8:36 PM Oct 7, 1996

GLOBALIZATION ISN'T UNCHANGEABLE

Geneva 7 Oct (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero called Monday for focusing the organization's activities on analysing development experience and provide concrete advice to countries on integrating their development and give people "sound and true reasons for hope in the future."

One of the major problems countries are facing, and not only developing countries, but all countries is "the loss of hope in the future", insecurity in employment and the feelings that they were not seeing the promised benefits of globalization, Ricupero said addressing the opening meeting of the 43rd session of the Trade and Development Board - the first substantive session since UNCTAD-IX at Midrand.

It has been a common mistake, by people of good intentions, he said, to often present globalization as a threat, as something that will punish, rather than as an opportunity to better lives and do this on the basis of a true picture.

"Globalization is not like a planetary system, something that no one can change," Ricupero said. "An economy is the product of culture and society and a matter of choice of values. It is up to us to provide this hope, not on the basis of false reasons, but by providing sound and true reasons for hope."

The Board at the outset mourned the death, at the hands of an unidentified sniper, of Andrei Lukanov of Bulgaria, who was a President of the Trade and Development Board in the early years.

The Board also elected formally Ambassador Patrick N. Sinyinza of Zambia as its President in place of Amb. Rossier of Switzerland, eleven vice-presidents and a rapporteur to constitute the Bureau of the session.

At the outset, Ricupero outlined the various steps taken within the UNCTAD, after the Midrand Conference, to restructure and reorganize the secretariat, effecting economies and reducing costs, and said compared to the budget for the biennium 1996-1997, the number of professional posts had been reduced by 12.5% and that of general services by 11.1 percent.

One out of eight staff members have gone. Ricupero said. The savings achieved by the reduction in the number of meetings were being worked out and would be made known shortly.

The restructuring has been not only to reduce costs and undertake economies, but to make the organization more and more relevant to development needs of countries most in need, the UNCTAD head said.

UNCTAD's working methods, he added, should be characterized by openness and transparency and much had already been achieved.

Referring to the restructuring of the UN system taking place in New York (and expected to be accelerated), Ricupero said that while in Geneva, because of their relatively smaller operation, they had been able to undertake rapidly the restructuring, in New York some four different bodies were working on this.

When he was recently in New York and talked to various people, most of the people seemed unaware of the extent to which UNCTAD had already undertaken the restructuring and budget cutting exercise. The new President of the General Assembly, Mr. Razali Ismail of Malaysia, had frankly told him that he was not aware that UNCTAD had achieved so much.

It was necessary to make the extent of the reform and restructuring effort at UNCTAD widely known so as to ensure that the reform process set in motion in Midrand about the work of the organization could be advanced, Ricupero said.

Ricupero appeared, in this oblique way, to be telling the member-states to advise their colleagues in New York and ensure that the major functions allotted to UNCTAD at the Midrand meeting -- analysis, technical assistance and inter-government consensus building -- is not further whittled down (through the New York budget-cutting and restructuring process) and that the organization is not left merely to undertake technical assistance work.

Referring to the Midrand decision to accept Thailand offer to host UNCTAD-X, Ricupero noted that Thailand is "a representative example of a country that showed that development is possible and is not an impossible dream."

The UNCTAD Secretary-General added: "We should try to look at and replicate these success stories (in Asia and elsewhere), and our work should be concentrated on the vocation of this organization, founded to promote development through trade, investment, technology and other instruments essential for development.

"This has to remain at the centre of the activities of UNCTAD, now and in the future. UNCTAD's specificity and raison d'etre is development, and it should provide the world community with a particular point of view. "Just as we have a point of view of the industrialized countries from the OECD, we also need a particular point of view of the developing countries. But our organization is not like the OECD, but involves countries in different stages of development, and it is much more difficult to reach a common approach to problems which are not simple or easy in substance."

"But if we are agreed that development is our vocation and raison d'etre as we move from now to the year 2000 and beyond, and undertake this journey ahead of us.... and the challenges and prospects for development, we should try to do a sort of stock-taking on the experiences of development, not only from a theoretical approach, but from concrete and practical experiences with development. We should try to come to a conclusion about what experiences of the recent decades has taught us, which is what we are trying to do in the Trade and Development Report."

It was also necessary to look to the future, see the challenges of the next century in terms of development, try to incorporate in that vision what was not present in 1960s, when UNCTAD started to focus on the development issue.

Development should be evaluated not only in quantitative terms, but also qualitatively -- in terms of the quality of development, what it means for the well-being in the lives of the common peoples, and promote less inequality and bring about reduction of absolute poverty, enhance the status of women and the role they play, and cause the empowerment of peoples.

UNCTAD should do what it knows best to do, and concentrate on matters like income-distribution, poverty alleviation, ensuring accelerated growth with reduction of inequality, and do this not merely in terms of research, but in concrete terms of policy advice to countries.

It was also necessary to look at the sustainable quality of development so that future generations do not blame them for having wasted the natural resources.

UNCTAD's activities and meetings should be structured around making a clear contribution -- not merely in providing concrete technical advice such as in trade efficiency and reform of investment policies, but give countries concrete ideas, if not a blue-print, on how to integrate their development efforts.

"Our work is to create sound and true reasons for hope (for the people). This is the duty not only of statesman, but of public servants as most of us are," Ricupero told Board.

"One of the major problems countries are facing, and not merely the developing countries," Ricupero said, "is the loss of hope of people in the future. That is very perceptible in Europe where we are living, and where people are feeling insecurity and rising unemployment. They are not seeing the benefits promised by globalization, which unfortunately has been presented by people of good intentions, as a threat and something that will punish people, instead of giving the opportunity of bettering your life.

"To make this promise (of globalization) come true, we have to give the truth.

"Globalization is not like the planetary system, something that no one can change. An economy is the product of society, a matter of choice of values. It is up to us to provide this hope, not through false reasons, but sound and true reasons for hope."