DOHA // The World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative could hardly be more ambitious. Its main objective is to adapt the tools of international co-operation – the G20, UN bodies, the World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the like – to the complex challenges of the 21st century to ensure the long-term security of humanity.
It also aims to create a more inclusive global system.
“Legitimacy comes from people,” Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a former Singapore ambassador to the UN, said during the opening session of this week’s Global Redesign Summit in Doha. The report the WEF prepared for the event is titled Everybody’s Business.
“We have to learn to listen to the voices of 6.8 billion people,” he added. “The real purpose of this meeting is: let’s figure out how we can get the whole world involved in this, and not just some parts of it.”
Backed by the governments of Qatar, Tanzania, Singapore and Switzerland, the WEF launched the redesign initiative more than a year ago, in the depths of the financial crisis. A key aim was to move away from the so-called Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods-style institutions, created and led by industrialised countries, in the hopes of avoiding future catastrophes.
“The world has gone through a heart attack,” Arif Naqvi, founder of the Dubai-based Abraaj Capital, the region’s largest private equity firm, said during the opening plenary. “We have to work very carefully through this moment to make sure everyone acts in concert to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The GRI tasked more than 1,000 analysts, officials and policymakers to re-envision international institutions to better address global health, security, sustainability, development and the financial system. At a series of meetings over the past year, their ideas matured into proposals, which Doha participants sought to put into action.
“We have lots of ideas that now need spouses,” the WEF vice chairman, Mark Malloch-Brown said, advising government officials to choose a proposal and work to implement it.
Inclusion may be easier said than done. Despite the call for innovation and bold rethinking, many speakers at the event held fast to traditional institutions of co-operation.
Richard Samans, the WEF’s managing director, explained that the redesign initiative did not intend to replace the existing system for international co-operation, but rather augment it.
“We are not here to overthrow the system,” agreed He Yafei, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. “Global redesign of the system is not a revolution; it’s more an evolution.”
Few of the 58 proposals, which are to be finalised at Davos, Switzerland, in January, are revolutionary. They include strengthening the financial safety net, the creation of an international financial risk monitor, expanding the capacity of the International Labor Organisation and improving a UN-supported programme called Education for All.
“A lot of the proposals are what you might call ‘punting’,” passing the problem on, said Parag Khanna, the director of global governance at the New America Foundation, who previously worked for the WEF. He sat in on several meetings over the past year and attended several sessions during the Doha summit. “It’s not quite redesign yet.”
In addition, one sizeable demographic was mostly absent.
“For everything, whether it’s financial or climate change, we should look at the poor as part of the process, rather than beneficiaries,” said Harish Hande, the founder and managing director of Selco, a provider of sustainable energy solutions to rural India.
He was speaking on Davos Debates in Doha, a YouTube channel set up for the event. “Redesign needs to happen where the poor become part of the implementers, designers and thought processes,” Mr Hande said.
In the end, the GRI may be less redesign than makeover. In calling for change, one prominent observer complained of a hidebound system dominated by inertia.
“International deadlock is the norm; cynicism and mistrust are common currency,” said Queen Rania of Jordan, who is on the redesign council for education. “If just enough people are happy, there’s no need to change it.”
Mr Khanna acknowledged that the GRI is in part a branding exercise. But it could still effect change. “I think we might see in a couple years’ time that international organisations move towards sharing resources and collaborating more with NGOs and corporations,” he said. “And it will partially be attributable to WEF.”
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originally ran in 1 June 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial crisis. Show all posts
2.27.2009
China, Poverty and the UN’s Curious Stance on Human Rights
The United Nations' Human Rights Council kicked off a special session to discuss the impact of the financial crisis on the poor Friday. That same day, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in China, which recently received a rather friendly review from the world's leading rights body.
Why is the HRC addressing the concerns of the poor when it apparently fails to handle its own purview?
The council replaced the beleaguered Commission on Human Rights nearly three years ago. After its most recent 16-country review, the HRC has now reviewed one-third of the U.N.'s 192 member states. Among those reviews, that of China stands out.
Amnesty International has called China the "world's leading executioner," and the authoritarian government is known for jailing its citizens without trial, censoring its people and harshly quelling rebellious sentiment in Tibet and among the Muslim Uighurs.
Yet during the review, many developing countries commended China as an example of progress and criticized Western countries for "politicizing" the issues. Egypt lauded the Hu Jintao regime and Iran championed Beijing's "strong commitment to human rights." Cuba urged China to remain firm against "self-styled human rights defenders." Gabon, Sudan and Zimbabwe praised China for giving them financial aid, and failed to mention human rights.
"What we saw during the China review was a wide range of views expressed on several human rights issues - economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights," Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, Nigerian ambassador to the U.N. and current president of the HRC, told Devex. "This is significant!"
Like the HRC, Hilary Clinton pushed human rights to the sidelines during her visit to Beijing over the weekend, saying human rights issues "should not be allowed to interfere" with common interests. She could have capitalized on the buzz surrounding "Charter 08," an online petition denouncing the Chinese government for its human rights abuses that has been signed by more than 8,000 Chinese citizens. But Clinton instead focused on climate change and financial crisis cooperation.
Perhaps it's understandable for the U.S. secretary of state to go soft on China - she has a relationship to manage. The HRC, on the other hand, has a job to do. Despite human rights abuses all around, the council issued a draft resolution Monday calling on nations to protect those put most at risk during the ongoing financial downturn.
"The hope of this session is to send out a strong message that human rights should not be overlooked or drowned out by the current financial crisis," said Uhomoibhi. "The international community must take into account the human rights dimension of the economic crises when implementing measures to address its effects."
Coming two days after the Hu Jintao government gagged dozens of human rights advocates to keep them quiet during Clinton's visit, the real message is that human rights-abusing governments can act with impunity.
--
Posted to Devex.com on 23 February 2009
Why is the HRC addressing the concerns of the poor when it apparently fails to handle its own purview?
The council replaced the beleaguered Commission on Human Rights nearly three years ago. After its most recent 16-country review, the HRC has now reviewed one-third of the U.N.'s 192 member states. Among those reviews, that of China stands out.
Amnesty International has called China the "world's leading executioner," and the authoritarian government is known for jailing its citizens without trial, censoring its people and harshly quelling rebellious sentiment in Tibet and among the Muslim Uighurs.
Yet during the review, many developing countries commended China as an example of progress and criticized Western countries for "politicizing" the issues. Egypt lauded the Hu Jintao regime and Iran championed Beijing's "strong commitment to human rights." Cuba urged China to remain firm against "self-styled human rights defenders." Gabon, Sudan and Zimbabwe praised China for giving them financial aid, and failed to mention human rights.
"What we saw during the China review was a wide range of views expressed on several human rights issues - economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights," Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, Nigerian ambassador to the U.N. and current president of the HRC, told Devex. "This is significant!"
Like the HRC, Hilary Clinton pushed human rights to the sidelines during her visit to Beijing over the weekend, saying human rights issues "should not be allowed to interfere" with common interests. She could have capitalized on the buzz surrounding "Charter 08," an online petition denouncing the Chinese government for its human rights abuses that has been signed by more than 8,000 Chinese citizens. But Clinton instead focused on climate change and financial crisis cooperation.
Perhaps it's understandable for the U.S. secretary of state to go soft on China - she has a relationship to manage. The HRC, on the other hand, has a job to do. Despite human rights abuses all around, the council issued a draft resolution Monday calling on nations to protect those put most at risk during the ongoing financial downturn.
"The hope of this session is to send out a strong message that human rights should not be overlooked or drowned out by the current financial crisis," said Uhomoibhi. "The international community must take into account the human rights dimension of the economic crises when implementing measures to address its effects."
Coming two days after the Hu Jintao government gagged dozens of human rights advocates to keep them quiet during Clinton's visit, the real message is that human rights-abusing governments can act with impunity.
--
Posted to Devex.com on 23 February 2009
Downturn Likely to Smack the Developing World
While the developed world hustles to minimize the damage from the deepening economic crisis, developing countries have been mostly ignored. Yet it is precisely those poorer countries – and their hundreds of millions of people living on the knife edge of desperation – that will be most at risk in the coming weeks and months.
As the downturn leans into its second year, the international community is finally taking note. Earlier this week, the United Nations Human Rights Council urged developed nations to protect those most at risk during this crisis. Its draft solution may not solve the problem, but it's certain to draw attention to a very real concern.
The next day, Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz spoke about the impact of the financial crisis on global development as part of the United Nations University's speaker series.
"The problems are far deeper, surely, than we've seen so far," said Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank. "The financial crisis is symptomatic of a deeper macro-economic crisis."
The Nobel laureate highlighted the need to fix the underlying problems or face more debilitating hurdles internationally.
"While the financial crisis began in the US, it's now reverberating around the world, including developing countries," said Stiglitz. These countries don't have the funds to enact stimulus policies like those of the West.
"If we don't give them the resources, they won't be able to stimulate their economy and global imbalances will be exacerbated," Stiglitz explained. On the other hand, "Europe and Japan have offered substantial increased funds to the IMF, but if those loans to developing countries are marred by the policies of the past, it will be counter-productive."
Stiglitz went one step further.
"I think we're going to come to a realization that the institutions that we created 60 years ago are not up to the task," he said, before proposing a new, more open-minded international credit facility as part of a "new global architecture."
In a recent interview with Devex, author of best-seller "The White Man's Burden" and New York University economics professor William Easterly acknowledged that the financial crisis would slow developing country growth yet thought it might provide an opportunity.
"How do we make aid even more effective to cope with this additional suffering?" wondered Easterly. "All those people who were spending all their energies campaigning for more aid money, well, maybe they should join those of us who've been campaigning for more results out of the same amount of money."
Posted to Devex.com on 26 February 2009
As the downturn leans into its second year, the international community is finally taking note. Earlier this week, the United Nations Human Rights Council urged developed nations to protect those most at risk during this crisis. Its draft solution may not solve the problem, but it's certain to draw attention to a very real concern.
The next day, Columbia University economics professor Joseph Stiglitz spoke about the impact of the financial crisis on global development as part of the United Nations University's speaker series.
"The problems are far deeper, surely, than we've seen so far," said Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank. "The financial crisis is symptomatic of a deeper macro-economic crisis."
The Nobel laureate highlighted the need to fix the underlying problems or face more debilitating hurdles internationally.
"While the financial crisis began in the US, it's now reverberating around the world, including developing countries," said Stiglitz. These countries don't have the funds to enact stimulus policies like those of the West.
"If we don't give them the resources, they won't be able to stimulate their economy and global imbalances will be exacerbated," Stiglitz explained. On the other hand, "Europe and Japan have offered substantial increased funds to the IMF, but if those loans to developing countries are marred by the policies of the past, it will be counter-productive."
Stiglitz went one step further.
"I think we're going to come to a realization that the institutions that we created 60 years ago are not up to the task," he said, before proposing a new, more open-minded international credit facility as part of a "new global architecture."
In a recent interview with Devex, author of best-seller "The White Man's Burden" and New York University economics professor William Easterly acknowledged that the financial crisis would slow developing country growth yet thought it might provide an opportunity.
"How do we make aid even more effective to cope with this additional suffering?" wondered Easterly. "All those people who were spending all their energies campaigning for more aid money, well, maybe they should join those of us who've been campaigning for more results out of the same amount of money."
Posted to Devex.com on 26 February 2009
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