The views expressed in this paper are those of the participants at the Roundtable and should not be attributed to UNDP.
PREFACE
The United Nations Development Program's Development Study Program sponsors annual "roundtable" meetings at which experts in a variety of fields have an opportunity to exchange views on a particular development topic.
This year, the Study Program and the Government of Sweden co-sponsored one of these roundtables in Saltsjubaden, just outside of the Swedish capital of Stockholm. The issue presented to the experts at this roundtable was "Change: Social Conflict or Harmony?"
The point of the roundtable was to look at several of the major problems that are afflicting virtually every country today and to propose solutions. These problems include poverty, unemployment and social disintegration. These three problems will also be the focus of the World Summit for Social Development, which the United Nations will sponsor in Copenhagen in March 1995. Through this report, many of the recommendations made by the participants at the Stockholm Roundtable are being submitted to planners of the Copenhagen summit for discussion. This report includes a summary of the participants' recommendations and an analysis of some of the key issues.
Participants included top officials of United Nations agencies, senior government officials, development experts, journalists, social scientists, students and members of the business community.
SUMMARY
Despite many advances in human development over the past 50 years, a large unfinished agenda of human deprivation challenges humanity in the 21st century. Global poverty is worsening, unemployment is on the rise, and people are increasingly turning against their neighbors in brutal ethnic conflicts.
And with these problems come other social problems: crime, violence, disease, pollution, environmental destruction and the total breakdown of governments and institutions like the family.
Never before have people had so much knowledge and information at their disposal. But unfortunately, the international community has failed to fully use this knowledge to improve the human condition. Meanwhile, each day, another piece of the planet sinks into chaos, despair and desperation. And behind every failed state, there is a failed development process.
The international community must reverse this trend before any more societies collapse. We must make better use of our knowledge and other resources to tackle social problems before they occur and to fix the problems that have already erupted. Time is of the essence.
The United Nations is sponsoring a World Summit for Social Development, which will take place in Copenhagen in March 1995. There, delegates from all countries and major international institutions will join forces to formulate an urgently needed strategy for curing some of the world's major social ills.
To help the global community prepare for the summit, UNDP, in association with the Swedish International Development Agency, invited experts from all over the world to discuss in a Stockholm Roundtable from 22 July to 24 July, 1994, the magnitude and causes of rising unemployment, worsening poverty and social decay. They were also asked to propose possible solutions to these problems.
A major cause of many of today's problems is underdevelopment. Observers in the 1970s agreed that to eradicate underdevelopment, the international community needed to promote economic growth and social reform.
But in the 1980s, development thinking changed. Many experts believed that economic growth should be a prerequisite for economic growth. After growth was under way, social progress would follow naturally. The results of this approach were devastating: many countries are worse off today than they were decades earlier, and social problems are intensifying.
There has been a renaissance in development thinking: there is an increased recognition that development requires a balance between economic goals and social goals. Without this balance, long-term development cannot occur and progress in meeting social goals will never be sustained.
POVERTY
More than 1 billion people live in absolute poverty, and most of the poor live in the developing world. Until recently, poverty was narrowly defined as low income. Today, it is more broadly defined to include factors such as social status, physical strength and power. Any strategy for eliminating poverty must therefore be based on this broader definition.
Governments and international organizations must both be involved in the fight against poverty. The list of necessary actions is long. For governments, the list includes a need to establish or strengthen social safety nets, basic education, especially for women, easier access to health care, and justice systems that benefit the poor as well as the rich. In particular, gender empowerment should be used as the vanguard in the fight against poverty. For the international community, the list includes innovative ways of raising resources, such as taxing international currency transactions to finance programs that will aid the poor, relieving countries' debt burdens, which have contributed to poverty, and establishing and enforcing global social standards for transnational corporations, which have become important players in the international development arena.
UNEMPLOYMENT
The ranks of the unemployed are growing in most parts of the world. And the nature of the workforce is changing rapidly, with more and more women entering the job market and with people moving to cities to look for work.
Causes of unemployment include misguided government policies that have discouraged the generation of jobs, heavy national debt burdens that have fueled inflation and resulted in recession, and limited growth in the industrial countries.
Preventing or reducing poverty and social disintegration requires determined national efforts and concerted international efforts to achieve full employment.
Governments must create an "enabling environment" for job growth and the growth of other income-earning opportunities. They must also take steps to fully use their human resources in a way that ensures macroeconomic stability.
The international community must dismantle protectionist trade policies that impede economic growth in developing countries, reduce the debt burdens of the poorest countries, and commit the industrial countries to guarantee a minimum overall growth rate of between 3 percent and 3.5 percent.
SOCIAL INTEGRATION
The social fabric of rich and poor countries is weakening. As a result, some nation-states are disintegrating. Ethnic, religious and cultural rivalries are tearing countries apart. The causes -- and the effects -- of global social disintegration include discrimination against minorities, the low status of women, poorly educated populations, drug addiction, crime, juvenile delinquency and diseases such as AIDS.
Widespread slow economic growth, declines in incomes and living standards, and mounting unemployment have contributed to social disintegration. Progress toward social harmony can only be achieved through extensive socio-economic and political reforms.
The necessary reforms are numerous, complex and may be difficult to implement. These reforms might include government policies that promote tolerance and solidarity, educational reforms to stimulate values of acceptance and togetherness, and international support for change.
HUMAN SECURITY
When the United Nations was established in 1945, its charter stated that international peace could be achieved only if human security could be guaranteed for everyone. "Human security" refers not only to protection from international enemies, but even more to protection from unemployment, poverty, crime and disease.
One way to develop human security is through sustainable human development. This type of development is people-centered. It generates economic growth but distributes its benefits equitably. It regenerates the environment instead of destroying it. It empowers people rather than marginalizing them. And it gives priority to the poor, enlarging their choices and opportunities.
Governments and international organizations must work together to forge global human security. To reach this goal, governments should establish goals for reducing poverty and reduce mindless investments in weapons and increase judicious investments in people. The international community must renew its commitment to the original human-security-building goals of the United Nations, rethink structural adjustment programs so they do not hurt the poor, and set up an early-warning system to identify areas where human security is at risk.
GOVERNANCE
Governments have an important role to play in promoting employment, eliminating poverty and making societies more cohesive.
Part of that role involves encouraging people's participation in the decisions that affect their lives. When people feel that governments are responding to their needs, better, more stable, systems of governance can evolve. And these systems will be better equipped to face the challenge of generating economic growth and enabling a fairer distribution of wealth. Research has shown that countries that are performing the best are the ones that have assigned a priority to a liberal; investment in the education and health of their people.
The international community can help improve governance by reformulating aid policies so that they help meet long-term development objectives. Meeting these objectives means more attention to meeting "human development" objectives through better education, health, nutrition, basic water and sanitation and family planning.
INTRODUCTION
The pendulum of development thinking swings back and forth.
In the 1970s -- and even earlier -- many development experts agreed that economic growth alone could not help countries move forward. They believed a balance between economic growth and social progress was needed for development.
But then in the 1980s, development thinking shifted. Many believed that economic growth was a prerequisite for development. Economic growth would then enable countries to meet social objectives.
But now most development experts are returning to the beliefs of the 1970s. Development requires a balanced and integrated set of economic, financial and social policies.
The following section provides a more detailed look at this shift in development thinking.
BEFORE THE SHIFT IN THINKING
Before the 1980s, the development community generally accepted the view that high rates of economic growth are necessary for achieving social goals like poverty reduction and the generation of jobs. But growth by itself is not enough.
Research has shown that high rates of economic growth were not solely responsible for East Asia's attainment of full employment in the early 1970s. Instead, government emphasis on the full use of the factors of production -- especially labor -- was the cornerstone of the region's high growth rate. Without development policies geared toward employment, the region would not have experienced 8 percent to 10 percent growth rates. The lesson drawn from East Asia is that the pattern of growth is just as important as the rate of growth.
The pattern of growth depends on governments' choices -- choices about which economic sectors should receive support and which population groups should receive special attention. The pattern of growth also depends on the quality of human resources in a country, the degree of balance between regions, and the extent to which people have an opportunity to participate in the decisions that affect their future.
Experience taught the development community in the 1970s that economic growth is effective for achieving social objectives and tackling poverty, but this might take three to five generations. Such a long period would be humanly unacceptable and politically irresponsible.
THE 1980s
The lessons learned in the 1970s were all but forgotten in the 1980s. The global recession in the first part of the decade and the debt crisis that began in 1982 resulted in the return to an older development paradigm: first economic growth, then everything else will follow. The idea of a balanced and integrated set of economic, financial, and social policies evaporated. Gone was the idea that economic and social goals were one. Gone was the belief that attaining one goal without the other would lead to disaster. Development experts seemed to have forgotten that too much emphasis on social goals without sufficient attention to economic goals leads to bankruptcy. They also seemed to have forgotten that too much attention to economic goals without enough attention to social goals leads to unrest and an end to economic growth.
The results of the policies pursued during the 1980s can be seen everywhere. Employment has become a universal problem, unmanaged urban development has reduced standards of living, and education quality has deteriorated. Health services everywhere need restructuring, social security and pension funds (where they exist) are faltering, and economic migrants are coming in increasing numbers to many industrialized countries.
It is more appropriate than ever to say that "poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere."
THE CHALLENGE
The economic and social problems that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s present the development community with a new challenge and require a new development vision. This vision can be captured by the words, "put people first," or perhaps, "poor people first." The participants of the Stockholm Roundtable challenge the delegations who will come to the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen next year to have the foresight and courage to adopt these three words as an underlying theme for the summit.
Hundreds of millions of poor people are on a downward slide. And in many of our societies, the poor have been losing their voice. The grim daily realities of the countless poor are rarely seen by the rich and the powerful few. Among the rich, materialism and greed have supplanted the ethics of altruism, service and sacrifice.
"Put people first" would provide new direction for the development community and would help rekindle commitment to a fairer world. These three words should pave the way for the new social agenda at the Copenhagen summit.
The future of political freedom is closely linked to economic prosperity and social progress. Today, the poverty of opportunity, as well as poverty itself, causes widespread suffering and discontent. Individual political freedom in the long run depends on the well-being of people. True economic development must therefore become a peace-building process to alleviate the present poverty of opportunity. Economic development should expand human capabilities, use people's energies and encourage individual initiative and innovation.
POVERTY
Participants at the roundtable held lengthy debates about five topics: poverty, unemployment, social disintegration, human security and governance.
About 40 participants joined each debate and made recommendations for addressing these issues (see Annex II for a list of the roundtable's "working groups").
In the debate on poverty, participants asked, "What are the patterns and nature of poverty and what are the political, economic, social and environmental impacts of poverty?" They also asked, "What could be learned from experience and what are the best means for alleviating poverty?"
THE NATURE OF POVERTY
More than 1 billion people live in absolute poverty. More than half of these people live in Asia, and about one-quarter of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many live in fragile environments. Most live in rural areas, but the ranks of the urban poor are growing. Most of the poor are female.
Poverty is usually defined in terms of income. But this is only one dimension of poverty. The criterion for poverty should be broadened to include more than income. It should include social status, physical strength, and power. The poor are often socially inferior, isolated, weak, vulnerable to abuse, powerless and humiliated.
A key approach to reducing poverty and deprivation, then, is enabling the poor to freely express their needs. Part of that approach includes encouraging the rest of society to respect and support the poor's efforts to change their living conditions.
Enabling the poor to be better off in their own terms will require actions on many levels, from the micro to the macro. The reduction of poverty and deprivation must be sought through changes in national policies, through the tapping of new resources and through institutional, professional and other changes that will help reach the poor and improve their lives.
NATIONAL POLICIES
The poor are everywhere, but mostly in the developing world. Global economic shocks, sudden environmental changes and other factors make the poor vulnerable to even worse poverty. Worsening poverty is reflected in sickness, disability, or loss of assets and livelihoods.
Governments must take a close look at how national policies affect the poor and devise ways to decrease the poor's vulnerability to worsening poverty.
Some forms of structural adjustment are necessary. But too often, structural adjustment has penalized the poor -- especially women -- in a variety of ways, including declining resources for education and health and the elimination of some subsidies. Governments should provide the poor with safety nets to cushion the shocks of economic transition.
National investments must empower the poor. This means investments that respond to the poor's own vision of their opportunities and their own analysis of their problems. Governments should turn the ownership of these investments over to the poor. This would help ensure that the poor's labor is more productive and would give them a greater chance to improve their own well-being in the long run.
National governance structures make it difficult for the poor to influence decisions that affect their lives. For example, national legal systems often discriminate against the poor because the poor are unfamiliar with their rights and lack access to legal support.
GLOBAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND EQUITY
Governments have the main power in promoting global accountability and equity. But we live in a world where governments are increasingly abdicating their power to the market, where transnational corporations act independently and where financial institutions are able to reap enormous profits from monetary transactions on an unprecedented scale.
This trend further impoverishes the poor. This trend must be reversed. International financial transactions and actions by transnational corporations -- particularly when they affect the poor -- must be made more transparent and accountable. If governments are unable to ensure accountability and equity at the global level, they must empower international institutions -- such as the United Nations -- to monitor actions and to take steps to protect the poor.
The poorer commodity-exporting countries of the world have been hurt by falling international prices, making it harder for their economies to grow and for them to repay debts. National indebtedness is a drain on national budgets and foreign-exchange reserves and a major cause of poverty. Multilateral debt poses a special problem for countries because current rules prohibit reducing it or writing it off. Finding a solution to these global problems requires urgent research.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following recommendations apply to both national and global policies.
A new form of "social conditionality" is needed. This conditionality should be based not on donor edict but on a genuine dialogue between governments and citizens' groups in the South, the Bretton Woods institutions, aid donors, and UN agencies. The dialogue could result in taxing windfall winners from structural adjustment programs and owners of undeveloped land and in reducing military expenditures. The funds generated could be used to maintain and improve the poor's access to health, education, clean water and other social services.
Safety nets should be an integral part of social policy.
The poor must gain access to fair and effective justice systems, and regulations that penalize the poor should be abolished.
Women's access to basic education, skills training, health care, nutrition services, family planning, and "productive resources" and markets should be expanded.
Assets and security of tenure should be redistributed. This includes rural land reform and urban land security for the poor and fair and equal rights for women.
Governments should decentralize many activities and introduce mechanisms to increase accountability to the poor. Governments should also strengthen structures of civil society to aid participation by the poor in national policy decisions.
The international community should establish and enforce global environmental and social standards for transnational corporations.
International currency transactions should be taxed (as Nobel prize winner James Tobin proposed in UNDP's Human Development Report 1994.
Governments and multilateral creditors should relieve countries' debt burdens.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
Institutional, professional and personal changes are essential in achieving the goal of "putting poor people first." The following recommendations for change will help meet that goal.
Institutional changes: Development organizations need a culture of participatory management if they are to successfully promote shared and fair development policies. Information must flow freely between all actors. To mount an effective attack on poverty, multilateral institutions need to reduce competition, increase collaboration and devote resources to areas where they have a comparative advantage.
Professional changes: Putting poor people first requires an overhaul of professional ethics and actions. Development experts must learn from poor people and base actions on the special needs and circumstances of each community.
Personal changes: Putting poor people first entails changes in individuals' values, behavior and attitudes. People who have traditionally been in positions of authority must become listeners and learners.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Another group participating in the roundtable looked into the issue of unemployment and sought solutions to this problem which has afflicted practically every country, rich and poor alike.
As the world's economies have grown increasingly interdependent, global unemployment has risen. Because of this interdependence, we need a global solution to the problem. Without concerted international action, unemployment and its attendant miseries are bound to persist and worsen. This prospect is intolerable.
UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE 1990S
The employment situation varies by region. In East and Southeast Asia, including China, output and employment have been growing dramatically. In South Asia, absolute poverty is on the decline, but the growth in employment has been precarious; much valuable work pays workers barely enough to survive. These regions have been relatively successful at boosting employment, but the success is fragile.
But for much of the rest of the world, having a productive, remunerative and reasonably secure job is only a dream. Societies that fail to offer the prospect of this type of job are bound to be socially unstable and economically insecure.
In the relatively rich nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, economic growth has resumed. But jobs are growing more slowly than production. And even where unemployment has fallen (as in the United States), the new jobs pay less and are less secure than in previous periods.
Eastern Europe's rapid economic transformation has wiped out many jobs. Subsidies to cushion the impact of job losses require massive government spending, which contributes to inflation and makes the new poor even poorer.
In Latin America, the workforce is changing. The working-age population is increasing, more women are in the job market, and more and more people are moving to urban areas in search of work. Meanwhile, governments are cutting back on the public sector, resulting in fewer jobs. Most new jobs are found in the informal sector.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the population has been growing at a time when oil revenues have been shrinking. Reduced oil revenues mean that governments are no longer able to be employer of last resort, especially for university graduates. This situation is resulting in instability that prevents governments from implementing economic reforms.
The unemployment crisis is fiercest in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is growing at an unprecedented pace. More than half of all non-farm workers have found jobs in government. But governments in the region cannot afford to hire any more people or raise wages. And structural adjustment programs have failed to result in increased employment.
Employment and economic activity are on the rise in East and Southeast Asia. Here, the state sector is small, labor markets are only lightly regulated, and government policies favor private-sector employers. Manipulated exchange rates have promoted exports. Protectionism -- specially in imports like rice -- have supported social stability and quality of incomes. Governments in the region have assigned human rights a low priority. But there are signs that social progress is following economic progress in some countries.
Because of its large size, China is a special case. A rush toward economic liberalization has contributed to astonishing and probably unsustainable rates of economic growth and a quick decline in poverty. This progress has been achieved under tight political control, with no concessions to human rights or to the rights of workers.
The countries of South Asia have generally survived the shocks of the oil and debt crises. Nevertheless, they still need to create huge numbers of jobs because more and more women are joining the labor force. Even though many workers in rural areas are moving to cities, employment in agriculture may grow. Meanwhile, governments are reducing restrictions on labor markets to enable many enterprises to become more competitive.
The employment crises in some regions are often the result of government incentives that have distorted the job market and of inadequate government institutions. Some countries, for example, have promoted capital investment, when labor-intensive investments would have been more appropriate.
Another source of employment crises is imprudent government borrowing. Excessive borrowing fuels inflation, and some attempts to curb inflation bring recession.
Meanwhile, monetary restraints in the industrial countries have brought growth to a halt. When growth stopped, the industrial countries cut back on imports, hurting the economies of many countries, particularly ones that export commodities. In an attempt to limit domestic borrowing, governments of the OECD countries raised their interest rates. As a result, interest rates rose everywhere, putting a particularly great burden on the heavily indebted developing countries.
IMPACT OF UNEMPLOYMENT
The painful experience of the Great Depression and the economic decline that led to World War II caused the founders of the United Nations to identify full employment as one of the main pillars of international peace, stability and well-being. But today, the goal of full employment seems to be all but forgotten.
"Jobless growth" is a new phenomenon. Elimination of jobs is now considered an important measure to increase competitiveness. In some of the richest countries, structural unemployment has recently reached record levels.
Three and four decades ago, a normal unemployment rate was between 3 percent and 4 percent. Today, a normal rate exceeds 12 percent. Now it is common to see high unemployment and low wages.
In the past, economists considered unemployment a temporary problem that would be resolved by market forces. But today, this is no longer the case. Instead, market forces are leading to permanent job cuts. The profit-making philosophy of today is that workers should be fired if their termination has no effect on production and sales. New technologies enable companies to produce more goods with fewer workers. Therefore, businesses are posting gains by paring back the workforce. Because of this trend, corporate profits are rising while wages as a percentage of national incomes are falling.
RECOMMENDATIONS
All governments should commit themselves to full utilization of human resources. Full employment should be the central goal of all economic and social policy. Social integration and the eradication of poverty depend on the expansion of productive and remunerative work, including wage employment, self-employment and employment in cooperative enterprises.
Governments should explore all alternatives for ensuring full employment with macroeconomic stability. This means that full employment takes precedence as an objective in policy formulation.
Countries need an international economic "enabling environment" to attain goals for expanding productive employment. The main elements for creating this environment include:
A pledge by industrial countries to coordinate macroeconomic policies to ensure a minimum overall growth rate of between 3 percent and 3.5 percent.
A dismantling of protectionist policies in OECD countries.
Exclusive allocation of official development assistance to the poorest countries that demonstrate effective use of resources and economic growth with social and gender equity.
A reduction in the debt burden of the developing countries, especially the poorest ones. This should include forgiveness of officially held debt.
Trade reform in developing countries to promote international commerce and boost trade and investment among developing countries.
A small tax on international capital movement to help reduce fluctuations in exchange rates stemming from speculative capital movement. The proceeds could fund environmental protection, increased development assistance and debt reduction.
Investment should rise to promote higher growth in developed and developing countries. But investment must be backed by a high rate of domestic savings and highly productive capital. The goal is to have employment-friendly growth. A system for reaching this goal includes:
A foreign trade regime that adopts careful support for infant industries but avoids over-valuation of exchange rates, discrimination against imports, and dependence of import quotas.
A pricing system that provides reasonable indicators of scarcities and is free of arbitrary controls.
An economic environment that encourages foreign investment.
Special actions to help sub-Saharan Africa. These actions include building up human capital, improving food production and distribution, establishing a base for export earnings, and diversifying economies.
Governments should intervene in labor markets only to make them more efficient and responsive to the needs of the economy. Workers should have access to social protection and everyone should have access to basic education. Governments should emphasize higher education that is of high quality and provides students with technical skills to aid countries' science-led sustainable development. And, all governments must guarantee certain human rights, such as the protection of children by making child labor unnecessary and illegal, freedom from forced labor, and unrestricted organization of workers. Minimum-wage laws that do not overprice labor should be put in place.
Government policies must be designed to unleash people's creativity and energy and enable them to become self-employed or entrepreneurs. This means:
Increased access to education.
Access to resources such as land and credit.
Reduction in regulations that impede entrepreneurship.
Improved infrastructure, particularly that which enables the working poor and small-scale entrepreneurs to raise their productivity and earnings.
Improved access by the agricultural sector to productive resources. This sector will have to absorb a significant proportion of the growing labor force. Improved access by the working poor to land would also help boost employment and labor productivity.
SOCIAL INTEGRATION
Another group of the Stockholm Roundtable participants looked into the issues of social disintegration and ethnic conflicts and considered strategies for making societies more cohesive.
The social fabric of most countries -- rich and poor -- is weakening. As a result, some nation-states are disintegrating.
People are increasingly abandoning established social values, and a highly materialistic global culture is evolving. A value of competition is replacing values of sharing and cooperation. The pursuit of happiness is more and more defined in terms of money and consumerism.
Ethnic, tribal, religious an cultural differences are polarizing groups within nations. The list of causes and effects of growing social instability is long. It includes discrimination against minorities, inferior status of women, increasing numbers of single-parent households, poorly educated children, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, disease and crime. These problems easily travel the globe.
PATTERNS OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION
In a normative sense, social integration refers to improved living standards, social justice and harmonious relations between people. In an analytical sense, social integration refers to patterns of interaction between individuals and groups (these patterns may be unjust or equitable, conflictual or harmonious). But however it is defined, social integration takes place in a framework of institutions, such as families, communities, the workplace, or states. Furthermore, social integration is deeply embedded in the social, political, and economic processes and structures of societies, nations, and global systems. Therefore, dominant trends in society, politics, economy, technology and culture influence the patterns of social integration.
Put simply, social integration is the degree of real harmony (real means freely chosen, not imposed) that exists between groups in a society. Social disintegration is the degree of negative tension between groups. These groups can be workers and employers, men and women, poor and rich, old and young, black and white or the governed and the governing.
Many forces have influenced social integration. These include the spread of liberal democracy, the dominance of markets, the acceleration of economic globalization, the change in productions systems and labor markets, technological progress and the revolution in the mass media and communications.
The past decade has been characterized by widespread slow growth, economic stagnation, or debt crises and sharp declines in production, incomes, employment and living standards. These changes have deeply influenced integration through their impact on the role, responsibilities and capacities of institutions ranging from the family to the state.
Social fabrics are under stress. Families and communities are disintegrating, crime and violence are spreading, drugs and alcohol are being consumed by an increasing number of people, and homelessness, child labor, and prostitution are becoming commonplace. Fundamentalism, xenophobia and racism are on the rise. Ethnic conflicts are growing. Organized crime is taking over many markets. The extreme cases of social disintegration are in a growing number of countries that are suffering from prolonged civil strife. In these countries, infrastructure is collapsing and millions of people are losing their livelihoods. Entire populations are being uprooted. Communities and other institutions are disappearing. The ultimate tragedy is the total collapse of the state and all established institutional authority. The result is an environment of chaos and misery.
In general, the world is characterized by growing unemployment, poverty and inequality; worsening ethnic strife and tensions between groups in society; mounting religious fundamentalism and intolerance; and increasing numbers of uprooted people. A vicious circle is becoming all too familiar: falling gross domestic product, which leads to growing poverty and unemployment, which results in social disintegration, which turns into violence, crime, and religious extremism, which further cuts into gross domestic product.
Progress toward social harmony, solidarity and equality can only be achieved by far-reaching socio-economic and political reform. There are no simple or easy solutions. Reform will be slow and difficult and will require a determined effort by individuals, organizations and social groups.
RECOMMENDATIONS
In most cases, the initiative for reform must come from within countries but must receive international support. In Africa, for example, some countries require a national and regional "shock" to restructure economies, diversify exports, increase savings and investment rates, or lower fertility rates. There are cases where an outside initiative must come first, but this shock should be accompanied whenever possible by national action. This has been the case, for instance, in Central America.
In some cases, there should be a political shock rather than an economic one. And, external and internal changes must be realized simultaneously. One illustration is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Another is the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.
The management of expectations and pluralism is crucial. This is particularly applicable wherever expectations have been suppressed for a long time, as in South Africa. The only viable option in such a case is to set clear intermediate targets. These must be met at any price, so that the people experience progress toward the realization of their expectations and continue to support reforms.
Managing expectations and pluralism is essential. This is particularly true where expectations have been suppressed for a long time, as in South Africa. The only option is to set clear intermediate targets, which must be met.
The most fundamental change must come from the heart and the mind. We must become more tolerant and respectful, show more solidarity with one another, and halt violence. Respect for human rights, freedom of expression and association, and true justice are the cornerstone of stable societies.
Countries must develop or procure the skills to manage complex economic and political problems. Care must be taken in hiring foreign experts, who must be highly sensitive and observant.
Promoting a flourishing civil society will help guarantee democracy and citizens' social and economic rights.
Institutional reforms at the grassroots, national and international levels are needed to respond to today's complex and overwhelming social problems.
Discrimination against women must stop. This discrimination is morally wrong but is also a waste of resources.
Governments should use public policies to promote solidarity and tolerance in multicultural societies. These policies include devolution of power, electoral reforms, and respect for different cultures, languages, and religions.
Everyone needs to join forces to nurture an ethos and culture of world citizenship. Educational institutions, media and individuals all have responsibilities to expand our moral
From the United Nations Department of Public Information.
