Brining home globalization or globalization, home; Second Committee: Economic and Financial.

• Position: GA 57 Session

Three UN conferences held in 2001 and 2002 left in their wake commitments on development. The Second (Economic and Financial) Committee, in discussing these commitments, marked a turning point in deciding how to measure them against the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, one aim of which is to halve poverty by the year 2015.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in August/September 2002 associated poverty reduction with environmental protection; the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002 was concerned with resource shortfalls for development goals; and the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001 declared that it put the interests of the developing world at the heart of trade reform. These conferences bracketed three main needs of developing countries: sustainable development, finance and commerce for development.

The Committee passed four resolutions to specify targets, set time frames and evaluate achievements as a follow-up to the conferences. "That became a turning point for how the United Nations is doing business with the Bretton Woods institutions", Committee Chairman Marco Antonio Suazo Fernandez of Honduras told the UN Chronicle. "It was a complicated matter", he said, "how to fulfil the demanding need of developing countries after those huge conferences, where donors and the Bretton Woods institutions made a lot of commitments to eradicate poverty." The Committee also decided to review its work programme in light of the commitments made.

The General Assembly decided to hold a high-level dialogue by October 2003 involving WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and civil society to "evaluate progress" after Monterrey. The conferences raised hopes in the developing world as it faced unilateral trade barriers, Ambassador Suazo Fernandez said. "Developing nations can be rich in resources, but if you don't have the possibility to exploit them and put them in the market for your own people, then you are stuck."

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), between 1980 and 2001 exports of the developed world shot up from $1,296 billion to $3,919 billion, with 64 per cent share in world trade, while exports of the developing world climbed from $581 billion to $1,922 billion, with 30 per cent share.

In the debate on measures to cut poverty, delegates from Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, India, Myanmar, and Venezuela, among others, said the commitment in Monterrey by developed nations to increase the official development assistance (ODA) to 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP)--roughly $100 billion--must be realized alongside increased access to developed markets.

"It's a kind of a package"...