General Assembly Session 51 meeting 36

The President

In a letter contained in document A/51/366/Add.4, the Secretary-General informs me that, since the issuance of his communications dated 17 and 20 September, and 2 and 11 October 1996, Sao Tome and Principe has made the necessary payment to reduce its arrears below the amount specified in Article 19 of the Charter.

May I take it that the General Assembly duly takes note of this information?

The President

Before calling on the first speaker on this agenda item, I should like to propose, if there is no objection, that the list of speakers for the debate on this item be closed at 12 noon.

Mrs. Castro de Barish (Costa Rica)

On behalf of the Group of 77 and China, Costa Rica is pleased to express its satisfaction at your excellent and innovative performance, Sir, in the exercise of the presidency of the fifty-first session of the General Assembly.

The Group of 77 and China welcome the Bureau's decision to allocate this important item to the plenary, since it concerns the follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen. Our Group acknowledges with appreciation the initiative and effort of the Government of Chile, a member of the Group of 77, and of China in convening this Summit on subjects of such great relevance and urgency. We believe that multilateral cooperation is indispensable to meeting the fundamental challenges that affect the survival of our peoples on the eve of the twenty-first century and of the next millennium.

We would like to stress that, in accordance with the agreements reached at the World Summit, a special session of the General Assembly will be convened in the year 2000 in order to assess the implementation of those agreements. Clearly, the follow-up of the Summit by the plenary and on that occasion fully justifies such effort.

The Commission for Social Development held a special session in order to implement the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development. The Commission reviewed its mandate, its terms of reference, the composition of its membership, its scope of work and the frequency of its meetings, and it also elaborated a multi-year programme of work. In this regard, we wish to reiterate the importance that our Group attaches to the follow-up of the Summit by the Commission for Social Development. This important Commission has been strengthened by the decision to hold annual instead of biennial sessions, to expand its membership from 32 to 46, and to ensure it a minimum of eight working days so that it can better and more efficiently fulfil its mandate. We expect that the required resources will be made available.

The Group is pleased that the Commission adopted a resolution that called for the implementation of agreed measures to eradicate poverty and for strengthened international cooperation to that end, and which also called on the international community to mobilize additional financial resources that are both adequate and predictable to contribute to poverty eradication.

We must acknowledge our responsibility to leave to future generations a framework for this cooperation. True security is global. Poverty and exclusion should not be the only perspectives for two thirds of humankind. It is not possible to ignore the inequality of world development and the ever-widening gap between developed and developing countries.

Development and social justice remain an elusive dream for poor people around the world. The Group of 77 and China share this sentiment and reiterate the commitments entered into at the World Summit for Social Development. The Summit recognized that the peoples of the world have demonstrated and reiterated the urgent need to focus on critical social problems, particularly poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. The task before us is to take due account of both the underlying and structural causes and their unfortunate consequences, so as to reduce the uncertainty and insecurity of their lives. We are convinced that individuals should not only be the beneficiaries of development, but should also have the opportunity to become the agents of their own development.

Humankind has begun to recognize that poverty is not an inevitable part of the human condition. It can be conquered and eradicated from the face of the earth. We have the resources and the organizational ability to do this successfully. The issue has always been the political will of all Members of the United Nations to attain this objective and to pursue it within a framework of global partnership for development, with the aim of waging a concerted fight against poverty and its consequences. This would give globalization and interdependence a more profound dimension.

In their efforts to become integrated in the global economy, many developing countries have been compelled to undertake structural adjustments at enormous social and human cost. Although this process has adversely affected all developing countries, the African countries and the least developed countries in other parts of the world have been the most seriously affected by this critical situation.

In the absence of an external environment to support their national development efforts, many developing countries continue to languish in poverty, backwardness and stagnation, and even to experience negative economic growth. Every year, between 13 million and 18 million people, most of them children, perish from hunger and from poverty-related causes.

The Fourth World Conference on Women recognized that the eradication of poverty will require implementing and integrating strategies at the national and international levels, addressing all the critical areas of concern outlined in the Platform for Action that it adopted. The Conference emphasized, among other things, that empowering women is a critical factor in the eradication of poverty, and it gave particular priority to the situation of women living in poverty, recognizing the need to improve their access to income, education, health care and other resources.

As long as the developing countries remain on the periphery of international decision-making, which would enable them to devise global solutions to the global economic problems that affect them, this unfortunate state of affairs will continue. It needs to be faced resolutely and in a spirit of solidarity by both the developing countries and the developed countries that are Members of this world Organization. After all, the United Nations is an Organization that, because of its very nature, principles and objectives, transcends all individual or national interests to represent the interests of all. No better form of partnership has yet been proposed at the global level to address the major problems of an increasingly interdependent world.

Our Group supports the Secretary-General's System-wide Special Initiative for Africa, which reinforces the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s. A major constraint on the development efforts of these countries is the critical loss of the financial and human resources to combat poverty and underdevelopment. In an international climate in which they are unable to secure adequate levels of investment or other financial sources to promote development, they must depend almost exclusively on official development assistance. Regrettably, however, such assistance has plummeted over the past decade, dropping by as much as 25 per cent in the past four years alone.

Even more daunting, especially with regard to the heavily indebted poor countries, including those of Africa, is the continuing crisis of excessive external indebtedness. Notwithstanding the broad range of internationally supported debt-relief measures carried out over the past decade, the crisis continues to cripple the ability of these countries to generate economic growth and development. There is a critical need, therefore, to expand the current international debt strategy so that it becomes more comprehensive, development-oriented and durable.

In this regard, we welcome the approval of the Bretton Woods institutions' proposal to reduce the overall debt burden of the heavily indebted poor countries to more sustainable levels. However, to enhance the initiative's chances of success, we call on the Bretton Woods institutions to further refine it so as to make it less restrictive by, for instance, reducing the adjustment period from six to three years and by modifying eligibility requirements so as to better serve the legitimate interests of the developing countries.

We reiterate that investing in people is as vital as investing in capital. Special attention should be paid to sound basic education, to skill formation and to training, which is a lifelong undertaking that improves the transition from school to work.

The Copenhagen Declaration, adopted by all the Summit participants, stressed that development and social justice are indispensable for the achievement and maintenance of peace and security within and among our nations. Conversely, social development and social justice cannot be achieved in the absence of peace and security or of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. This basic interdependence was recognized 50 years ago in the Charter of the United Nations and has gained strength ever since.

The Group appeals to all Member States and to the United Nations system to honour their commitments, particularly with respect to the provision of adequate resources, to ensure full implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development. At the twentieth annual meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 and China, held in New York on 27 September 1996, the Ministers stressed the fact that 1996 is the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty and that the General Assembly declared the years 1997-2006 as the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty. In this context, the Ministers reaffirmed that the goal of eradicating poverty in the world is an ethical, social, political and economic imperative that can be achieved only through a multidimensional and integrated approach. They also emphasized that the commitments agreed upon at the World Summit for Social Development should be fully implemented. To this end, they look forward with interest to the special session of the General Assembly in the year 2000, which will review and appraise the outcome of the Summit with a view to considering further initiatives on the eradication of poverty.

Let us therefore make every effort to fully realize the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, with their lofty principles and commitments, to fulfil the just aspirations and urgent needs of all our peoples on a universal basis as we begin the new millennium.

Mr. Camacho-Omiste (Bolivia)

It is an honour for the delegation of Bolivia, in its capacity as coordinator of the Rio Group, to make this statement on behalf of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica -- representing the countries of Central America -- Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The Rio Group believes that at the World Summit for Social Development, one of the most important events of our times, the international community recognized the need to adopt urgent measures to check social problems.

The Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Programme of Action adopted at that time established the guidelines for the creation of a just society for all and for effectively meeting human needs, on the basis of democracy, human rights, equality, social justice, tolerance and respect for diversity.

The Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, and particularly its 10 commitments, made economic and political issues the focus of international debate. The key element of Copenhagen is the interrelationship between analysis and processes, which were previously approached in a partial and fragmented manner, and an emphasis on the fact that poverty is a worldwide concern and a threat to world peace and security.

At the conclusion of the series of high-level world Conferences organized under the auspices of the United Nations in the course of the 1990s, we noted that their common denominator was the promotion of economic and social justice, with the fundamental objective of approaching the structural causes of poverty in a concerted manner. The Declaration and Programme of Action establish an interrelationship between the outcome of the Social Summit and agreements reached prior to the World Summit on Children in 1990, followed by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992, the World Conference on Human Rights in June 1993, the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States in April and May 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development in September 1994, the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995, and the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in June 1996.

The General Assembly, at its fiftieth session, included on its agenda the item "Implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development", and in considering in plenary the report of the Summit emphasized the nature of that Conference, pointing out its role as the foundation for the elaboration of national and international social development policies.

It also decided that a revitalized Commission for Social Development, together with the Economic and Social Council and the Assembly itself, would constitute a "three-tiered intergovernmental process" in the follow-up to the implementation of the Declaration and Programme of Action.

In his report, the Secretary-General describes the measures taken in the wake of the adoption of resolution 50/161, and draws attention in particular to commitment 2 of the Copenhagen Declaration and to chapter 2 of the Programme of Action, concerning the observance in 1996 of the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty and the proclamation of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006).

In this context, the Heads of State and Government of the countries of the Rio Group, meeting in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 3 and 4 September 1996, reaffirmed our Governments' resolve to overcome poverty, malnutrition, exclusion, lack of access to health services, and illiteracy, through policies leading to sustainable economic development in the medium and long term.

Our leaders appealed to the international financial institutions to strengthen their support in the fight against poverty by providing resources and technical assistance to national programmes.

The countries of the Rio Group reaffirm their support for the holding of a special session in the year 2000 to undertake an overall review and appraisal of the implementation of the outcome of the Summit and to consider further measures and initiatives.

As a complementary measure to the Summit for Social Development, the 20/20 initiative recognized the objective that to achieve the eradication of absolute poverty, we must formulate a broad range of policies and take actions at all levels. The Oslo consensus on the 20/20 initiative pointed out that basic social services must be made universal and that their beneficiaries should preferentially be the poorest and most vulnerable sectors.

As stated in the Declaration of Cochabamba, we the member countries of the Rio Group undertook to continue to implement favourable policies to enable economic agents, in particular small and medium businesses, to create productive jobs with livable remuneration levels. We also undertook to promote education, training and social skills, with priority given to the more vulnerable sectors of our populations.

In this context, the member countries of the Rio Group reiterate their support for resolution 48/98 of the General Assembly, which calls upon the Secretary-General to draft a conceptual framework of a programme for the preparation for and observance of the International Year of Older Persons in 1999.

The global theme of the year, "Towards a society for all ages", constitutes an appeal for the participation of all generations and organizations from all sectors of society. This sends a message that all men and women, of any age or status, have a valuable contribution to make to society. This in turn helps to promote dialogue between generations and social harmony.

The member countries of the Rio Group consider that with the International Year of Older Persons we will come closer to achieving the ultimate objective of social integration, which is to create a society for all, in which each individual will have an active role to play.

Mr. Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso)

Mr. President, I know how important it is to you that we be concise in our statements, and I am aware of the great concern you have for making the best possible use of the time allotted to us. That is your mark of distinction.

After reiterating to you the congratulations of my Minister for Foreign Affairs, I would like to turn to agenda item 45, entitled "Implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development". I also endorse the points made by the Ambassador of Costa Rica in his statement here on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

A total of 118 heads of State and Government and over 800 non-governmental organizations all acknowledged in March 1995, at Copenhagen, Denmark, the vital relationship between social development and improving the human condition. Commitments were undertaken to work urgently to attain the goals set, principles for action were determined, and directives were provided for implementing and following up the outcome of the Summit.

What is the situation almost 18 months later? Following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 50/161, we now have the report of the Secretary-General, which gives us an overview of the initiatives and actions undertaken as part of the follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development. The efforts made by the United Nations system to coordinate follow-up activities to the major United Nations conferences, whose common denominator is development, are immediately evident.

My delegation would like to make the following assessment of the Social Summit. Three major themes emerged at the Conference: the battle against poverty and measures to promote development; the involvement of civil society; and the need for financial resources.

In connection with the first issue, the debate held in the Economic and Social Council on the coordination of the activities of United Nations bodies to eradicate poverty yielded objective, balanced and clear conclusions. Combating poverty is primarily the responsibility of Governments, which must formulate, execute and strengthen national plans and programmes.

The international community is duty-bound to discharge the commitments it has undertaken. Poverty can be national or regional; but its origin always -- in one way or another and to varying degrees -- has international dimensions. As a result, the implementation of plans and programmes to combat poverty succeed better through the development of increased solidarity, through honest, serious cooperation and through self-reliance and the shouldering of one's full responsibilities, relying on a foundation of social justice, equity and respect for others.

With regard to measures taken in favour of social development, we must recognize the work of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and encourage them to redouble their efforts. Loans made within this framework must be harmonized with the special situations of the recipients in order to prevent interest from accumulating at a dizzying rate. Recipient populations should not arrive at an impasse, crippled by growing debts instead of enjoying sought-after and well-deserved social well-being.

The United Nations System-wide Special Initiative for Africa, which highlights the priorities of health, education, water and food security, should become one of the operational aspects of the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s.

At the institutional level, the United Nations Commission for Social Development will be expanded soon through the election of new members. The General Assembly must provide that body with the necessary means to discharge its mandate and fulfil its role.

The involvement of civil society in social development is a growing trend. The increasing commitment and activity of the non-governmental organizations, together with governmental responsibility and action, is weaving a new fabric of solidarity among individuals, peoples and nations. This valuable, daily contribution at the grass-roots level should be utilized in the social sphere in a way and to an extent that are compatible with the sovereign expression of States.

However, the mobilization of human and material resources through non-governmental organizations is not enough in itself to meet the needs expressed or to satisfy the priorities of peoples. This brings me to the oft-asked about the financial resources needed to implement the social programmes and plans formulated at the World Summit for Social Development and as part of its follow-up. The Summit's conclusions included the 20/20 initiative, which the Oslo meeting, held in April 1996, further defined in order to make it operational. This opens up the possibility of allowing everyone to benefit from basic social services, according to a realistic and precise timetable.

That timetable was established on the basis of a redirection of available resources. It is to be followed by the mobilization of additional resources and, finally, by an improvement in the effectiveness and quality of services.

Burkina Faso supports the 20/20 initiative and has agreed to participate in a pilot plan for its implementation.

Still within the framework of the follow-up of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development, Burkina Faso has set up an inter-ministerial follow-up national committee, headed by the Prime Minister. This committee has three key tasks before it: to monitor the specific implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development at all ministerial and institutional levels; to develop initiatives to consolidate and accelerate the implementation of the outcome of the Summit; and to monitor coordination of the various steps taken at the national level.

The committee's permanent secretariat provides a formal structure for negotiations, which have led to the elaboration of a national programme of activities. Burkina Faso, despite its limited resources, is preparing to continue its work following the holding of a national workshop to heighten people's awareness of the outcome of the Summit.

In the short and long terms, combating unemployment is best done by adopting a global approach that takes account of material, social and psychological factors. The promotion of Burkina Faso's social sectors is in keeping with its desire to build a just and unified society in the place of the current one, in which destitution and the law of the market are shredding our social fabric. Burkina Faso's social development policies are therefore focused on education, health and the environment. Women are the driving force in this regard because rapid progress cannot be made without their participation in socio-economic activities, an area in which they are already very active, particularly in informal ways. These are some of the aspects of Burkina Faso's follow-up to the Social Summit.

I wish to conclude by stressing the need for genuine partnership. The coordination and complementarity of activities and development programmes is increasingly necessary at the intergovernmental and non-governmental levels. We all still need to respect our commitments and the agreed priorities and programmes, and to work tirelessly so that political will does not waver and the aspirations of our people for justice and peace with solidarity can prevail.

Mr. Shah (India)

Since this is the first time I have spoken, Sir, since you assumed the presidency, I would like to begin by congratulating you on your election as President of the General Assembly at its fifty-first session. You have already displayed some of your well-known talent for organization and effectiveness, and my delegation looks forward to working further with you to improve the effectiveness and the image of the General Assembly.

My delegation heard with interest the statement made by Costa Rica on behalf of the Group of 77 and lends its support to that statement.

At the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, our leaders committed themselves to the goal of eradicating poverty in the world through decisive national actions and international cooperation, as an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind. At the international level, it was agreed to focus attention on and support the special needs of countries and regions in which there are substantial concentrations of people living in poverty. They are the ones who face the most serious difficulties in achieving social and economic development. The Summit reaffirmed rights in the areas of education, food, shelter, employment, health and information, particularly for the purpose of assisting people living in poverty. On the other two core issues identified for the Summit, they committed themselves to promoting the goal of full employment and social integration.

The world today stands at the crossroads of history, even as it struggles to free itself from the attitudes and confines of the cold-war era. Certain paradigms of development that had placed the State alone at the centre have had to be reversed significantly. National rivalries and competition, defined in the past along ideological lines, are searching for new identities and motivations. Interest in the cause of development, often defined in the context of a search for allies, is now giving way to an unfortunate questioning of the utility of international development cooperation. The pendulum has swung decisively to the syndrome of private-sector-based growth and to a tendency to put an unfettered market system alone at the centre of the new scheme of things.

While this enthusiasm is being pushed throughout the world, practical experience is generating a search for and recourse to an approach that blends economic growth with social justice and market imperatives with social and environmental concerns. There is a continued role for public policy, both at the national and international levels, to tackle market imperfections and failures. Otherwise, the poor and the weak will suffer continued exclusion from growth and prosperity due to the imperfections and the tyranny of the market.

At both the Social Summit and the ninth session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the positive and negative effects of globalization were reflected upon. It was also recognized that the rapid processes of change and adjustment have been accompanied by intensified poverty, unemployment and social disintegration, and that they bring increased risks of instability and marginalization.

Mr. Shah (India)

To succeed, any long-term strategy must place people at the centre. This centrality of people in the development process is extremely important. It was recognized in the Rio Declaration and reaffirmed and expanded upon at Copenhagen. The central strategy for achieving social and economic development to sustain human progress should be to empower the people themselves. The effort must be to empower every disadvantaged class and group, particularly women. This will be possible only when certain rights fundamental to human development are guaranteed to people.

In today's context, international cooperation remains essential to facilitate and accelerate national economic and social development. All countries, regardless of their geographical location, are in need of social development and integration. The dominant causes for discord may be different in different countries, but no society can claim to be fully integrated. We have only to look around us to see the exclusion and marginalization experienced by significant sections of the population in developed countries, due in part to human failings and imperfections of social organization and due significantly to the dictates of the market-based approach.

The core issues of poverty eradication, employment generation and social integration cannot be addressed credibly without adequate resources, non-discriminatory access to markets and the availability of modern technologies for invigorating economic and social progress. At the national level, countries have to commit the resources required to secure the rights of the poor in terms of building infrastructure, building and strengthening institutions, formulating policies and designing strategies and mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation that permit sustainable implementation.

The father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, mobilized the masses of India in our struggle for freedom. He inspired an impoverished nation to win freedom from the world's mightiest empire by non-violent means. As India struggles towards its second freedom, the freedom from want, disease and ignorance, we go back to Mahatma Gandhi and his technique of social mobilization of the people. Our strategy goes well beyond representative governance and endeavours to involve more and more people at the grass-roots level. Our current five-year plan, the eighth, stipulates that

"it is necessary to make development a people's movement, and people's initiative and participation must become the key element to the whole process of development".

To this end, in the last couple of years, we have amended our Constitution to provide for decentralized, participative, village-level democratic institutions with statutory representation to the socially disadvantaged groups of our people. One third of all elective representative posts at the local level have been reserved for women. A bill has now been introduced in the Indian Parliament to reserve for women one third of Federal and State legislative offices. It is our resolve to make the concerns of gender and the rights of children, adolescents and youth the centre of all our decision-making, including economic decision-making. Beginning next year with the ninth five-year plan, India's expenditure on education is planned to rise from its present 3.7 per cent of gross domestic product to 6 per cent of GDP. The Common Minimum Programme, adopted by the United Front Government constituted after the elections earlier this year, has also set for itself the target of eradicating absolute poverty by the year 2005.

In Copenhagen our leaders adopted a visionary document that incorporates major commitments for national action and international cooperation. It is essential that we put in place effective follow-up machinery to translate these commitments into action. The discussions that have taken place so far in the Commission for Social Development and the information that has been made available to the Commission show clearly that most of the follow-up action has been at the national level. There has been very little progress in the area of international cooperation. The Commission should take a more critical look at these aspects in its forthcoming meetings. The synergy between national action and international cooperation should not be allowed to fall out of balance merely because of perceived domestic constraints in the developed countries.

There is a clearly recognized need to increase substantially the resources available for international cooperation for social development. It is particularly shocking, therefore, that soon after the adoption of these major commitments, we are faced with the prospect of the eleventh replenishment of the International Development Association at reduced real levels. Greater attention should be paid to the commitments made to facilitate increased transfer of real resources to the developing countries. Legitimate worldwide concern with social development ought not simply to degenerate into additional conditionalities imposed on developing countries from outside. The social-development agenda cannot be viewed in isolation. The domestic resources needed for social development can be mobilized only if the economy is growing rapidly. A holistic approach has to be adopted in assessing the balance between expenditure on economic services and expenditure on social services.

The entire United Nations system should be involved in the follow-up process. The Bretton Woods institutions and the specialized agencies, in particular the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), should be involved in the follow-up process in a coordinated manner. We should look at not only the situation in developing countries, but also the societal problems in developed countries. My delegation supports the three-tiered structure for follow-up, which is now in place, consisting of the Commission on Social Development as the functional commission with primary responsibility; the Economic and Social Council, with responsibility for coordination; and the General Assembly, with responsibility for policy guidance. We also welcome the decision to hold a special session of the General Assembly in the year 2000 to review implementation.

For their part, of course, the developing countries must increase the availability of domestic resources by reorienting public expenditure and minimizing waste. However, the central question relating to the overall limits of available resources cannot be ignored. Given low per capita income levels, sufficient resources cannot be mobilized for the programmes outlined at the Summit, even with the best political will and expenditure policies. The onus therefore rests on the international community to generate a substantial increase in the flow of external resources for poverty eradication and social development. This has to be achieved not just through conventional means, such as official development assistance, but also through measures in the areas of trade, development and technology transfer, in the clear recognition that accelerated and sustained growth rates in the developing countries will, in turn, generate greater trade and employment benefits for developed countries.

I believe that in the post-cold-war era our countries have, through the United Nations, entered into a major compact for national economic and social development and international cooperation to this end. This compact is embodied in the outcomes of the series of world conferences held over the past five years. We now have to ensure an effective and coordinated follow-up of the commitments undertaken, including commitments for international cooperation.