Unkept promises” “

Once again the password was “campaign against poverty”, and no end of promises and future commitments were made to this end. But now these need to be translated into concrete actions. At the summit in Davos, in Switzerland, politicians, economists, experts from non-governmental organizations, managers of multinationals, religious leaders and show business personalities debated together for five days. All underlined the urgent need for joint action by the “rich countries” to help promote the part of the planet where the great majority of mankind live and where the problems of lack of food and drinking water, disease and illiteracy persist. “WE NEED A PRAGMATIC OPTIMISM”. Concurrently with the World Economic Forum, promoted in the Swiss ski resort for over thirty years (over 2000 participants from a hundred or so countries), its counter-event, the Social Forum, opened in Porto Alegre, in Brazil. Eschewing the “conference” style of the WEF, it assumes the form of a popular event (over 80,000 enrolments from all over the world), in which activists from the international volunteer service organizations and “sheriffs” of the environment, representatives of national Caritas agencies, government leaders and militants of movements involved in social promotion meet informally together. Yet a common thread between Davos and Porto Alegre emerged as never before this year and helped to bring them closer together: namely, the attempt to propose a new form of world governance in response to the real challenge of globalization, which not only impacts on the economy, but also has considerable social and cultural repercussions and has something to do with the impetuous demographic dynamics now unfolding in the five continents. The eyes of all those who believe, among other things, that now is the time for the “responsibility of difficult decisions”, to quote the title of the forum promoted by Klaus Schwab, were focused on the Swiss happening. Schwab declared: “This meeting is taking place at a crucial time, with a large number of ‘debutants’, from the President of the European Commission to that of the Palestinian Authority, and the new leader of the Ukraine. Davos may serve to build new beginnings and what we need is a pragmatic optimism”. GET-TOGETHER OF ECONOMISTS, POLITICALS LEADERS AND “starS”. Leading political personalities arrived in the little Swiss mountain resort. They included British premier Tony Blair, who holds the revolving presidency of the G8 and opened the work of the Forum, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder and former US President Bill Clinton. The protagonists also included representatives of the European Union: the President of the Commission, José Manuel Durao Barroso, and the President of the Parliament, Josep Borrell. Guests invited to the Davos meeting, held from 26 to 30 January, also included the newly elected President of Ukraine Victor Yushenko, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula and Turkish premier Recep Tayyp Erdogan; captains of industry such as Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Lord Browne (BP), who were joined by the major exponents of Swiss industry and the world of finance. And then there were the show business stars, from Bono to Peter Gabriel and Sharon Stone, who, in a theatrical coup, offered 10,000 dollars “to purchase mosquito nets to fight malaria, one of the most tragic disasters in Africa today”. As usual at Davos everything was spoken of: from economic strategies to high finance, from “marriages” between software companies to the price of cereals in America and Asia, from humanitarian aid (South-East Asia, after the tsunami disaster, was on everyone’s lips) to the remission of the debts of the poor countries, from banking legislation to the problems of the UNO and the World Trade Organization. URGENT NEEDS AND PROMISES TO BE KEPT. At this forum a great deal of emphasis was placed on the “ills that are killing Africa”: apart from malaria and Aids, the lack of drinking water, the lack of investments in education, and the lack of infrastructures, which are considered the first step to help the economy grow and increase material prosperity. The issues raised also included those underlined in the Report on the millennium objectives, recently presented at UN headquarters in New York: poverty reduction through targeted projects of agricultural and commercial development; the boosting of efforts to provide everyone with food, drinking water and medicine; the renewed commitment to ensure that every child has access to schooling; the safeguard of women’s rights; and the protection of the natural heritage, understood as “environment for man”. There was no shortage of promises, first and foremost that of cancelling the foreign debt of the poor countries. But, as recalled by the economist who works closely with the UNO, Jeffrey Sachs, the industrialized nations had pledged in 1976 to allocate 0.7% of their GDP to development aid: since then only Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden have kept their promise. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1359 N.ro relativo : 8 Data pubblicazione : 02/02/2005