UNITED NATIONS
(Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan told finance ministers and diplomats
on Tuesday it was ''shameful and unacceptable'' that most people are excluded
from the benefits of globalization and new technology.
``I think we all
recognize our duty to change this state of affairs, and more importantly our
interest in doing so,'' he said.
He was addressing an annual session of the U.N. Economic and
Social Council attended by ministers and other financial experts who have been taking
part in meetings in Washington of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF).
On Sunday and Monday, demonstrators opposed to World Bank
and IMF policies took to the streets of the capital in an effort to disrupt the
meetings.
Police arrested 600 demonstrators on Monday and hurled tear gas and sprayed pepper to crush protests. The arrests brought to about 1,300 the number of people detained in a week of protests.
The arrest total was more than twice the 525 people who were arrested late last year when riots and vandalism helped sink trade talks in the port city of Seattle.
Annan said he started from the proposition that, ``in an age
when globalization and new technology are bringing hitherto unimaginable benefits
to one part of humankind, it is shameful and unacceptable that another part --
and by most reckonings the larger part – remains excluded from those
benefits,'' subjected to a life of grinding poverty often accompanied by
malnutrition and disease.
Annan outlined economic and social recommendations contained in an ambitious report he issued earlier this month for a millennium U.N. General Assembly session to be attended by world leaders in September.
These included:
--
``reducing by half, before the year 2015, the proportion of people in the world
living on one dollar a day or less,'' even though there would ``still be 600
million people living in abject poverty;''
-- policies
to encourage private investment, ``which create job opportunities, especially
for young people; which harness the power of the new information technologies;
and which improve the effectiveness and transparency of governments themselves;''
-- steps to
end war, which is ``calculated to perpetuate and aggravate poverty;''
-- action
by governments, ``especially, but not only, those in sub-Saharan Africa (to)
face up to the mind-numbing devastation which HIV/AIDS is wreaking on their
economies and societies;''
--
investing in education, with the aim of adopting universal primary school
enrollment by 2015 and closing a gender gap in which girls account for
two-thirds of the 110 million children worldwide who are not in school;
Only if given ``full and free market access for their
products can developing countries attract the investment they need to achieve
high growth and trade their way out of poverty,'' Annan said.
``Only if they are freed from the shackles of debt repayment
and debt servicing can the poorest countries devote an appropriate share of
their revenue to anti-poverty programs,'' he added.
``And only with generous financial assistance from the
industrialized world can countries that have worked hard to reform their
economies provide their poorer citizens with the basic social services they so desperately
need,'' he said.
Alluding to the street protests in Washington, Annan spoke
of the ``ongoing vehemence with which people are debating the merits and de-merits
of globalization, making demands on our organizations and telling us that we
must do more, and do it better.''
``We need to turn this unease, this ferment, this confrontational energy, into something constructive -- into something that benefits all people and which all people can support,'' he said.