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UNCTAD
High–level Policy Dialogue of the Economic
and Social Council
Statement High –level Policy Dialogue of the Economic and Social
Council
New York - 1º July 2002
Mr. Secretary-General,
Mr. President,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The fantastic image of people demolishing the Berlin Wall with their
bare hands or makeshift tools was to become the visual symbol of the
exhilarating promises of the 90´s. It was an era to abolish all
barriers - barriers dividing people, by ending apartheid and the
ideological confrontation of the Cold War, and barriers dividing
economies, through globalization and liberalization. But 12 years
later, the barriers are returning, with statesmen discussing how to
erect legal and political walls against economic refugees and poor
immigrants, Governments planning fences against suicide terrorists
and rich countries raising new barriers to steel, agricultural and
other sensitive imports.
Of course, not all walls are alike. They can form a prison or a
cage, as in Berlin, or they can provide necessary defence or
protection. But whether justified or not, they are almost always an
admission of failure to find lasting solutions to the problems at
hand.
One of the most insidious types of walls are the barriers we build
inside our minds against unpleasant realities and immovable
problems. Some of us in Monterrey last March tried to draw the
world´s attention to the despair and suffering of the millions of
innocent Argentineans who are being punished by the misdeeds of
their Governments. Many of us urged prompt action to avoid the
contagion. But now, more than three months later, the disease has
spread, to Uruguay; Paraguay; my own country, Brazil; and other
Latin American countries. In Argentina, the sense of hopelessness
and abandon is fast evolving into dark and chaotic agony. I know
there are no simplistic, miraculous cures, and I am not playing the
blame game. But in the face of such manmade catastrophes, our first
and most urgent action should be to relieve the suffering and
contain the damage.
Even after several episodes of painful crises in emerging markets,
the international community still lacks a realistic strategy for
dealing with financial instability and the debt problem. Just
"muddling through" cost Latin America a lost decade in the 1980s;
and a similar lack of orderly procedures for handling international
debt has now been exposed in Argentina. Uncertainty continues to
surround the modalities of official intervention in the financial
crises, adding to volatility in market sentiment. Current
arrangements appear to encourage pro-cyclical policy responses,
which risks only deepening the crises. It is time to end such ad hoc
approaches and to get on with a genuine reform of the international
financial architecture. Only multilateral action under IMF
leadership can effectively deal with the debt problem; only
cooperation among the major economic powers can deliver the degree
of currency stability needed by developing countries to ensure that
trade and financial flows complement their domestic efforts.
Mr. President,
Trade has always been one of the channels for transmitting
recessions in the industrial countries to the developing countries.
We saw a recurrence of this phenomenon just last year, when the
United States economic slowdown was the central reason for the
sharpest contraction in trade performance worldwide since 1982. The
loss in value was three times higher than the reduction in volume,
hitting the commodity-exporting developing countries particularly
hard. More than ever, the international community as a whole, and
not least the developing countries, needs a strong multilateral
trading system and the successful delivery of the Doha promises to
inject as much growth and development potential as possible into the
negotiations. This is why we were dismayed by recent threats to
those promises arising from a disturbing sequence of protectionist
measures. I once wrote in a book edited by Professor Jagdish
Bhagwati in honour of Arthur Dunkel that, after the Uruguay Round,
we were living in a paradoxical situation. Developing countries had
finally persuaded themselves that they should be among the
staunchest defenders of multilateralism, because they needed it more
than the others. But the same reason why they needed the system -
their vulnerability and lack of power - was also why they could do
little to save it on their own. This is as true today as it was
then. We must all resist protectionism everywhere, but it is only
the major trading powers, which account for the largest share of
world trade, that can really make a difference, by exercising
responsible leadership.
Among the main victims of the shortcomings of the trading system are
the commodity-dependent LDCs. These are the nations caught in a
poverty trap in which pervasive poverty ends up perpetuating itself.
UNCTAD´s recent LDC Report 2002, the first comprehensive analysis of
poverty in the least developed countries, has shown that the
proportion of the population living on less than a dollar a day has
been underestimated in the poorest countries, particularly in
Africa, and that the number of people living in extreme poverty has
actually doubled in the past 30 years. But the Report also
demonstrates that there is a golden opportunity to radically change
the situation because at very low levels of income per capita, a
doubling of average household incomes can rapidly slash $1-a-day
poverty rates. The way forward is with national policies that are
development-oriented and outward-looking, in that they seek to
manage integration with the world economy through trade and
investment. But to be successful, these policies need to be
complemented by increased debt relief; more, and more effective,
aid; a renewal and recasting of international commodity policy; and
greater South-South cooperation.
In each of these three challenges - financial crises in Argentina
and Latin America, the negotiation of a more development-friendly
trading system, and achieving the Millennium Development Goal of
slashing extreme poverty in the poorest countries - we need the
decisive and responsible leadership of those who have the power to
create a tolerant, pluralistic and generous multilateral agenda. It
is much better to take this road than to put up more walls and
fences, however strong and invulnerable they may look, for, as
Gildor the elf tells Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: "The wide world
is all about you: You can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for
ever fence it out".
Thank you, Mr. President.
...
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