Statement to the Third Committee
by Mr. José Antonio Ocampo, Under Secretary General for DESA
Delivered on
Chairperson,
Let me congratulate you on your election
as Chairperson of this important session of the Third Committee. You bring to
this Committee a wealth of experience and I am confident that under your able
leadership the Committee will tackle its vast and complex agenda with gusto and
alacrity. I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my felicitations
to the other members of the bureau. You should be assured of our fullest
cooperation and assistance in your work.
In
keeping with the practice of my predecessor, Mr. Nitin Desai, who over the
years led the Department of Economic and Social Affairs with great ability, I am
most pleased to address the Third Committee for the first time in my capacity
as the Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs.
I am very much aware of the rich spectrum
of matters under the purview of this Committee, from gender and human rights to
questions addressed by the newly formed Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,
to drugs and crime control, to the range of other aspects of social
development. Today I would like to share with you my thoughts on the importance
of integrated social and economic policies in dealing with all of these
matters. Mr. Johan Scholvinck, Director of the Division for Social Policy and
Development, will then comment specifically on the items on the Committee’s
agenda on social development, including questions relating to the world social
situation, the follow-ups to the World Summit for Social Development and the
Madrid World Assembly on Ageing, and the situations of other special groups.
Chairperson,
As
I will elaborate in more detail this afternoon in my statement to the Second
Committee, we are meeting at a time when the world
economic recovery is gaining traction and the short-term outlook seems
promising. Nevertheless, the mediocre growth of the world economy for the
past two years has impeded progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.
Furthermore,
the inevitable preoccupation with short-term economic considerations may have
distracted us from tackling the long-term, largely social, development
objectives of the Millennium Declaration. The challenge is to ensure that
growth is equitable, inclusive, pro-development and supportive of equality
between men and women. I will devote the rest of my statement to this
challenge, which lies at the core of the work of your Committee.
To
meet this challenge, an essential step is to shed the prevailing hierarchical
approach to economic and social policies, in which the economic is considered
“hard” and the social “soft”. This approach should be substituted by one, in
which social development goals are fully and effectively integrated into
economic policies. In order to reduce poverty, eliminate extreme poverty, and
to enhance equity, social integration and gender equality, we must be able to
reconcile economic growth, employment generation and active social
policies. This requires a consistent
macroeconomic framework and an equity-enhancing productive development
strategy. Social policies cannot be regarded merely as a mechanism to
compensate for the adverse social effects that the functioning of the economic
system may generate. Indeed, social
policies can almost never substitute for social inequities that are generated
by what, from a social perspective, may be regarded as a malfunctioning of the
economic system.
The
links between social development and economic policies are multidimensional.
Social cohesion and an adequate accumulation of human capital by women and men
are essential prerequisites for economic growth. Given their central role in
human capital formation, gender-sensitive social investment policies are
crucial to reconciling growth and social development. In this powerful sense,
social investment is and should be regarded by economic policy makers as an
essential productive factor.
It
should be recognized, on the other hand, that a sound macroeconomic environment
is a necessary condition for a successful social policy. There is now a
consensus that macroeconomic instability is harmful for both growth and equity.
Episodes of instability, such as rising inflation, recessions and unsustainable
trade deficits, disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, and the reversals
of the adverse social effects of crises tend to be slow and incomplete. In addition, instability undermines savings
and investment, and adversely affects the functioning of the State sector,
thereby reducing long run growth and the potential for productive job creation.
Likewise, technology policies and
productive strategies should include tools to pursue the goals of social
development. Failure to address the differential impact of technology, trade
liberalization and productive restructuring on different social groups may
increase historical inequalities, reducing the ability of groups adversely
affected to contribute to the intentions of economic and social policies. Thus,
trade liberalization cannot and should not be pursued as an end in itself, but
rather in ways that help equity and poverty reduction.
Social
policies should focus on supporting an inclusive growth process. The best
social outcome is one in which women and men share the benefits but also
contribute to economic development. Social policies contribute to both equity
and growth when they seek to strengthen the weakest, to accommodate the less
adapted, to endow the poorer agents and to reinsert the losers as active
economic citizens.
Authorities
responsible for macroeconomic, trade and productive development policies have
frequently not been accountable for the social effects of their decisions. The
original stabilization and structural programmes rarely addressed their social
consequences. At the World Social Summit in
Chairperson,
Social
progress is the result of three basic factors: a long-term social policy aimed
at improving equity and guaranteeing inclusion; economic growth that generates
adequate quantities of quality employment for women and men; and the reduction
of the productivity gaps between different economic activities and agents.
Globalization, whatever its merits, has increased tensions in all these realms.
It has skewed the demand for labour towards high skills, generated new tensions
between competitiveness and employment, increased dualism in productive
structures and created new social risks. Given these tensions, social
strategies must focus on three critical areas: education, employment and social
protection.
Education
is not only a human right, but also the primary vehicle for lifting
marginalized adults and children out of poverty and for enabling them to obtain
the means by which they can participate fully in their communities. Given the
correlation between present educational disparities and future income
disparities, both within and between countries, it is imperative that
developing countries make every effort to increase the contribution of public
resources to education. In order to
overcome existing gender gaps, the education of girls should receive particular
attention.
An
inadequate generation of quality jobs can defeat the best efforts in the field
of education. When employment generation is low and skill-biased, income gaps
between skilled and unskilled workers tend to widen. Unfortunately, the
inadequate generation of quality employment seems to be one of the most
problematic features of the prevailing economic system. In this context, the
adaptability of labour to technical change and the business cycle is crucial,
but increased labour market flexibility is only one of the possible instruments
to achieve this objective and it is a sub-optimal one under several
circumstances. Thus, to build such adaptability, more emphasis should be given
to strong human resources training schemes, to institutions that enhance
cooperation between labour and employers, both at the national level and within
firms, to adequate social protection, and to a prudent minimum wage
policy.
The
promotion of social dialogue plays a crucial role in this regard. The process
of policy-making can be as influential as its substance in creating the
conditions for the achievement of more and better employment. Strengthening
procedures and institutions for social dialogue, including specific proposals
for enhanced employer and worker organizations, is crucial.
Let
me now turn to the third area, social protection.
Improved social security systems are key elements of an integrated approach to
eradicating poverty and improving equity. To be effective, these systems must
provide for universal coverage and solidarity and cover basic risks in an
integrated way –particularly nutrition, health, ageing and unemployment. We must
recognize, of course, that in countries where the labour force is largely rural
or informal, such schemes can be developed only gradually. Moreover, social
security systems do not come without costs. In many countries, such costs are
associated with population ageing, changing family structures, increasing costs
of medical care, persistent unemployment and the abuses and disincentives they
may generate. Addressing the differential impact of such schemes on women must
be a guiding principle, since women are both beneficiaries and commonly carry
the burden of family and informal care when social security systems are either
absent, restructured or downsized.
Given
the existing lack of integration between social and economic policies, much
attention has recently been been focused on providing safety nets in economic
crises. According to the framework I have outlined, more attention needs to be
paid to developing integrated social and economic policies that aim at
preventing the crises in the first place and developing permanent social
protection systems. In the meantime, of course, affordable and appropriate
safety nets are needed to reassure populations that the negative consequences
of economic reforms and downswings in some activities will not fall
disproportionately on them. However, such safety nets should not be viewed as a
substitute for basic social policies, and their financing during crises should
not crowd-out spending on human capital or on more permanent schemes of social
protection. Ideally, they should evolve into elements of a more permanent
social security system.
Finally,
new institutions are required to support the development of integrated policy
frameworks. These institutions are necessary to encourage social actors to
speak for the poor, coordinate economic and social authorities, make the social
effects of economic policy highly visible and, most importantly, effectively
mainstream social objectives into economic policy-making. Explicit recognition
and analysis of the effects of public sector budgets and tax reforms on equity,
of monetary policies on employment, of trade policies on regions and social
groups, of technology and credit policies on small firms, and the explicit
incorporation of such analysis into policy design in all of these areas, are
some of the required effects to effectively mainstream social objectives into
economic policy. The lack of such institutions is a deeply felt problem and a
major impediment to progress in many countries.
Chairperson,
Rising
inequality is making the social integration goals of the World Social Summit
all the more difficult to achieve. Yet it is essential that every effort be
made to develop, reinforce and sustain institutions and mechanisms that encourage
social integration. Social cohesion and solidarity is a fundamental condition
of social progress and economic development.
More
generally, fuller progress in tackling the agenda of the World Social Summit
will require a major effort at all levels –national, regional and
international—in accepting, promoting and demanding that priority be given to
more effective social investment efforts.
Progress towards achieving the eighth goal of the Millennium Declaration
–building a global partnership for development—is especially pertinent. The most important components of this goal
relate to trade, debt relief and aid. In
this regard, the High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development latter this
month will provide the General Assembly an important opportunity to review the
follow-up to the Monterrey Consensus and to chart the next steps by all
stakeholders to ensure increased domestic and international resources for economic and social development.
Chairperson,
I
have tried to make a case for integrating social and economic policies, for
linking growth with equity and for making the social dimensions of economic
policy explicit in the decision making process. Development is a long-term,
complex pursuit. It cannot be approached from a purely technocratic vantage
point. As guardians of the social agenda, you and your colleagues in the Third
Committee have a special responsibility in ensuring this agenda is better
understood and is effectively translated into action. My Department and I look
forward to collaborating with you in this crucial endeavour.