AS WRITTEN

THE WORLD SUMMIT FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Copenhagen, 10 March 1995

Statement by the Commonwealth Secretary-General,
Chief Emeka Anyaoku


 Mr President

 This World Summit convened to address the issues of poverty, unemployment 
and social exclusion is, as many speakers before me have emphasised, 
timely. But more importantly it is also a tremendous opportunity. Our 
distinguished Secretary-General, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali has rightly 
defined the task of the Summit as one of rethinking the notion of 
collective social responsibility and has enjoined us to work towards a new 
social contract to bring hope to nations, and men and women around our 
globe. It is an opportunity for the world to make a new beginning towards 
changing the nature and character of international co-operation.

 I do not want to dwell on all the social problems you have already debated 
at length. The dismal and well documented statistics of world poverty have 
yet again been laid bare for all to hear and see. I therefore want to focus 
on one general but necessary point: how to ensure that the pronouncement 
from this Summit can be translated into practical action.

 If this Summit is not to be another missed opportunity, a beginning must 
be made here and now to stress the importance of the necessary political 
will without which there can be no follow-up action for a far-reaching 
global socio-economic transformation. And we cannot successfully mobilise 
such requisite political will unless we first take our common humanity 
seriously.

 The Marshall Plan by which the United States contributed so generously to 
the reconstruction of Europe after the last war was in no small part 
actuated by the feeling of kinship on the part of Americans for Western 
Europeans. There have also been other examples of major international 
deployment of resources for critical economic recovery or reconstruction 
programmes which can be said to have been similarly facilitated by a keen 
sense of shared interests between the peoples of the nations involved.

 What the world needs today is a similar feeling of fellowship. I remember 
well that frame of mind which in the days of apartheid made many millions 
of people the world over to feel that the assault on the human dignity of 
those living South of the Limpopo was an assault on humanity everywhere.

 Experience has taught us that the feeling of ‘otherness’ towards people 
who are either different from us or live outside our immediate community, 
often stands in the way of full acceptance of our common humanity. Indeed 
we are today still witnessing in many parts of the world actual or 
potential conflicts arising from intolerance and divisive tendencies of 
various kinds - ethnic, religious and social.

 The reality of our common humanity inspires the activities of the 
Commonwealth with its 51 diverse member states. At the individual national 
level, some Commonwealth countries, have demonstrated that given the 
necessary determination, ways can be found for significantly improving, 
even within very meagre resources, the wretched lot of some of the poorest 
of the poor within their societies. I give you the example of Bangladesh 
with the Grameen Bank and other similar organisations. At the multilateral 
level, the activities of the Commonwealth in the area of this Summit's 
primary concern have been sketched out in the paper which the Commonwealth 
Secretariat has circulated.

 I therefore return to the issue of the political will and the 
determination reguired to ensure that the outcome of this                       
Summit will truly make a difference to the lives of those whose conditions 
have brought us together. Speaking globally, our humanity does not lack the 
knowledge of how the ills being debated here can be cured. Nor do we lack 
the material resources with which to perform better in our pursuit of 
sustainable development. To appreciate this, we only need to contemplate 
the volumes of related scientific and other studies conducted in many 
national and international institutions in both the public and the private 
sectors; or the extent of the human and material resources with which our 
common habitat is endowed; or the innumerable resolutions and declarations 
of support for the goals of this conference that have over the years been 
adopted under the auspices of various national and intentional 
organisations.

And yet the ills continue. Their enormity and the fact that they are 
getting worse, not better, have been well articulated in the many 
statements that have so far been made at this Summit.

 Unless we can mobilize the necessary political will to match words with 
deeds that will give meaning and content to the reality of our common 
humanity, we will not be able to reverse the continuation of what is so 
clearly an unacceptable situation. I mean the situation in which humanity 
continues to refuse to use all the resources available to it for curing 
itself of the scourge of poverty, despair and social disintegration with 
which it is increasingly afflicted.

 Mr President No grouping of countries can have a greater interest in the 
success of this Summit than the Commonwealth. About one half of the world's  
absolute poor and illiterate adults live in Commonwealth countries. So do 
more than half of the world's malnourished children who die before the age 
of five. The Commonwealth also comprises a large number of the world's 
small developing states and these have great difficulty in achieving and 
sustaining social progress because of their narrow resource base and their 
vulnerability to a host of pressures, external and internal, including 
natural disasters and security threats.

 It goes without saying that this Summit can count on the full co-operation 
of the Commonwealth in the achievement of its objectives. The issues under 
discussion here go to the heart of international peace and security. The 
world will be building on sand if it fails to address the burning socio-
economic problems of our time urgently and imaginatively. That failure 
would be a dangerous wind to let loose; and we would all surely reap the 
whirlwind.

 The race then is against this threatening catastrophe. The challenge 
before us is to ensure that the world wins that race.