First Global Forum on Human Development

FIRST GLOBAL FORUM ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
29-31 July 1999 . United Nations Headquarters . New York

GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
by Richard Jolly,
Chief Architect of the Human Development Report
and Special Adviser to the Administrator, UNDP

Churchill famously remarked that it was the people who had the lion’s heart - he had the luck to give the roar.
In making this presentation this morning, I speak, perhaps I roar, on behalf of the human development team. This is no false modesty. The HDR has always been a team production, all the more so after the departure of its creative originator, Mahbub ul Haq, to whom I would like to pay my own public tribute. The HDR is nothing if not the result of an extraordinary mixture of ideas and advice, of analysis and intelligence, of human commitment and intellectual risk taking – pulled together by the small team of us in the HDRO, including interns, the paid and the unpaid – but drawing on the skills and wisdom of many in the field and headquarters of UNDP and of a host of outside advisers and consultants, also paid and unpaid. Many are present today – even more are not. To all of them, I pay tribute and we express our thanks – even while I have the luck to give the roar.
The crusade for Human Development has grown and broadened over the ten years since the late Mahbub ul Haq – to whom this Forum and this report is dedicated- launched the first report in UNDP in 1990. Over this period, the theme of human development has gathered an astonishing degree of international interest and support. Some 260 national and sub-national human development reports have now been prepared in 120 countries – listed on page 24 in the HDR99. Cameroon and Bangladesh produced the first national reports some seven years ago and have since prepared further reports every year or two on different themes. India has prepared 4 HDRs at state levels, with more underway. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the transition countries now have National Human Development Reports. Human Development (HD) has entered into the dialogue and conclusions of the UN Global Conferences of the 1990s, to the point where perhaps we should begin to talk about "a New York HD consensus".
This year’s report includes some important improvements in the methodology and data use for the HDI – giving us a better indicator and making it possible for the first time to assess HDI advances from 1975 to 1997 for some 80 countries, and for 90 countries over the 1990s.
Globalization and Human Development.
This Report argues that (in the words of Ted Turner) globalization is in fast forward but the world’s ability to understand and react to it is in slow motion. Shrinking time, shrinking space and disappearing borders are linking millions of people more closely than ever before – but billions of the world’s people are left out in the cold.
The report takes a broad view. Globalization involves much more than trade and finance. The internet and interpol, pop culture and global crime, immunization and AIDS, new rules and new roles – are part and parcel of a world hurtling towards global integration.
The report also takes a positive view. Notwithstanding the problems and inadequacies of globalization, many countries have exploited the opportunities and controlled its costs with considerable success. The challenge is to improve governance, nationally and internationally, so that the power and potential of globalization works for people, not just for profits or capital.
Yet efforts so far to strengthen global governance have been too narrow - fixated on the economic, largely ignoring human consequences and human needs and working to an agenda heavily dominated by the industrialized countries.
Thus the Human Development Report calls for Globalization with a Human Face - and sets out proposals for national and international action to make globalization work for people in all parts of the world. It identifies five priorities.

Bringing human concerns into the core of global governance

Stronger action to tackle the growing range of human insecurities.

Measures to narrow global gaps and reverse the marginalisation of poor people and poor countries.

Starting now to build the architecture for humane global governance needed for the 21^st century

And, lest this all sound too focused on the long run, the report ends with seven proposals, all feasible for action within the next one to three years.

Globalization is not new. Christopher Columbus opened the Western phase 500 years ago and there was a surge of globalization from 1870 to 1913 – incidentally, one which like the recent phase led to an acceleration of global inequalities. But as the report argues, the present phase of globalization is different. New markets, new tools, new actors and new rules are linking people’s lives more deeply, more intensely and more immediately than ever before. Trade and finance, communications and new technologies are playing a part but the changes are both broader and deeper.
Indeed the report tries to dispel five myths about globalization.

That there is nothing new

That it is all economics,

driven by technology,

inevitable and irreversible

That globalization makes the state irrelevant

Globalization without improved governance will be an expensive proposition. The report estimates that the world lost $2 trillion dollars in lost production and incomes from the Asian crisis and its global consequences – which, of course, hit the developing countries hardest. Chapter 1 of the report sets out two other parts of the challenge: to control the growing range of human insecurities and to diminish global inequalities, both of which have been accelerating with globalization
The report identifies seven critical areas of human insecurity all of which need action:

financial insecurity and volatility

insecurity of jobs and incomes –affecting people in rich countries as well as poor

health insecurity – HIV/AIDS being only the most obvious example

cultural insecurity – in response to the unbalanced flows of TV, films and other media, heavily weighted from rich countries to poor

personal insecurity –growing crime, money laundering

environmental insecurity

political and community insecurity – 61 major armed conflicts have been fought in the post cold war era, almost all civil conflicts but fed by international flows of arms, mercenaries and interests

The second challenge is inequality, which has also been growing with globalization – at an accelerated rate in the last decade both in countries and between countries. Globally, it has reached grotesque proportions. The gap between the incomes of the fifth of the world’s population living in the richest countries to the fifth living in the poorest, has risen from 30 to 1 in 1960, 60 to 1 in 1990 to reach 74 to 1 in 1997. Inequality has become the top item on what the report calls the unlisted agenda of urgent actions needed for the 21^st century.

Inequality is not only of income. Chapter 2 spells out the new inequalities of the Internet. The cover of the report shows the inequalities between the connected and the unconnected, between the knows and the know nots – in a globalizing world where knowledge is increasingly the key to advancement and success. Within each region, it is only the tip of each society which has stepped into the global loop – just two per cent worldwide. Current access runs along the fault lines of existing societies – income buys access and those connected are disproportionately educated, male, young and white. Even in the UK, half of all Internet users have a degree. In the US, five times as many boys use computers at home as girls and parents spend twice as much on technology products for their sons as for their daughters.

Chapter 3 is about the non-market dimensions of globalization – focussed on care, the invisible heart of human development. Care is being squeezed by globalization. Both individuals and institutions have been free riding on the caring labor that mainly women provide. With increasing pressures on the way both men and women use their time, care has often been squeezed.

So what can be done? The report identifies seven major areas of action. Chapter 4 sets out the issues at national level, chapter 5 the regional and international. The overwhelming priority is to better manage globalization, nationally and internationally – so that countries can gain the benefits of globalization, while controlling its risks and human costs.

A starting point. All countries need to do more to develop more coherent and comprehensive policies toward globalization – to take advantage of its opportunities and to guard against its risks and human costs. At present, policies for trade, finance, technology, agriculture are made in different parts of government, negotiated in different places of the world, often with little coherence or realization of the major consequences they hold for people in the country.

At global level, the debate on reforming global governance is too narrow in scope, too unbalanced geographically and too fixated on finance. With the Asian crisis, the need for fresh thinking about global governance was recognized and for a while, there was an eager willingness to consider changes on a broader footing. As the sense of crisis passed in the North, with the recovery of Korea, Thailand and Malaysia, the sense of urgency has unfortunately passed – even though much of Latin America remains in recession and much of Africa and the transition countries in desperate difficulty.

Chapter 5 identifies five areas of action.

Human Concerns and Human Rights need to be brought into the heart of global governance. At present, the rules and regulations for global governance are being driven by concepts of economic efficiency and profitability, with scant concern for human needs and ethics. The perspectives need to be broadened.

Here let me pay tribute to the British government which took the lead last October, to request the World Bank to prepare a paper on how social principles could be incorporated into global economic governance – in part to avoid a repetition of the human disasters of the Asian crisis, in which international support on the social side was followed by several months financial and economic support. The World Bank prepared a paper in response to this British request, in consultation with the UN, and put it to a joint meeting of the Interim Committee and ECOSOC. It is an example of the many other areas where in the report’s view, human concerns need to be put alongside economic and financial concerns when tackling the issues of global governance.

Protecting human security
Narrowing global gaps, starting with stronger action to end the marginalization of Africa and the least developed countries.
Specific actions to strengthen the bargaining position of poor countries in global governance. The report draws on the work of Gerry Helleiner to emphasize a number of very specific needs: legal aid to help countries improve their bargaining in the WTO; the establishment of an ombudsman in the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF; encouraging the involvement of NGOs and non-official professional groups in the discussion and review of proposals and policies, especially those under-represented in the formal structures; setting some long term goals for narrowing global income gaps. But the report also recongizes that developing countries can and need to do much more to strengthen their own bargaining capacity, especially thought collective regional action.
Finally, the report urges that a start be made now in exploring and building the architecture, which will be needed for improved global governance for the 21^st century. The mood of the dominant powers – or power – may not yet be ready for serious negotiation on much of this – but it is not too early to explore the elements needed.

Even before these long term changes, however, there is much that could be done, many elements of which would make a big difference for the people in the poorer and weaker countries. The overview of the report ends by identifying seven such elements for action, all of which could be taken in the next one to three years.

Developing countries could take regional initiatives to strengthen their negotiating positions.
Individual countries could set up a high level task force or other group to coordinate policy on their national globalization and manage their integration for a more positive impact on human development.
Donor countries could accelerate action on debt relief and redirect aid in favour of the poorest and least developed countries. The first of these has begun to happen at the G-8 meeting in Cologne – but the latter may have been set back by some of the decisions made in finding resources for humanitarian action in Kosovo.
A legal aid and ombudsman facility could be created in the WTO – again actions on the legal aid facility seems to be underway.
All countries could do more to fight global crime, relaxing bank secrecy laws for instance.
New sources of financing for poor people and poor country technologies could be investigated.
A representative task force could be set up to review global economic governance, including not only countries but also some representation of the private sector and civil society.

The report ends : "The surge of globalization over the past decade is only a beginning. People in all parts of the world need to join in the debate on global governance and to make clear their interests and concerns. The process of re-inventing global governance needs to be broadened – and human development can provide a framework for this exploration".

May the discussions of the next two days and our further work as a community of committed individuals contribute to this end.

Thank you

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