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Development and Social Action

Globalisation, social action and human rights
Miloon Kothari

Introduction
The concern with social action and development dates back to the struggles for independence in the period following World War II. The original notion of development was to open up spaces for deprived social sectors who were themselves often deeply involved in the struggles for self-determination. In that context the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was conceived and the United Nations (UN) was set up to promote processes which subsequently gave rise to the concept of development. The state was supposed to be, in its counter-imperial and post-colonial role, a catalyst for social action; a role that received serious attention from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).

The state's agenda as a catalyst for social action was, however, hijacked by monopolistic tendencies. Soon after the post-colonial phase, both the state and international agencies began to emphasise social and economic policies that focused on wealth-creation. 'Development' thus became tied to the creation of national market economies to be integrated into a global economic system that was based on market principles. This approach, much accelerated by the deregulation of global markets from the 1980s, has led to growing wealth disparity, polarisation of social classes, and increasing dependence on foreign aid and international capital in many Third World countries. The most recent of these tendencies, especially after the collapse of the socialist states and the emergence of a unipolar world, is known as economic globalisation (EG).

This paper argues that there is a major crisis in the philosophy, the reality, and the very notion of development which, instead of being a process to create conditions for self-reliant, sustainable communities, has become simply a project. The misuse and atomisation of the original understanding of development, which was directly linked to the achievement of social justice, has led to deepening poverty even in times of economic boom for investors and soaring stock market indices. This misappropriation has left a painful legacy whose lexicon of acronyms - IMF, WB, SAPs, GATT, WTO, NAFTA - represent lost ideals, lost decades, and a consistent assault on the true development capacities of people and communities.

For those who advocate stable social institutions that can foster policies, laws, and programmes aimed at bringing about social justice, respect for human rights, and development, EG is already leaving pernicious and long-lasting results. Further, the dismantling of socially-conscious legislation, institutions and programmes, is eroding the social gains made through decades of civil society struggle.

This paper also argues both that the onus is on CSOs to recapture the radical notion of development; and that, ironically, the catalyst for doing so is to be found in the very processes that have been spawned by EG. Ever more intense collaborative transnational alliances are needed to restore what has been destroyed in recent decades. But the inability to understand the many dimensions, some quite technical, of EG, the unwillingness to lock horns with the institutions that spearhead it, and a focus only on local-level action will serve to marginalise CSOs, and to consign many millions of people to further exclusion and immiseration.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, EG is the phenomenon that dominates the world stage. Its many manifestations are all around us, as are its manifold failures. The iniquitous outcomes of EG have been confirmed in numerous UN reports. Even the international economic policy forums now recognise that the so-called 'trickle down' effect, for long the social justification for economic liberalisation, is not occurring. Studies such as UNCTAD's Trade and Development Report 1997 and UNDP's Human Development Report 1997 (HDR), convincingly show that the opposite is true. UNCTAD demonstrates that since the early 1980s the world economy has been characterised by rising inequality, both among and within countries, that income gaps between North and South continue to widen, and that the income share of the richest 20 per cent has risen almost everywhere while that of both the poorest 20 per cent and also the middle class has fallen. The HDR 1997 similarly shows that although poverty has been dramatically reduced in many parts of the world, one-quarter of the human race remains in severe poverty, that the human development index (HDI) declined in the previous year in more than 30 countries - more than in any year since the HDR was first issued in 1990 - and that EG had indeed helped to reduce poverty in some of the largest and strongest developing economies but had also produced a widening gap between winners and losers among and within countries.

The USA, whose ideology created and sustains the global architecture on which EG depends, is disgraced, both politically and in terms of its own domestic dispossession and poverty. The USA now ranks highest among the industrialised countries in terms of the scale of its poverty. What right, then, does the USA have to dictate the world's economic ideology? Powerful voices, however, are now emerging within the USA to question the 'Washington Consensus', the basis of EG as we know it, including such establishment figures as the Chief Economist of the World Bank, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz.

As if the adverse effects of the liberalisation of trade and investment were not enough, a climate is now being sought to allow for unfettered capital flows. The conditions for such potential global fallout had been set in place by the establishment of global deregulated markets in the 1980s and 1990s. While massively increased financial mobility has become a primary danger to the health of national economies - as demonstrated by the crisis in Southeast Asia - the scale of such financial flows is astounding and indicates the exponential growth in this area.

For those pushing for further liberalisation of investment, the past two years have witnessed the attempt to adopt a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). This was until recently being negotiated at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the international club of the world's 29 richest countries. If adopted, the MAI would have contributed a significant chapter in what has been called the 'constitution of a single global economy', or 'a bill of rights and freedoms for transnational corporations¼ a declaration of corporate rule'. Until February 1997, when a draft was leaked, it was for the most part negotiated in secret and was driven by the aggressive advocacy of the International Chamber of Commerce, the US Council on International Business, and other corporate-backed groups. Essentially the MAI sought to complete the economic liberalisation agenda, favouring the rights of transnational investors and corporations over the rights of workers, consumers, communities, and the environment.

In December 1998, under intense pressure from CSOs (described below) and the withdrawal of France from the negotiations, the OECD abandoned the MAI. However, the increased freedom for investment is very much on the agenda at various global and regional forums. Provisions that made the MAI notorious with the environment, human rights, and development NGOs, are cropping up at the WTO, the IMF, the FTAA, and elsewhere. CSOs thus need to be more, and not less, vigilant.

It is against the background of attempts to further liberalise finance, trade, and investment, that we contemplate perhaps the greatest challenge to social action: How to sustain countervailing forces that challenge, expose, demystify, and discredit the lure of EG and blunt the power of those who are spearheading and devising ways to push the world closer to the edge of economic and social disaster - processes already evident with the recent crises in Southeast Asia, Russia, and Brazil.

It is imperative that CSOs recognise this omnipresent threat and use all available international instruments and mechanisms as well as government commitments from the recent series of UN conferences. For social actors and activists who want to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world, the pressing need is to grapple with the world's economic systems, at whatever level possible - from gathering information and gaining understanding to carrying out research on the impacts, from advocacy work aimed at reform of global institutions to staking claim to space during international and regional negotiations on economic treaties, and an increased role for the UN. Without such forthright countering of EG and taking advantage of the spaces it has inadvertently opened up, social action and development have a bleak and fragmented future.

Approaches

While ever more people and institutions now acknowledge the problems with the economic liberalisation model, what is conveniently being overlooked is the framework within which economic policy needs to be formulated for the benefit of humankind. The existing international human rights instruments and UN monitoring mechanisms for compliance with these instruments already provide such a framework and confer upon states the legal obligations to protect, promote, and fulfil human rights. A number of instruments of a declaratory nature also exist. Together, these form useful points of departure in articulating and putting into practice collective rights such as the right to development and to a clean environment. Certain instruments also promote the rights of specific population groups such as indigenous and tribal peoples, minorities, and disabled persons. Collective rights are emerging as an important area of articulation and action among social movements and campaigns around the world for things such as clean drinking water, or for the rights of women, indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, and so forth.

Underpinning the human rights instruments are the basic principles of non-discrimination, equality, and self-determination, and the right to political participation. Viewed from the perspective of people and communities fighting for adequate food, heath care, housing and living conditions, education, and a voice and representation on political bodies, these instruments provide a bulwark, a standard to aspire to, and for civil society groups, a set of rights to be claimed. A more forthright and comprehensive approach to human rights can provide for a sharper critique of government responsibility and provide benchmarks for interventions by all sectors of society, including by those who are marginalised and suffer discrimination.

Human rights provide the perspective, context, and the substance (through the entitlements contained in numerous instruments) to realise sustainable development and social justice for all. The holistic approach offered by human rights can strengthen, to take some examples, struggles for women's rights and for the environment. Viewed in such a light, the realisation of human rights for every woman, man, and child is the primary system through which international investment, finance, and trade regimes can be held accountable. For the policies, programmes, and instruments emanating from EG affect people at the local level both directly through the acquisition of natural resources and indirectly through the influencing of national policies that undermine the capacity of people and communities, especially the marginalised, to control their own space and resources. Such impacts are clearly a violation of internationally accepted obligations under human rights treaties.

The four fundamental principles that are under threat, as outlined by the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment, form a useful framework to explain the all-encompassing scope of this approach, and also offer clear directions for gaining and retaining human rights:

The new social movements that have adopted this holistic approach have done much not only to strengthen the pro-environment lobby and women's movements, but also to forge a path that clearly shows the imperative of viewing human rights and development as complementary and mutually reinforcing trajectories in achieving social justice for all.

There are also valuable insights and directions offered by the resolutions emanating from the UN human rights programme. Take, for example, the resolution adopted on 20 August 1998 by the UN Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities and entitled: 'Human rights as the primary objective of trade, investment, and financial policy'. In this resolution the Sub-Commission emphasised that the realisation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms described in the international human rights instruments is the 'first and most fundamental responsibility and objective of States in all areas of governance and development.' This phrase reaffirms language adopted by the world's governments in the Declaration and Plan of Action from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. The Sub-Commission also expressed concern about the human rights implications of the MAI 'and particularly about the extent to which the Agreement might limit the capacity of States to take proactive steps to ensure the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by all people, creating benefits for a small privileged minority at the expense of an increasingly disenfranchised majority.'

Taking these international instruments as point of departure, several international NGOs have mobilised at local, national, and international levels to promote economic, social, and cultural rights in the context of EG. Two examples will serve as illustration.

Habitat International Coalition (HIC): Basing its work on the right to housing and land HIC works through its three committees: housing and land rights, women and shelter, and housing and environment. The Coalition's work proceeds from a holistic perspective that seeks, through alliance building, training, use of the UN system, research and fact-finding, to counter the negative effects of EG through stressing the inviolability of the gaining and retaining of housing and land rights as essential to the realisation of all human rights.

FoodFirst International Action Network (FIAN): A global coalition promoting the human right to feed oneself, FIAN works through national chapters and urgent actions against violations of the right to food and land. FIAN has been the principle force, in collaboration with CSOs and NGOs across the world, behind the drafting of a Code of Conduct on the Right to Food following successful advocacy at the 1997 Rome Food Summit to get the right to food into the formal Declaration. The Code contains particular provisions on the accountability of non-state actors.

Viewed from the perspective and entitlements offered by existing international instruments, it is clear that a system more sensitive to human rights and to environmental concerns would have afforded better protection to the vulnerable individuals and communities who are now bearing the brunt of the global economic crisis, through no fault of their own and with no opportunities to participate in shaping international economic structures and policies. It is also clear that unless reforms to the international economic system explicitly incorporate respect for human rights and the environment at a structural level, they will not address the fundamental and practical concerns and suffering of the overwhelming majority of the world's people and communities, whose welfare and economic development they must surely be intended to promote.

New forms of social action

Recent years have witnessed some remarkable CSO initiatives cutting across cultural, thematic, and language barriers, building solidarity and successfully taking on powerful global institutions in the process.

One such is the global coalition that developed to counter the MAI. Over 650 CSOs and NGOs from 70 countries joined to steer a global campaign, using a variety of instruments, media, advocacy, alternative investment policies and treaties, and a range of collectively agreed strategies. The anti-MAI coalition consists of environment, development, human rights, and church-based CSOs and NGOs, as well as local governments and parliamentarians. While the MAI was being debated at the OECD, the coalition also included national anti-MAI campaigns from more than half the OECD member countries and from a number of developing nations.

The anti-MAI coalition used electronic communication as a primary means of spreading information, building solidarity, and coordinating multi-level activities. Its strength was acknowledged in the report prepared for the French government that led to its decision to withdraw from the MAI negotiations. The report refers to the surprise that the OECD member governments felt at the 'scale, strength and the speed with which the opposition appeared and developed' and goes on to say '[t]he MAI thus marks a stage in international negotiations. For the first time, one is seeing the emergence of a 'global civil society' represented by NGOs which are often based in several states and communicate beyond their frontiers. This evolution is doubtless irreversible.'

The Lalumière report points to the Internet as a major source of power for the MAI opposition. The coalition's members used the e-mail to its maximum effect from the beginning of their campaign. In order to maintain contact and share strategies, they used e-mail listserves and websites, created and maintained by NGOs, and were able to inform millions worldwide about the MAI negotiations. Drafts of the text were circulated via the Internet, enabling large numbers of diverse groups to engage in critiques and analyses which were then redistributed. The Internet has enabled groups from all over the world to work together, share knowledge and expertise, move towards becoming a global civil society - and gain credibility in the process.

The anti-MAI coalition is still vigilant as the main provisions pushing financial liberalisation are being or are likely to be picked up at the regional and international economic forums and treaty-making processes such as the IMF, FTAA, and WTO. Since the principal resources in developing countries are in agriculture, mining, forestry, and fisheries, MAI-like provisions could considerably exacerbate existing pressures on these sectors, and on the often vulnerable people and communities whose livelihoods depend on them.

Another example of spirited global opposition to EG is that of the People's Global Action (PGA). Over 300 representatives of people's movements from 70 countries met in February 1998 in Geneva to initiate an international popular movement against various aspects of globalisation. Uniquely, the PGA is primarily composed of social movements and people's organisations such as the National Alliance of People's Movements (India), the National Zapatista Liberation Front (Mexico), the Landless Peasant Movement (Brazil), the Peasant Movement of the Philippines, and the Canadian Postal Union.

This meeting resulted in a people's manifesto against global 'corporate rule' which argues that '[t]he WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions that promote globalisation and liberalisation want us to believe in the beneficial effects of global competition. Their agreements and policies constitute direct violations of basic human rights (including civil, political, economic, social, labour and cultural rights) which are codified in international law and many national constitutions, and ingrained in people's understandings of human dignity.'

During the May 1998 second ministerial meeting of the WTO, the PGA launched a series of coordinated protest actions across the world, including demonstrations in Geneva. The resulting negative publicity has caused much anguish within the WTO. Among the actions planned for 1999 is an InterContinental Caravan that will attempt to bring 500 Indian peasant farmers to Europe to protest before national parliaments, and the WTO, multinational companies, and banks that are pushing for global free market policies.

Also worthy of mention is an alliance of development and human rights NGOs that in May 1998 formed the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment, with the express goal of ensuring that the international human rights perspective is no longer ignored in international economic policy and practice. In a policy statement quoted above, this Committee outlines four fundamental principles of human rights as being under threat from the way in which EG is proceeding and calls for these to be accepted as the 'organising principles for all bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade, investment and financial agreements, laws and policies'.

The statement also stresses the need for:

The NGO Committee was also instrumental in convincing the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities to adopt the resolution on trade, investment and financial policy alluded to earlier. In a 21 October 1998 press release, the NGO Committee stated:

The principal message of such groups is that a reformed international economic architecture must necessarily be built upon the foundation of explicit recognition of obligations stemming from the key human rights principles relating to self-determination, participation, non-discrimination, an adequate standard of living, food, housing, work, and education; and the specific rights of women, indigenous people and children.

Space does not permit a summary of other initiatives against EG. Over past two years, however, it is clear that at national, regional and international levels numerous initiatives have been taken, often in coordination among different levels of work, that point towards a nascent movement of counter globalisation steered by CSOs and NGOs.

Challenges ahead

Although human rights offer a principle around which to confront the challenges posed by EG, significant obstacles remain. At the same time, some existing CSO and NGO strategies point to recommendations for enhancing the struggles against EG. These struggles must also come to grips with three inter-related obstacles of a somewhat different order. One is the need to define the nature of the state faced as we are with opposing views, some calling for its withdrawal and others for it to play a more 'regulatory' role. Another is the need to revitalise the UN to play the role envisaged in its Charter and developed during the 1980s but then abandoned under the pressure of EG forces. A further crucial obstacle is the unwillingness of actors at all levels, including CSOs and NGOs, to understand and address the impact of EG on women.

Recasting the role of the state

With the onset of EG, there has been much concern expressed by CSOs and NGOs about the marginalisation of the state, its withering away. However, advocates of EG, pushing for the increasing privatisation and commodification of all spheres of life, have referred to the economic unviability of the welfare state and the need for states to 'harmonise' their economic priorities with their 'dependency-creating' social responsibilities. Such visions have contributed significantly to states' desperate search for better 'economic indicators' that are divorced from better 'social indicators'. The advocates of a strong state fear the bargaining away of state sovereignty under multilateral trade, investment, finance, and intellectual property agreements, and under the regimes of structural adjustment and debt repayment.

It is essentially argued by EG proponents that the state can no longer, in fact need no longer, play a proactive role in terms of fulfilling the economic, social, and cultural rights of its citizens. The private sector (national and international) along with a vibrant NGO sector (primarily development and humanitarian actors) can well handle these tasks. By the same logic, and when the state is itself found to violate these rights, the dissenting role of the human rights and environmental movement should be reinforced, to press the state to adopt an unequivocal pro-people stance and oppose its repressive tendencies. (Of course, it is not only the state that violates rights. There are cases of politicians and right-wing ideologues (often belonging to CSOs) that are using EG as a scapegoat for all ills, or are whipping up anti-imperialist sentiments and appealing to religious identities to create a base for nationalistic economic, immigration, and other policies.)

It is critical to keep in mind that the struggle is not limited to blunting or reforming the forces of EG but also pertains to the recognition of existing violations of economic, social, and cultural rights and the need to improve the conditions in which a significant part of humanity lives. The fundamental priority is to halt the worsening conditions that are directly linked to the growing disparity of wealth, whether due to the forces of EG or to socially unjust policies at national levels. This is all the more critical as it is now abundantly clear that the poor do not gain from periods of economic boom and stock market euphoria. They had no part in planning the policies that led to EG and yet when economic crisis hits they suffer disproportionately. The responses of the global institutions, such as the IMF's bailout loans, are designed to assist loss-making banks, not to help those that are in a spiral towards joblessness, homelessness, and destitution.

In the past year, however, the very voices that have ardently advocated 'reduced' role of the state are now, in a dramatic overturn, calling for the urgent need to recast its critical 'regulatory' role. These voices now want the state to be the arbiter, the protecting guardian for the social sectors against the ravages that are being wrought by an increasingly unbridled global economic system. They include well-known economists like Jagdish Bhagwati and Joseph Stiglitz, prominent businesspersons such as George Soros, and influential media organs including The Financial Times and The Economist. What is needed, then, is to strengthen the state to stand up to the forces of globalisation by reasserting its transformative role: not only to regulate but also to guarantee conditions for the sustenance and growth of spaces that allow for the realisation of human rights of all its citizens.

What should the role of the state be? And how should CSOs respond to state violations? Once again, existing human rights instruments offer the most precise and sensitive framework., obliging the state 'first and foremost' to promote the human rights of the vulnerable sections of society and not to take any retrogressive steps (through policies, programmes, and laws) that would further dispossess these groups or marginalise other sectors. States have legal obligations to respect, promote, and protect human rights including the right to political participation and the right to an adequate standard of living. If they were to follow these - voluntarily accepted - obligations, then it is evident that much of what passes as the global economic regime would be in violation of the human rights of the all residents of these states. As pointed out by Yash Ghai:

While the state's transformative role is being reasserted by CSOs and the within parts of the UN system, it is also important to find ways and means to sustain and increase the spaces for human rights and development groups to collaborate with its more progressive elements. This is perhaps the most promising path through which to strengthen the state both to stand up to the deleterious forces of globalisation, and to take advantage of the positive social benefits that can accrue in interacting with global institutions, treaties, norms, and standards.

Need for a revitalised UN

If the international economic institutions are to be more accountable, then the UN has to play a central role and to devise ways to create democratic structures (including participation of CSOs and NGOs) that can debate and develop new multilateral treaties on trade, investment, and finance. This role is crucial as all these issues have an impact on the social sphere.

The perspective and specific duties required to perform this role are already contained in numerous international human rights instruments that, in the rush to push the 'market' solution, have been cast aside. Valuable provisions and guidance are offered, for instance, in addition to the international Covenants and Conventions, in the Declaration of Social Progress and Development, the Declaration and Programme of Action of a New International Economic Order, and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.

Various efforts were also made in the 1980s to provide social justice dimensions to the process of economic liberalisation and the growth of transnational corporations (TNCs) such as the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), the UN Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED), the New International Information Order (NIIO), and the New International Economic Order (NIEO). However, these valuable efforts were systematically undermined by the proponents of wholesale liberalisation.

Subsequently, the UN has taken the lead in cautioning against unguided liberalisation and in highlighting the need to define the obligations of states, and equip them to meet these. For instance, the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (PoA) confirmed that the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms is the first responsibility of governments, and that the human person is the central subject of development. Similarly, the 1995 Copenhagen Declaration and PoA recommended that states should intervene in markets to prevent or counteract market failure, promote stability and long-term investment, ensure fair competition and ethical conduct, and harmonise economic and social development.

The development of a principled leadership within the UN is vital to counter three obstacles to implementing human rights, halting the negative affects of EG, and offering a framework for the reform of economic institutions so that these bring together social justice and economic goals:

(1) Currently, the effectiveness of enforcement mechanisms of institutions such as WTO and NAFTA is in stark contrast to the lack of attention given to developing similar mechanisms for the international human rights instruments.

(2) A major stumbling block to the development of human rights, particularly economic, social, and cultural rights is, unsurprisingly, the USA. For example, in the 1998 UN General Assembly, the USA went back on its endorsement of the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, and was the sole member state to vote against a resolution recognising the Right to Development. Ways need to be found to rein in US power, even if that country is becoming more isolationist.

(3) There is a need to temper UN Secretary-General's enthusiastic embrace of the global business community, represented by groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which is composed of many of the most powerful TNCs and is hardly the partner the UN needs if it is seeking to 'promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms&' as its Charter obliges it to do.

In tackling these obstacles, the UN can regain its leadership role through the widespread adoption (in practice, and not only rhetorically) and more effective enforcement mechanisms of the various Declarations, Covenants and Conventions to which its member states have agreed, and underpinning this with a human rights approach; something that would be very much in keeping with the 'mainstreaming human rights policy' being pursued by Kofi Annan..

Women and EG

Perhaps the most neglected aspect of the social dimensions of trade, investment, and financial policies and programmes is their impact on women.

The principal and lasting impact of a liberalised economy results in ever fewer controls protecting job security (for men as well as women), routine reductions in social expenditures, uncontrolled food prices due to the emphasis on agricultural export and the lack of protection for local food production and food security regimes, the lack of safety nets to prevent women having to take up casual labour and carry out multiple jobs, and the lack of protection of women's access to land and credit. All these trends have an adverse impact on women. For example, a recent study on women workers in the electronics industry in India brings out the gradual displacement from secure jobs:

Lacking opportunities for education and training, women are less equipped to deal with the challenges and complexities of international trade. Their traditional reproductive and child-rearing responsibilities reduce the time they can spend on earning a living. The result is a reduction in household spending on education and health care. The stress on 'cash crops' reduces access to land to marginal areas, which in turn curtails women's capacity to carry out subsistence agriculture and crop production for local markets. Women's additional household responsibilities and lack of land ownership, the fact that credit and extension services biased towards men, and an 'export' economy all present obstacles to the productive role that they can play.

A study from Ghana presented at the parallel NGO Forum to the 1998 WTO Ministerial Conference concluded:

EG has certainly brought about opportunities in the form of greater labour mobility. This has allowed some women to choose between agriculture labour and paid employment, and some studies suggest that women may sometimes prefer independent wage employment to the oppressive social structures and isolation in which they live, and the hard, often erratic agricultural labour on which they depend . Of course, the objective working conditions are exploitative as the jobs are generally insecure, badly paid, part-time, without trade union rights, and expose women employees to sexual and other forms of harassment and so forth. Given the global economic scenario, without changes that are sensitive to women's needs, the long-term prospects are bleak as capital always seeks to reduce labour costs and to avoid stringent environmental and human rights standards. This approach is all too evident, for example, in the proliferating export processing zones (EPZs) called for by the forces of EG worldwide, and whose principal workforce is young women.

A major reason for the failure of the global financial architecture in reaching even a modicum of social progress for vulnerable social sectors has been its failure to take into account or even acknowledge the role that women play in everyday development activities. It is critical, therefore, that all attempts to blunt the impact of EG and to offer alternative economic or legal frameworks recognise and develop benchmarks to assess to what extent women's role is being taken into account in 'designing development'. The few groups that have taken on the task of disaggregating the impact of EG and its associated processes have offered a number of recommendations that are useful starting points for further advocacy work to ensure gender-sensitive policy-making within the global trade, investment, and finance bodies (see below).

Opportunities and challenges facting CSOs

Only recently has it become clear how many opportunities EG also offers. Advocating and actively mobilising through international campaigns for limits to and accountability of EG, such as the anti-MAI and Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, have opened up the possibility for alliances, across national boundaries, based on commonalties of the values and objectives (struggle) and a common perception of the power of solidarity to halt or at least gain time through delaying potentially harmful international economic initiatives stemming from the economic institutions that drive EG.

One clear advantage of such collectivities is that they are informally linked, non-hierarchical, and are organised around multiple focal points (they are multi-centric) each with their own programmes structured around national campaigns, yet all coalescing into a formidable whole. We might even say that EG provides a platform from which to launch a hundred transnational movements. It should now be possible, through the spaces opened up for international action and the confidence gained by knowing of and working with hundreds of like-minded people and communities across the world, for these transnational movements to tackle local problems that may not even have originated in, and are not perpetuated by, global processes.

The transnational solidarity created by the collective opposition to EG is having multiple benefits. Erstwhile diffused stirrings have joined around common causes, and local struggles have gained confidence that comes from the knowledge of support from other CSO and NGO sources. We should now look to develop strategies to counter local violations of economic, social, and cultural rights, and processes of exclusion and dispossession. The horizontal and vertical solidarity that has been built from these transnational initiatives needs now to be harnessed to promote local change.

The opportunity is then enhanced for CSOs to push at local, national, and international levels, sometimes simultaneously, for states to be accountable and representative - to fulfil the promise of the post-colonial phase. The devolution of power that was to come from above must now be demanded from below, in collaboration with global forces such as transnational collectivities of CSOs as well as within institutions such as the UN where spaces exist or can be created in support for local struggles for human rights and social justice.

This creation of new political spaces, carved out by cross-border, transnational initiatives, nevertheless raises a number of questions that need deep reflection and action. What is needed to sustain these collective transnational actions, campaigns, and movements (processes)? What are the limits of such initiatives? The human rights regime provides a sufficient approach and a set of organising and intertwined principles, as this paper has argued, to gain and sustain social justice, equality and democracy. What steps are necessary to move towards a wider adoption of this approach and to enhance its effectiveness? Can these forces continue to show positive results in the face of the simultaneous phenomenon of fragmentation (often at the local levels) and the integration inherent in globalising processes? Can these collectivities, that work from a basis of a multi-centric world, constructively rival the traditional state-centric global system? What are the preconditions for these processes to reinforce local solidarities to counter local violations of economic, social and cultural rights stemming from exclusion, discrimination, and dispossession?

A cursory overview of the national and international actions taken to date by CSOs in confronting EG, and a review of the existing and emerging opportunities and challenges in terms of existing and potential multilateral instruments within the EG mould, reveal actions and directions that must be pursued by CSOs if they are to remain relevant and true to the task of both countering and offering alternatives to the forces of EG. These need to be based on a focus on hitherto neglected issues such as the impact of EG on women as well as on children, indigenous peoples, and poor peasant communities. Other valuable starting points are the active national experiences (India, Canada, and Mexico) where CSOs have developed useful local strategies and transnational alliances to expose and counter the negative tendencies of EG. One useful lesson from work done thus far is that it is important to keep breaking down the North-South barriers. Essentially, CSOs, particularly those working at the local level, must break loose from the isolationism that can mark local efforts and to join national and transnational efforts to hold EG accountable to people's processes. This is critical to the formation of a global civil society.

Knowledge

CSOs and NGOs need to know about and deal with the processes and institutions that are driving EG - for example, the issue of financial liberalisation - and to seek relevant information and collaborate with CSOs that are dealing with hitherto 'unknown' institutions such as the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the International Organisation of Securities Commission (IOSCO)

North-South barriers need to be broken down. The consequences of EG show clearly that everyone is in the same boat and that transnational alliances are of benefit to all CSOs. If anything, there is a need for far greater knowledge in the Third World countries of the scale of poverty, material and cultural, existing and growing in the First and Second worlds.

Case study and analysis

Given the paucity of case studies that examine the impact of EG on human rights and on the environment, there is an urgent need to develop appropriate methodology and research plans; search for available data, case studies and legal materials; analyse and compile data into succinct case studies on the specific, verifiable effects of trade and investment treaties; and prepare and disseminate materials in plain language as well as technical publications. Such work must include a gender-sensitive assessment of the impact of trade policy on women workers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and traders. There is a need for disaggregated data from reviews of trade policy and rules, without which it is difficult fully to assess the different impact of EG on women and men.

It is also important to collaborate, including with joint research activities, with 'progressive' UN institutions that are seeking a voice to counter EG - UNCTAD, UNRISD, OHCHR, ILO - to suggest how the UN could play a more active role on economic issues, including through the formation of democratic and representative bodies (including CSO participation) to examine issues and draft instruments likely to have an impact on millions across the world.

Join alliances/participate in solidarity work

Joining the active global coalitions such as the anti-MAI coalition or the International NGO Committee on Trade and Investment will bolster their strength and contribute to the growth of a Movement towards the creation of a global civil society. We need platforms where 'horizontal' exchange can take place. For example, it is far easier to get information on what struggles are being waged against the WTO in industrialised countries than to get this information from countries in the South. This also illustrates the need within the South for more information exchange, strategy sharing, and solidarity building.

Campaigns/Alternatives

It is important to learn about, publicise, and develop campaigns premised on valuable ideas such as the Tobin Tax. Several that are working EG have put forward alternatives to the instruments emerging from the forces driving EG, such as the alternative agreement on investment proposed by some of groups that are part of the global anti-MAI campaign. We need to learn from, critique, and develop further alternatives.

Some groups are also proposing alternative means of judging the human rights and environmental impact of EG forces such as TNCs. Joining these forces and participating in efforts such as People's Tribunals (such as the PPP) and the tribunal on TNCs and human rights currently being planned, is a way to begin to hold international economic actors accountable.

In some countries, groups are also proposing alternative economic surveys (India) and alternative indicators and benchmarks to assess the state of the world's people (Social Watch). Social activists need to learn from, contribute to, and attempt similar exercises particularly at national levels.

Advocacy, intelligence, and gaining new allies

Advocacy work geared at global economic institutions is critical to push for reform to make these institutions (such as WTO, NAFTA, and IMF) democratic and sensitive to human rights, development, and environmental concerns; and to make use of the working paper being prepared by the UN Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities 'on ways and means by which the primacy of human rights norms and standards could be better reflected in, and could better inform, international and regional trade, investment and financial policies, agreements and practices, and how the United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms could play a central role in this regard.'

 

It is also important to call for the development of in-house capacity in gender analysis and to stress the need to mainstream gender analysis in all sectors within the purview of the IMF, WTO, and NAFTA. At the latter two, it equally vital to call for women's participation in all negotiations and dispute-resolution mechanisms, and more generally, to assist in tracking MAI-like provisions in emerging multilateral and regional economic instruments.

All advocacy work needs to push organisations such as the WTO both to adopt human rights and environmental instruments as the basis of their work, for example in drafting new instruments and in dispute-settlement processes, and to respect the obligations that states have under these regimes.

It is also necessary to make alliances with the new converts, such as the economists and media cited earlier, that until recently were all for reducing the role of the state and are now calling for it to play a regulatory role.

The role of the state

In addition to the points made on this earlier, there is a need to push states to act in accordance with the human rights and environmental instruments that they have ratified and also to respect the provisions agreed to in the Declarations and PoAs signed at the UN conferences in Rio, Vienna, Beijing, Cairo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Rome. At Beijing, for example, governments recognised that they should take account of women's contributions and concerns in economic structures. They also committed themselves to a gender perspective in all policies and programmes by making an analysis of the effects on women and of men respectively 'before decisions are taken'. Obviously states have failed to do this. Specifically, governments should be called on to explain the taking on of any new obligations, such as many instruments that drive EG, that conflict with their existing ones.

At the national level, governments and multilateral institutions should be called on to ensure that technical assistance is gender-sensitive and that it promotes the upgrading of technology and skills, including opportunities to acquire new skills, for women as well as for men. Governments must also ensure the adequate flow of information and technological transfer between the North and the South, and between men and women, and must ensure that women have access to land and credit. To this can be added the need for women to have access and inheritance rights to housing and land.

Conclusion

Despite the evidence, countries across the world continue to be drawn by the 'mythical' alchemy of the free market ideology, the lure of privatisation, and the withdrawal of the state from basic responsibilities to its citizens. The lure seems so great and the pressures so intense that states are willing to pursue the free market agenda no matter what the social cost. Tragically, the harsh lessons from the lost decades of structural adjustment and debt seem not to have seeped into the mindset of the decision-makers.

The developing global economy urgently needs to be informed and guided by the principles and the imperatives inherent in the international human rights regime. Such a task is critical to the revival of the leadership exercised by the UN in the 1980s and for the consolidation of peace and justice worldwide. Conditions need to be created for the harmonisation of international trade, investment, and financial regimes with existing human rights obligations. This would ultimately lead to the establishment of an integrated international agenda which would cover not just agreements, policies, and practices in international trade and investment, but also more importantly, international obligations and standards relating to human rights, environmental protection and sustainable development. Focusing merely on the former will only undermine the far more basic obligations underscored by the latter.

In order for this to happen, it is again up to CSOs to hold international and regional economic actors accountable for the fulfilment of human rights as the primary basis for global economic policies and programmes. In the process, it is essential for CSOs to use the UN, to press for international democratic forums, and to push the UN to work primarily for the world's downtrodden. By establishing such an overarching framework, national governments can also be pushed in the same direction. Engagement in social action for achieving just and humane development involves such an all-encompassing approach, particularly keeping in mind the well-being of the deprived and the downtrodden.

The challenge is for all of us to keep moving forwards and to keep taking advantage of the tremendous solidarity that now exists among groups representing or being represented by the marginalised and oppressed people and communities across the world. The struggle these groups have come to represent is for the sovereignty (self-determination) of people and communities, beyond national borders, against the forces of EG, using as their principal basis international instruments concerning human rights, the environment, and development. If EG signifies a breaking down of national borders and controls then the answer that is being given by civil society is also transnational and inspired by fundamental human values based in the belief in solidarity and comradeship that is missing in the technically-driven, hierarchy-based system of EG. The struggle is between those working on the principles of dignity and justice for all versus those bent on creating a world driven by mechanistic and profit-driven motives that benefit a small minority only. Nothing more or less.

The overriding challenge is knowing how to get people to mobilise politically so that we 'democratise' ownership both of the existing instruments and of the process of refining and developing these, and to hold the states and the international economic agents and forums accountable to our human rights and our fundamental freedoms.

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