UN Millennium DeclarationA declaration adopted by world leaders at the close of the Millennium Summit noted the particular needs confronting Africa at the start of the 21st century. It pledged that the international community would provide "full support" to emerging African democracies, strengthen Africa's capacity to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and take "special measures" to address poverty, including debt cancellation, improved market access and increased flows of official development assistance and foreign direct investment. It also outlined a series of specific international development goals, including: -- Halve by 2015 the proportion of people living on less than $1 per day, the proportion of people without clean water and the proportion of people living in hunger. -- Reduce by 2015 infant mortality rates by 67 per cent and maternal mortality rates by 75 per cent, and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases. -- Provide by 2015 primary education to every boy and girl. -- Achieve a "significant improvement" in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. -- Provide duty- and quota-free market access by developed countries for "essentially all" exports from least developed countries, implement debt relief and increase official development assistance for countries committed to poverty alleviation. -- Reduce emissions of "greenhouse" gases through concerted efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol by 2002. --Press for implementation of the protocols on biological diversity and desertification, particularly in Africa. -- Halt the unsustainable exploitation of water resources and improve cooperation in cases of natural or human-made disasters. -- Combat all forms of violence against women and implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. -- Increase popular participation in governance and ensure press freedom. -- Strengthen protection of vulnerable populations in emergencies and increase assistance to refugees and internally displaced persons. -- Encourage ratification of the international Convention on the Rights of the Child and related protocols. |
African leaders urge stronger UN
Photos: UN / Eskinder Debebe & Susan Markisz
Globalization, peacekeeping reform and the role of the UN in international affairs dominated the debate among world leaders at the Millennium Summit in New York on 6-8 September. Many leaders from Africa and other developing regions decried the growing economic and technological gap between North and South and called on industrialized countries to accelerate debt relief, open their markets to developing countries' exports and greatly increase foreign direct investment and official development assistance. Others called for a global mobilization of resources to combat HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa.
Over three days of speeches, roundtables and private discussions, this largest gathering of world leaders in history -- 100 heads of state, 47 heads of government and 44 foreign ministers and other senior government representatives -- considered the state of humanity at the end of the millennium. Their deliberations will help define the human agenda into the next. Excerpts follow.
President Ismael Omar Guelleh, Djibouti
The economic brush fire that is sweeping our planet is called globalization.
It favours the deregulation of markets, free trade and privatization. But
in a number of world regions, in particular Africa, many poor developing
countries find themselves trapped in a spiral of impoverishment and social
disintegration....
The Secretary-General has thrown us an immense challenge: to reduce by 2015 the number of inhabitants of the planet living in extreme poverty by half, representing close to 1 billion people. This must occur, everyone agrees, within the context of a sacrosanct market economy that is sweeping the globe. But the system of free trade is cruel and merciless. The multilateral institutions therefore must maintain order and ensure the application of international norms so that transparency and democratic equity reign. If not, we risk succumbing to market tyranny and international chaos.
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Prime Minister Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili, Lesotho
The attainment of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa must be accompanied by
corresponding economic gains and reduction of poverty. Yet the majority
of us who have embraced democracy are yet to reap the fruits of this change....
We are unable to meet the challenges of globalization and to take advantage
of the opportunities it offers for development and the relief of poverty.
We are similarly unable to take full advantage of the opportunities presented
by advances in information and communication technology.... The defining
challenge of the 21st century is how to close the present gap in development
between the developed and the developing nations.
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Prime Minister Tony Blair, UK
There is a dismal record of failure in Africa on the part of the developed
world that shocks and shames our civilization. Twenty-one of the 44 countries
in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by conflict, which undermines efforts
at development. Even worse, ten times as many people died of AIDS in Africa
last year as were killed in all the continent's wars combined. Nowhere are
more people dying needlessly from starvation, from disease, from conflict.
Nowhere are more children being denied the opportunities that will transform
the lives of their contemporaries elsewhere in the world.
We should use this unique summit for a concrete purpose: to start the process of agreeing a way forward for Africa. We need a new partnership for Africa, in which Africans lead but the rest of the world is committed; where all the problems are dealt with not separately but together in a coherent and unified plan. Britain stands ready to play our part with the rest of the world and the leaders of Africa.
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President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria
The new millennium is being shaped by forces of globalization that are turning
our world into a village. Thus, the new millennium will demand of us, more
than ever before, to live and work together as members of one human family.
But up to now, globalization has meant prosperity only for the chosen few
of the industrialized countries. For us in the developing world, globalization
will continue to ring hollow and [be] of dubious value until we see its
positive effects on our fortunes. In short, globalization has to be seen
to mean the eradication of poverty. And then, and only then, will the true
spirit of good neighbourliness reign in the new global village.
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President Festus Mogae, Botswana
I stand before you to claim the dubious distinction of being leader of a
country most seriously affected by HIV/AIDS in the whole world. The fight
against HIV/AIDS is therefore for us the challenge of the millennium. In
the last twenty-five years we attained human development indices that were
the envy of many, practiced multi-party democracy, maintained an open society
and ran an open economy. Now we daily witness elderly mothers mourning the
untimely deaths of their beloved children, babies born today only to be
buried the next. Our life expectancy is calculated to have been reduced
from sixty-seven to forty-seven years.
As developing countries, we cannot deal on our own with education and sensitization, testing and counselling, adolescent reproductive health, prevention of mother-to-child transmissions, acquisition of retroviral drugs and medication and care for the affected population.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a global problem, which calls for concerted action on the part of the international community as a whole. One more day of delayed action is a day too late for thousands of our people. Our people are crying out for help. Let us respond while there is still time.
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President Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal
The drama of the debt is not that it has still not been either repaid or
cancelled, but that it is a recurrent malady that will keep on coming back
if its fundamental causes are not eliminated....
At its July summit meeting in Lomé, the OAU [Organization of African Unity] decided to go beyond the goal of simply ending Africa's indebtedness, to also try to understand how we became indebted. That way we can effectively attack the causes of this pernicious and impoverishing form of dependence. Even though everyone talks about the debt, its rescheduling and cancellation, none of our countries knows, as a good accountant should know, how we became indebted. We also don't know why the more we pay back and the more the creditors write off, the more we actually become indebted....
The world must stop being a world where paternalist creditors meet timid and sickly debtors who dare to ask only for leniency, moratoriums and cancellation.
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President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria
The idea of democracy is making its way in the world and is beginning to
infuse the political life of our countries.... But in contrast, international
life is distancing itself ever more from democratic practices, concentrating
decision-making powers in the hands of the super-powers or at best those
of the developed countries....
Globalization certainly is bringing the peoples of the world closer together, but it excludes the notion of solidarity, tending to replace it with a more rigid and Spartan concept of competitiveness.... The UN remains for us the one organization capable of listening to our fears and trying to find adequate responses.
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President Jerry Rawlings, Ghana
In today's globalized world, we must not only ensure social justice internally;
we must also incorporate it in our global interactions.... The absence of
strong and resilient institutions in regions like Africa has encouraged
corruption from within and without.... Africa, in particular, has suffered
especially severe damage as seemingly the most corrupt continent in the
world.
Admittedly, Africa may have had some notably corrupt leaders and governments.... Let us ask ourselves: where do the proceeds of this corruption end up? In the vaults of the financial and banking institutions of the Western world. For every dollar of corrupt money that is kept in Western banks, one African child dies, two African children starve and three African children suffer from disease and ignorance. There will be less corruption in Africa if there is no place to hide the proceeds of corruption or if the proceeds of corruption, once uncovered, are returned to their real owners, the people of Africa.
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Deputy Prime Minister Eriya Kategaya, Uganda
Globalization presents many opportunities, but has always presented unfair
terms of trade. In our view, globalization has always existed. The era of
the slave trade where human beings were exchanged for trinkets and whisky
was a form of globalization, but an unfair one. It was an exchange of value
for no value. What therefore is needed, is fair terms of trade.
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Foreign Minister Jakaya M. Kikwete, Tanzania
There is need for the United Nations to be more involved in matters relating
to social and economic development. Perhaps nowhere is the problem more
compelling than in Africa where there are 33 of the 48 poorest countries
in the world. It is no accident that the overreaching development objective
of Africa remains the eradication of poverty, ignorance and disease.
The United Nations has always been a good advocate of the poor and the weak in their search for meaningful development. We recall the numerous initiatives made by the United Nations from the 1970s to create a new international economic order and make the international community respond to the plight of the poor. Expectations that globalization and liberalization would lead to increased growth and development have yet to produce tangible results for developing countries. We look to the UN to be in the forefront in ensuring that economic issues are put at the centre of its activities.
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President Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique
Debt cancellation per se cannot guarantee the eradication of poverty. It
needs to be supplemented by better access to world markets, provision of
adequate development assistance, and by foreign direct investments. We believe
that preferential treatment for developing countries' products needs to
be enhanced in order to ensure income generation, creation of employment
and improvement of social conditions of the population....
The United Nations remains the only global institution with the legitimacy and scope that derive from its universal character and a mandate that encompasses development, security, human rights and the environment. It is, therefore, our belief that, in the context of globalization, the United Nations can play a vital role in the search for an effective integration of developing countries in the global economy, in such a way that these countries can derive concrete benefits from global growth and development.
