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Mind the Gap: Matching rhetoric with reality
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 By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General Release Date: 14 November 2008 = e-CIVICUS 415 Dear friends and colleagues, Recent public pronouncements from Downing Street, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations (UN) have all urged that the current financial crisis be seen not as an excuse for turning inward, reneging on commitments on aid, trade, poverty reduction and climate justice, nor that action is restricted to papering over the cracks in regulatory frameworks. Instead, these august bodies have unanimously advocated that the global community seize the opportunity to reinvent the global economic order and redress the imbalances that are, in no small measure, at the root of the current turmoil. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, reiterated his commitment to meeting the Millennium Development Goals and hoped that 2008 would be remembered not just for the manner in which the world prevailed over the current crisis but that "in doing so we discovered and refashioned the global power of nations working together... Uniquely in this global age, it is now in our power to come together, confer, and decide and that we must be guided by one clear truth: that we need solutions that can no longer be defined in terms of us and them, but can be achieved only together: as us with them." World Bank Group President, Robert Zoellick, said that G20 leaders meeting in Washington this week "must not lose sight of the human crisis. As always, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are the hardest hit... The response to this crisis must be global, coordinated, flexible and fast. While the challenges need to be addressed at the country level, it is more critical than ever that the international community acts in a coordinated and supportive way to make each country's task easier." "There should be no competition between climate change and the financial crisis," said Mr. Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, which is China's top economic policy-making agency. "The financial crisis is short term, whereas climate change is a serious concern that stretches far into the future. Such long term and short term concerns should not compete, but we should instead take the opportunity of the crisis to alter our industrial structure." Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Nobel Prize winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and a host of civil society organisations have urged likewise. US President Elect, Barack Obama's campaign promises included commitments to double US development assistance to $50 billion by 2012 and integrate the MDGs into American policy. This weekend the leaders of the world's economic powerhouses, current and emerging, meet in Washington DC. Their actions must match their rhetoric. If not, they will be responsible for the dire consequences they have themselves described. Millions more pushed over the brink of survival, to add to the 100 million added by the food and energy crises, over and above the billion that the MDGs were attempting to lift out of poverty. Climate change will render almost as many displaced, starving or trapped in the crossfire of conflict. Their sincerity will be on test again in Doha a few weeks from now. As many of them have stated, they face an unprecedented opportunity to redeem their promises to the world's poor, to the planet itself and to re-fashioning the architecture of global decision-making. The world is minding the gaps. With gratitude, faith and solidarity, Ingrid Srinath For previous articles from the Secretary General, see details below:
To read articles written by the former Secretary General, please click here. |