NP Kofi Annan's speech to the World Economic Forum

[jbor]

    Two years ago I spoke here about the fragility of globalization. Some of
    you probably thought I was being too alarmist. Yet I believe events
    since then have shown that my concerns were justified.

    Our challenge is not the protests we have witnessed, but the public mood
    they reflect and help to spread. For far too many people in the world
    today, greater openness looms as a threat -- a threat to their
    livelihoods, to their ways of life, and to the ability of their
    governments to serve and protect them. Even when it may be exaggerated
    or misplaced, "fear has big eyes", in the words of the Russian proverb.
    And, we might add, it has the ear of governments, who feel compelled to
    respond.

    But it is not the case that most people would wish to reverse
    globalization. It is that they aspire to a different and better kind
    than we have today.

    That was the overriding message to come out of the United Nations
    Millennium Summit last September -- the largest gathering ever of Heads
    of State and Government. Its purpose was to take a fresh look at the
    core priorities for the United Nations in the new century. None was
    ranked higher than the need to make globalization work for all the
    world's people.

    You in this hall may take for granted that it can and will. But it is a
    much tougher sell out there, in a world where half of our fellow human
    beings struggle to survive on less than $2 a day; where less than 10 per
    cent of the global health research budget is aimed at the health
    problems afflicting 90 per cent of the world's population.

    Try to imagine what globalization can possibly mean to the half of
    humanity that has never made or received a telephone call; to the people
    of sub-Saharan Africa, who have less Internet access than the
    inhabitants of the borough of Manhattan.

    And how do you explain, especially to our young people, why the global
    system of rules, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, is tougher in
    protecting intellectual property rights than in protecting fundamental
    human rights?

    My friends, the simple fact of the matter is this: if we cannot make
    globalization work for all, in the end it will work for none. The
    unequal distribution of benefits, and the imbalances in global
    rule-making, which characterize globalization today, inevitably will
    produce backlash and protectionism. And that, in turn, threatens to
    undermine and ultimately to unravel the open world economy that has been
    so painstakingly constructed over the course of the past half-century...

Continues at:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0101/S00110.htm

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