Day 6: CUTS Bulletin on UNCTAD XIII
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CUTS International Daily Bulletin for 26 April 2012
UNCTAD XIII (21-26 April), Doha, State of Qatar
After five daily bulletins straight from Doha starting April 21, this bulletin covering the final day of UNCTAD XIII has been issued by CUTS International from Jaipur, India with excerpts from two unofficial press releases by UNCTAD: 1. Closing Plenary: UNCTAD XIII adopts two outcome documents at conclusion of Thirteenth Ministerial Meeting, Doha, 26 April 2012; and, 2. UNCTAD XIII quadrennial conference concludes with mandate affirming organization’s core activities, declaration of member states’ solidarity in quest for “a prosperous world”, Geneva 26 April 2012.
On the last day, that is Day 6, UNCTAD XIII adopted two outcome documents namely:
1. Doha Mandate (a 15-page, 64-paragraph document which gives guidelines for the organization’s activities for the next four years), and
2. Doha Manar (the closing declaration of UNCTAD XIII on behalf of 194 member States)
The highlights/excerpts of the Doha Mandate are:
· Member States noted that the global financial crisis had struck in 2008 shortly after UNCTAD XII, and that its effects had spread very rapidly and widely. Its ripple effects had impacted, among other things, efforts to ensure food security, combat climate change and stabilize energy and other commodity prices
· Several challenges have to be met to realize development-centred globalization. In this regard, finance should support the real economy in support of sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and sustainable development. All countries, developed and developing alike, can pay serious political, economic and social costs from financial shocks
· Another challenge is eliminating hunger and achieving food security. Securing adequate access to food – one of the most basic human needs – is a priority
· Issues related to energy must be addressed including volatile prices and access, including access to renewable energy
· Development-centred globalization sets the stage for inclusive growth and development, and contributes towards reducing poverty and creating jobs
· Discussions on globalization should be balanced, highlighting its benefits, acknowledging its risks and addressing its challenges
· Other matters noted in the text are that UNCTAD should continue its research and advisory work on issues of public debt and on the dissemination or diffusion of technology to developing countries
· Development-centred globalization sets the stage for inclusive growth and development and contributes towards reducing poverty and creating jobs. Development strategies should be inclusive and designed to meet human needs.
· People have similar needs and aspirations, including freedom, human rights, in particular the right to development, decent work [and] all aspects of affordable health care and good governance at all levels. Since those ends were closely interconnected, development strategies should be based on an integrated and holistic approach, if the desired policy options were to emerge
· UNCTAD should, through the three pillars of its mandate – consensus-building, policy-oriented analysis and technical cooperation – continue to deliver meaningful results, within available resources, while enhancing synergies and promoting collaboration with the efforts of other international organizations, according to the Mandate
· UNCTAD should contribute to global efforts to transition towards a green economy; continue to monitor and assess the evolution of the international trading system and its trends from a development perspective; and continue to support the specific needs of least developed countries, Small Island developing States, middle-income countries and those with economies in transition.
· For trade to serve as an engine of inclusive growth and development, the multilateral trading system must remain open, transparent, inclusive, non-discriminatory and rules-based. The successful conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations was crucial to the creation of new trade flows that would generate economic growth and development
· In a time of fragile economic recovery, trade protectionism remained a risk, and efforts to fight all forms of protectionism should continue. Meaningful trade liberalization would also require addressing non-tariff measures and aim to reduce and eliminate other arbitrary or unjustified trade barriers
· The Conference should also continue its work on commodities so as to help those countries achieve strengthened and more sustainable agricultural production, food security and export capacity. This work should also take into account the needs of small-scale farmers, as well as the empowerment of women and youth.
Following the Mandate’s adoption by the Committee of the Whole, UNCTAD Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi thanked participants for embracing the organization’s “capacious mandate and ambitious programme of work”, and for working intensively to chart the way forward for the next four-year period until its next ministerial meeting.
The closing declaration of UNCTAD XIII, called the Doha Manar – an Arabic word meaning a strong light visible from a distance that serves to direct travellers – came out on behalf of 194 member States. The highlights/excerpts of the Doha Manar are:
· We commend UNCTAD as the focal point of the United Nations system for the integrated treatment of trade and development and interrelated issues in the areas of finance, technology, investment and sustainable development.
· We recognize the need to make our common economic life more conducive to progressive structural change, more productive of inclusive and sustainable growth and development and more effective in fostering broad-based inclusion in a new and more robust social contract
· The winds of change blowing in many parts of the world today attest to the desire of populations for responsive policies that foster participatory and inclusive approaches to development towards achieving prosperity for all
· Together, as a collection of sovereign nations, we have endeavoured to construct a shared, interdependent and prosperous world through increased economic, political and social processes.
· By working to maximize the opportunities arising from globalization in international trade and investment, we have sought to promote economic growth and development with particular attention to reducing the inequalities between us and within our nations, and to improving our capacities to fulfil common purposes and exercise more effective and responsible stewardship of our natural and planetary resources.
· Above all, we have sought to fulfil, individually and collectively, our peoples’ aspirations to live in peace and to enjoy in fullness lives that are rich and diverse, and ever more stable and secure.
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From: Guy de Jonquières
Dear Pradeep:
Thank you for sending this. I am writing on the premise that the excerpts from the Unctad XIII draft statements are both accurate and capture their main points. Since CUTS is an organisation of unquestioned integrity, I assume that to be the case.
As a veteran of innumerable international meetings, I have learned from hard experience to be sceptical of what they promise and of what they achieve. However, I can honestly say that in four decades as a journalist covering such events, I have never read a communiqué as utterly vacuous, self-serving and pointless as the one from which you publish excerpts. To call it a vast amount of hot air would be a disservice to ballooning. There is, quite literally, absolutely nothing of substance in it.
Furthermore, the statement says that "UNCTAD should, through the three pillars of its mandate – consensus-building, policy-oriented analysis and technical cooperation – continue to deliver meaningful results". The only definition I know of "meaningful results" is concrete and tangible outcomes that have a measurable impact on the course of events. Can anyone name just three instances of actions instituted by Unctad in the past decade that come even close to meeting that criterion?
Of course, there are many international organisations that lack relevance, purpose and effectiveness. However, in Unctad's case, the deficiency is especially reprehensible. It is an organisation that purports both to represent developing countries and to advance the interests and wellbeing of their citizens. Judging by its communiqué, the only evident way that Unctad did this was to enable thousands of public sector employees from around the world to fly to Jaipur, stay in comfortable hotels and gather in air-conditioned conference rooms for a week. This, at a time when public expenditure budgets, in developed and in an increasing number of developing countries, are under severe pressure. That scarce public funds should be wantonly squandered in this way, when they could be spent far better on those genuinely in need, is, to put it bluntly, obscene.
Lest anyone accuse me of being someone from the developed world with an axe to grind against developing countries, I would like to say that I am genuinely concerned about the fate of the poorest and donate money from my own pocket to organisations that seek to relieve their plight. I sincerely believe that it is a responsibility of those of us who can afford it to contribute to the provision of essential public goods, such as schooling and health care, and to the creation of economic opportunities.
The reported non-outcomes of Unctad XIII leave me wondering, however, whether those participating in it really share those beliefs. They also make me very, very angry. Not simply because of the amount of money wasted on this empty exercise; but because they make it that much harder for those of us who believe that helping developing countries develop is a noble cause to defend it against those who do not.
If Unctad is genuinely committed to advancing the objectives that it claims to espouse, perhaps it should start by cancelling all further exercises of this kind until its members are confident that they have something to show for them.
Yours in sorrow,
Guy
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From: Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Founding Director, The Evian Group at IMD
Dear Guy
I think you mean flying to Doha rather than flying to Jaipur, though one can also get to both places by camel!
I do not disagree with you about the vacuousness of the Unctad communiqué. However, while I may be less an intrepid veteran of international meetings than you are, my question would be: “so what else is new”? How many of the countless international meetings of the last decades, say, have achieved real outcomes? Could one get to the fingers of just one hand? So what do we do? I strongly publicly suggested that the climate change meeting in Cancún (after Copenhagen) should be cancelled as it would achieve nothing and ditto the Geneva WTO ministerial last year. And indeed nothing was achieved. However to my dismay I got very little support. People thought I was joking, which I was not. These events are extremely expensive both economically and ecologically and further erode the credibility and legitimacy of the international organisations concerned.
Should we not try to stop the impending farce at Los Cabos next month?
Another idea is we could have a “vacuousness prize”. Over a given year take all international meetings and award them a mark on a vacuousness scale for which the winner would be rewarded by holding a hugely expensive international event!
Best
Jean-Pierre
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From: Mark Halle, Executive Director, IISD-Europe
Dear Guy,
Thanks for your very forthright assessment of the UNCTAD mandate. I attended the UNCTAD conference in Doha – my first and no doubt my last- and tried hard to understand what was going on. In the end, it all depends on what value you attribute to language, and specifically the language in the outcome document. The conference preparations – and the conference itself – all revolved around a huge squabble over language, with the developing countries seeking to preserve and where possible expand UNCTAD’s mandate to suggest alternatives to the economic orthodoxy coming from the IMF and World Bank, and the developed counties – who by and large have to foot the bill for UNCTAD – trying to keep the mandate within reasonable bounds.
In that context, words and phrases took on huge symbolic value. Weeks of precious and expensive diplomatic time were devoted to whether the mandate that emerged from UNCTAD XII was “reaffirmed” or “built upon”. In the end, in a predictable compromise, the members decided both to reaffirm and to build upon the Accra mandate. The fundamental question, of course, is whether this or the other contentious language matters at all, or whether it was all just a set-piece minuet that everybody went through because, well, that’s what they do.
My own feeling is that it doesn’t actually matter very much. In all likelihood the mandate will not be looked at again until UNCTAD XIV, when we will all go to battle to ensure that the Doha mandate is reaffirmed … and built upon.
My own view is that it is UNCTAD’s performance that will determine whether they serve the developing countries well, and not their mandate. I was in Doha as a member of the Civil Society Steering Group which I joined because I believe that deep reform of UNCTAD is an urgent priority. I went in with two specific suggestions: the first is that UNCTAD limit extra-budgetary funding (i.e. the funding that pays for activities) from OECD countries to 25% and insist that, if developing countries want an agency that represents their interests, they should pay for it. There is no reason why Qatar, China, Singapore, Brazil, the UAE and others should not fork over.
The second suggestion was that UNCTAD adopt the practice followed in the International Energy Agency, namely to limit the service of any individual to a set period of five or seven years, at all levels. This is the only way that I can see to clear out the accumulation of dead wood in UNCTAD that, at present, could profitably supply a major sawmill for decades.
Nor is my criticism of UNCTAD’s abysmal performance a lonely stand. The Joint Inspection Unit of the UN has recently put out a report that is devastating in its criticism of UNCTAD’s leadership, personnel policies, governance and internal communications. And yet my insistence that the civil society declaration at least urge UNCTAD to take the recommendations seriously was met with a response familiar to me from my student days in the 1970s – if we criticize UNCTAD, we play into the hands of the enemy.
So, in conclusion, like you I think that the outcome document will not be of much help in making UNCTAD an effective defender of developing country interests. Only a deep and thorough reform of the organization has any chance of doing that. And since the UN system has proved, over a sixty-year period, that it is essentially unreformable, we will end up with donors increasingly turning away, the organization sinking into oblivion, and its member-delegates increasingly indulging in the displacement behaviour of arguing about language that, in the end, does little to change reality.
Best regards,
Mark Halle
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From: Pradeep S. Mehta, Secretary-General, CUTS International
Guy has raised some fundamental issues which need to be debated so as to enable UNCTAD to become a lean and mean organisation.
But to say that such events are a waste of money is very unfair, though indeed the costs should be rationalised. For example, the meeting could have been held over 2-2.5 days rather than such a long period. Many sessions were of a repetitive nature and could also have been merged. I suspect the organisers have to try and cater to protocol requirements so that every possible VIP can be on the dias. At the same time some of the sessions were conducted in a round table manner, rather than a theatre style and thus were able to accommodate VIPs also.
However, the benefit of having face to face meetings can never be substituted by video conferencing or blogs or whatever. Other than meetings many issues are discussed in the lobbies and cafeteria, which cannot be done at all through electronic means. They serve a huge purpose and I have often found them to be more valuable than listening to speeches.
In terms of saving the money and using it for poverty eradication efforts, one agrees that the costs could be brought down, but it is somewhat like the unfair criticism and scorn that one faces from the crowd which goes somewhat like: ‘people discussing poverty in five star hotels’. As if the discussions could be held in slums or villages to arrive at solutions to eradicate poverty. Another populist comment: unless one is poor one cannot understand the pains of being poor. Very irrational argument!
In so far as the content of UNCTAD’s communiques are concerned, one has to be aware that they do what is the best under the circumstances they are in. (I with hold my criticism of some inanities which also feature in such documents, but that would need more space and time). Even the outcome document/declaration was debated vigorously and negotiated for days and nights at Doha, and is something what I have seen at all such past conferences.
I have often wondered as to whether the outcome document/declaration will bind all the member states to whatever is contained in them.…not at all, and members states often do what they feel is their best interest, which may be entirely different than what they have agreed (or persuaded to) under the UNCTAD declarations. Even under WTO agreements, member states often do not do what is required of them to do in spite of its binding nature.
For instance on one issue which I have followed closely is on the matter on investment policy. At Midrand in June, 1996, UNCTAD-IX adopted a statement under which inter alia the issue of a multilateral investment agreement was not favoured at all. The rich member states did not bother about what was agreed in June, 1996 in Midrand and launched a campaign at both WTO and OECD to push developing countries to take forward discussions soon after in 1996 in Geneva and Paris respectively.
The OECD negotiations fell flat on their face due to stiff opposition by the civil society and some of the OECD members. Whatever was agreed at Singapore, December, 1996, and Doha, November, 2001 fell flat at Cancun in September, 2003. In a manner of sort, the issue of ‘the words: ‘policy space’ in the context of liberalisation too had become an extremely contentious issue at the UNCTAD XI in Sao Paulo in June, 2004 and it also occupied huge time of all the participants.
If the developing world need exemptions from international commitments to protect their policy space to allow domestic enterprises and their impoverished economies to flourish, what is wrong with that. Even the rich countries are exercising their policy space rights in the area of agriculture (and had done it for textiles and clothing until 2005). And what the developing countries, struggling with the impasse ridden Doha Round, have been able to do? But that is another story.
Therefore let us not condemn UNCTAD, but seek its reform and strengthen it to do better than what it is doing. It is an essential element of our global economic order.
Pradeep S Mehta
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From: Anwarul Hoda, Professor ICRIER, New Delhi and Former Deputy Director General, WTO
Dear Pradeep,
I have great sympathy with the line of thinking of Mr Guy de Jonquières. However, I would propose that the next step for UNCTAD should be to carry out an evaluation of all the work it has done in the past and examine how much of it has proved to be of lasting benefit to developing countries. Some of it may have fallen by the wayside (Common Fund, Integrated Programme on Commodities, Convention on Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences etc.) but others have proved to be of enduring value (GSP, The Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices etc.).
Best wishes,
Anwarul Hoda