ANEXOS

15.4 The Quality Benchmark for the Social Summit

The Quality Benchmark
for the Social Summit

An NGO statement for the third session of the
Preparatory Committee of the Social Summit
September 1994

The World Summit for Social Development will be held in Copenhagen from March 6 to 11, 1995. From the outset our aspirations have been for the Social Summit to address the structural causes of poverty, unemployment and social disintegration, rather than dealing with their symptoms. Our contribution has been set out in various documents, including the "Twelve Points to Save the Social Summit" on which the current document is based.

Many UN conferences have been held in the past five years which dealt directly or indirectly with the question of sustainable development. In our view, the importance of the Social Summit lies in its possibility to identify the connection between political, economic and social factors for sustainable development and the interface of those areas. Agenda 21 already identified the inter-relationship of environmental sustainability and social development. The UN Vienna Conference on Human Rights confirmed the universal right of all people to development and civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The important contribution of women to social and sustainable development has been the core of the debate in the UN Cairo Conference on Population and Development and the preparations for the UN Beijing Conference on Women. We expect the Social Summit to seek a new paradigm for social and economic relations among nations, communities and men and women to reach peace, sustainability and justice.

Concretely the Draft Declaration for the Social Summit should be commended. It embraces a broader vision of social development and identifies the need to improve the economic environment to enable social development. It also recognises the necessity to make the international organisations more accountable to standards for social development set by the international community. Even though the Declaration is dealing with such key-issues, we are still looking for improvement.

The Declaration fails to note the necessary connection between sustainable growth and social progress. This must be strengthened in view of the relation between poverty, over consumption and unsustainable production patterns in the North that have already been addressed in Agenda 21.

Within the Declaration "poor" people are still seen merely as victims. We feel it is regrettable that persons living in poverty are viewed as people in need of aid, instead of as citizens universally entitled to development and civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

We have emphasised consistently that we believe the commitments of our national governments for social development cannot be implemented unless civil society is fully integrated in the implementation of the programme. The commitments in this respect should be stronger. A dialogue and consultation process at the national level regarding the Social Summit is imperative, and NGOs should become part of the national reporting. In line with the spirit of the Summit's preparations adequate NGO involvement must be ensured during inter-sessional meetings.

The huge gap between the revised Programme of Action and the spirit of the Declaration must be closed because the Programme of Action as it currently stands can not be a basis for the realisation of the Declaration. The Draft Programme of Action has, therefore, to be brought in line with the Declaration. We need clear goals and commitments for the Declaration. More particularly, for the Programme of Action we need well-defined targets, clear time-tables, specified measures for follow-up and implementation and instruments for monitoring the implementation both at the international and the national level.

From the experience and analysis of our organisations working in social development throughout the world the following points are essential to the conclusions of the Summit:

1. The Social Summit should call on all governments to ratify the six core Human Rights Treaties, the International Convention Relating to the Protection of Migrant Workers and their Families, and the relevant ILO conventions by the year 2000, without reservations that are contradictory to their intention and meaning. The Programme of Action should call on governments to recognise the legally binding obligations of the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and to establish means for the further elaboration and determination of those rights. The Social Summit should endorse the call from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights for the creation of an optional complaints procedure under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The complaints procedure would allow individuals and groups to bring alleged violations of economic and social rights before an impartial international body. Governments should adopt a National Strategy with specific actions and target dates for implementing their obligations under the Human Rights Treaties and ILO-Conventions related to social development. The strategy should be developed in full consultation with NGOs and civil society, and its implementation be monitored by an independent national commission which is drawn mainly from civil society.

2. Structural adjustment programmes focused on export led growth and which disregard wealth distribution and environmental sustainability have been an obstacle for national governments to develop such strategies. They fail to create employment, deepen social inequality and poverty, and thereby feed social disintegration. The impact of these policies falls most heavily on women. Trickle down economics is not working - in the north or the south. The Summit must urge that adjustment policies be fundamentally revised. Through its expert Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ECOSOC should investigate the underlying premises of World Bank and IMF policies, and measure their impact against the criteria established for the Social Summit: namely, do they exacerbate or alleviate the forces which exclude and deprive people living in poverty from the enjoyment of their basic rights. We, therefore, call for a reform of the multilateral structure, which brings the accountability of the International Financial Institutions - and the World Trade Organisation - into the UN system.

3. Those national and international programmes and projects that have an impact on social development, should be monitored through social impact studies, including those programmes implemented by the International Financial Institutions and the World Trade Organisation. Their programmes should be submitted to the relevant UN treaty monitoring bodies through regular reports explaining what steps are being taken to assist governments to comply with their economic, social and cultural obligations under the treaties and both governments and international organisations should provide the treaty monitoring bodies with evaluations of the effectiveness of their poverty alleviation measures and provide disaggregated data on the impact of their programmes on women, children and vulnerable groups.

4. Low Income Countries should receive compensation for losses experienced as a result of the Uruguay Round, so that resources are made available for social development.

5. The UN expert bodies on economic, social and cultural rights should also examine the implications of the new trade regime and the operations of the World Trade Organisation. There is a need for a social audit to gauge their impact on human welfare in the South. The right of Nations to establish national food and agriculture policies in order to eradicate hunger and ensure food security should be explicitly recognised. There should be no patenting of life forms.

6. Governments should direct their economic policies towards achieving sustainable economic development, not merely short-term economic growth. They should guide and moderate the operation of market forces, require fairness and honesty in business activities, provide adequate public infrastructure, and invest heavily in human resources (especially through education and health care). In particular, vigorous action should be taken to ensure that market forces are not allowed to degrade the community and environment in which they operate. Recognising that the major actors of the macro-economic system are unaccountable, the Social Summit should include as a condition for an enabling economic environment the international monitoring and a code of conduct for the operations of transnational corporations.

7. For a lot of countries the debt burden remains one of the most important obstacles to social development. The Social Summit should promote debt reduction initiatives that go beyond the existing package of options. Most urgently, the writing off of multilateral debt in Africa and all Low Income Countries is needed, since multilateral debt has been identified as a major obstacle for releasing resources for social development.

8. The UN target for Overseas Development Assistance of 0.7% of GNP should be achieved in the year 2000 by all OECD countries, including those who have yet to make such a commitment. To enable social sector expenditure and to enable investment in the economy of people living in poverty, effective spending of public resources is required. To achieve social development that caters for a broad range of fundamental human needs at least 50% of Official Development Assistance should be allocated to social development areas, which would include primary health care, reproductive health, education, shelter, water and sanitation, credit, institutional support and work guarantee schemes for people in poverty.

9. The Social Summit should establish effective mechanisms to curb the arms trade as a contribution to minimising violent social disintegration. Governments must decrease military expenditure to make resources available for social development.

10. Recognising the central role of citizenship and citizens' organisation in social development, the Programme of Action should insist on governments committing themselves to provide legal and regulatory frameworks for the contribution of different actors so as to involve local, regional and national civil society in social development. This requires the eradication of corrupt practices.

11. The gender specific aspects of each issue addressed by the Social Summit should be explicitly identified in the policy analysis and commitments taken by the Social Summit. Governments should pay specific attention to the development, implementation and evaluation of the impact of government policy on women, in order to create a new social climate, and should recognise the central role that women play in social and economic development. Governments should ensure that effective laws and agencies prevent violence, harassment and discrimination against women. The Social Summit should draw on the contribution and respect of the unique cultures of people and integrate sustainable indigenous and traditional practices which do not violate women's rights into social development. Vigorous action should also be taken to prevent discrimination on the grounds of disability, race, age, religion or sexuality. Specific strategies to develop greater respect for cultural diversity and for the needs of refugees and migrants should be adopted by encouraging tolerance in society.

12. Data on social development and environmental sustainability, including those related to health, education, income distribution, disaggregated by gender, are lacking and need to be seriously gathered and used as the basis for new indicators for sustainability and social development. The Social Summit should vest principal responsibility for the monitoring of the commitments undertaken in the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Committee's mandate and methods of work should be adjusted accordingly to accommodate such responsibilities.

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