Our responsibilities ” “” “

The document is called “Global Governance. Our responsibility to make globalization an opportunity for everyone”. Commissioned by the members of the Commission of the Episcopal Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) from an ad hoc working group, it represents the ideal continuation of the work of the social Congress “Europe’s responsibility for global development” held in Brussels from 30 March to 1 April 2000, a few months after the failure of the summit of the World Trade organization (WTO) in Seattle. The text of the document was presented in Brussels in recent days by Michel Camdessus, former director general of the International Monetary Fund, who coordinated the working group, and by Msgr. Noël Treanor, secretary general of COMECE. “In the globalized world of the future – the document declares – humanity needs to accept new values with a view to alleviating the sufferings of the poor. The hope of this new view of the world inspired this report on global governance”. “Global governance – the document explains – is the key to guaranteeing that the positive impact of globalization be reinforced and its potentially negative aspects mitigated”. The affirmation is made, bearing in mind that “the efforts to reduce poverty and inequality through ever more limited official aid to development have so far produced very modest results. The same may be said of the international efforts to reduce environmental damage”. The COMECE document proposes a series of basic values and principles as the foundation for a system of global governance: “human dignity, responsibility, solidarity, subsidiarity, coherence, transparency and accountability . The Church and the other religious communities have a central role to play in the promotion of these values”. The documents explains that “the system of global governance should not propose to take the place of national governments and regional organizations such as the European Union. It cannot replace them; rather, it must acquire legitimacy from them”. From the institutional point of view, “the creation of a system of global governance requires that the mandates of the existing international organizations be re-examined”: World Trade Organization, Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, International Labour Organization, Environmental Programme of the United Nations. The document lastly recommends “the establishment of a Global Governance Group (3G). This Group ought to tackle horizontal questions at the global level and guarantee a minimum of coordination and coherence within the system. The contribution of 3G in this sense is essential, because even after an extensive reform of the current institutional framework, the problems of coherence, orientation and final arbitration would probably persist. The system of global governance would remain incomplete without this final cornerstone”. The document recommends that the members of this group should be “the heads of government. They are the only players able to tackle horizontal questions in a credible and effective fashion. The Global Governance Group also has a need to be legitimated by an acceptable form of representation of all nations. One solution might be that of constituting the Group on the basis of the twenty-four heads of government of the countries with executive directors on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank”. This report, commented the presidency of COMECE (Msgr. Josef Homeyer, president, Msgr. Attilio Nicora and Msgr. Adrianus van Luyn, vice presidents), “is being presented at a crucial moment for the future of global security and hence for governance. When the authors decided to present it in September 2001, they did not imagine that this publication would have appeared in a period of great anguish, suffering and uncertainty”. The presidency of COMECE recalls that “military interventions and security measures alone will not resolve a profound malaise in many regions of the world. Poverty, inequality, hunger and humiliation, wherever they be found, are a fertile terrain for the growth of fanaticism and terrorism. Reducing the risk of terrorism thus presupposes serious and renewed efforts to promote the development of peoples”. Ignazio Ingrao