, a common perception of, and political consensus for, the path that development should take was emerging.

Francis Deng, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D. C., said that development should be seen as a process of self-enhancement from within. The degree to which a society could effectively generate development would depend on factors influencing its self-esteem and confidence.

Norman Girvan Director of the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, said that a partnership for sustainable development should involve more than the traditional public and private sectors. It must involve a "third sector", to be composed of NGOs, small farms and other grassroots economic initiatives.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, Permanent Representative of France to the Western European Union, said that globalization was inevitable and desirable and had formidable effects on the structure of the nation State. There could not be development in the world of globalization without belonging to a community, and those communities could not become "exclusivists".

Catherine Gwin, Vice-President of the Overseas Development Council in Washington, D. C., suggested the merger of UN development funds into a single emergency and development assistance agency, or the strengthening of the resident coordinator system, which would include "reinventing" the UN Development Programme as a streamlined coordinator of UN programmes.

Ryokichi Hirono of Seikei University in Tokyo, Japan, pointed to the development of East Asia, which he believed could potentially serve as a model for other countries. He stressed the role played by Governments in that region in building social and economic infrastructures and protecting the environment.

Helio Jaguaribe de Mattos, Dean of the Institute of Political and Social Studies, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, believed that to the extent that the masses were educated, they would be less likely to accept dictatorships. Therefore, education was crucial to the development process.

Paul Kennedy, Director of International Security Studies of the Department of History, Yale University, said that development was the most difficult and the most central issue for the future of the international order; it had no clear definition. The real issue was how to relate the globalization process to the desperately poor inhabitants of the planet. "Peaceful change through development" was needed.

Lawrence R. Klein, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and 1980 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, said countries must keep their eyes on reaching full employment, rather than on reaching zero inflation. Harmonization of international policies did not imply that countries should have the same policies, but rather that their policies should fit together.

Prince Alfred von Liechtenstein, President of the Vienna Academy for the Study of the Future, said that the world's decision makers must understand that changing the course of globalization to one of sustainable development, whatever the definition of that term, was fundamental to the survival of humanity.

Wangari Maathai, Coordinator of the Green Belt Movement--a project founded by the National Council of Women of Kenya--in discussing "a new partnership for global development", detailed "bottlenecks" preventing development in Africa, which must be removed.

Charles William Maynes, Editor of Foreign Policy, said that the world desperately needed the creation of some mechanism, either through reform of existing institutions or creation of new ones, to provide leadership and direction in the development field. The Economic and Social Council should create a formal UN council of economic advisers to report annually on concrete ways to promote development and growth.

Sigrun Mogedal, Director of the Centre for Partnership in Development in Oslo, Norway, said that Governments that were marginalized in the global arena must be strengthened. NGOs must be allowed to act in civil society, correcting the State when needed and mobilizing support for development.

Julius Nyerere, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania and current Chairman of the South Centre, said the "Agenda" must recognize the fact of a North-South divide, and must deal with its consequences, as well as seek to redress the imbalance. He wanted a plan of action to end poverty throughout the world. There must not be a universal development policy prescription.

General Olusegun Obasanjo, former Head of State of Nigeria and Chairman of Africa Leadership Forum, speaking on development, peace and security, said that a comprehensive approach to these symbiotically related issues must be carried out either by a new "development security council" or the existing Security Council.

Antonella Picchio, Professor of Economics at the University of Modena, Italy, said that human sustainable development required more courage in changing values and theories. Women should contribute to the process as actors and not as victims. Attention to women's health should be comprehensive and should not focus exclusively on their reproductive activities.

Jan Pronk, Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, speaking on the theme of "coordination and institutional support: role of the UN system", called for a post of Deputy-Secretary-General for economic affairs to be created, with the incumbent accountable to the "economic window" of the Security Council.

Havelock Ross-Brewster, Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank, said the present coordination mechanisms in the UN system were centred on the Economic and Social Council and the UN Secretariat. He proposed creation of a development council--involving the "Group of Seven" industrialized countries, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the Group of 77-having a status similar to that of the Security Council.

Hans Singer, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, called for a global overview of structural adjustment programmes in which the UN could play a role. A major problem was that these programmes were constructed on a country-by-country basis, with no coordination, which led to such phenomena as over-saturation of commodity markets.

Frances Stewart, Director of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford University, England, said that globalization had essentially taken the form of an increased role for the international markets. Unfortunately, global and market forces destroyed rather than created safety nets for those who were marginalized.

A special message from Crown Prince El Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan stated that the "Agenda" should explicitly recognize the need to coordinate and achieve a more appropriate balance between the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council.

Hans-Helmut Taake, Director of the German Institute for Development Policy, said that reasonable and effective solutions to debt problems could be found only on the basis of a case-by-case approach. A country's debt service should not exceed its economic efficiency and repayment capacity.

Makoto Taniguchi Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said the UN should establish a creative and constructive North-South dialogue since, in the post-cold-war era, major threats to world peace would derive from global issues, such as extreme poverty in poorer countries and environmental degradation.

Ted Turner, Chairman of the Board and President of the Turner Broadcasting System in Atlanta, Georgia, said that inasmuch as two thirds of the world lived in the "third world", it was in fact "the first world". There had been concerns that the globalization of the media could give rise to cultural imperialism. In his view, people needed to see each other in order to better understand each other.

Wang Baoliu, Minister and Special Adviser on Economic Issues at the International Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, wondered if it was fair to blame lack of development coordination on the Economic and Social Council. Recent measures to revitalize the Council, if implemented seriously, could improve the situation. The success of the revitalization exercise depended on the political will of the membership.

Xue Mouhong a Beijing University professor and Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that the UN sought to promote development in the South with, in principle, its main resources coming from the North; therefore, to play a positive role in the development process, the UN had to forge a broad consensus among Member States.