Address by Minister Lehtomäki at the Helsinki Process side event at ECOSOC

Address by Minister for Foreign Trade and Development of Finland Paula Lehtomäki at the Helsinki Process side event at the ECOSOC High-Level Segment.

New York
29 June, 2004





Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to express my thanks to all of you who have come here this afternoon. I am glad to see so many could attend. I am also happy that Minister Kikwete as the Co-Chair of the Helsinki Group is present here today. I would also like to thank Director General Juan Somavia from the ILO for his participation and his presentation.

It is particularly important, in my view, to have this lunch meeting during the ECOSOC high-level segment, as the themes of the conference are very close to the key themes of the Helsinki Process.

In the Millennium Declaration, which was unanimously adopted by all our countries, we have committed ourselves to ensuring that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world's people, to working collectively for more inclusive political processes, and to strengthening multilateralism. The Helsinki Process is an initiative which is based on these very commitments, and is a concrete attempt by Finland and Tanzania to contribute to the implementation of these commitments.

The Helsinki Process aims at finding ways to improve the international community's capacity to address global problems and searches for strategies to resolve some of the most urgent global issues. The Helsinki Process wishes to make a difference by (1) providing a new kind of equal forum for all stakeholders, (2) by identifying practical and feasible proposals for implementation, and (3) by mobilising political will for their implementation. We have come to realise that there is no lack of proposals for solving many of the current global concerns - previous commissions and processes have made good recommendations - the problem seems to be the lack of will or resources to implement them.

The Millennium Declaration also calls for more inclusive and thus, if you like, more legitimate multilateralism. It is the starting point of the Helsinki Process that broad-based, multi-stakeholder dialogue and cooperation are effective ways to increase legitimacy.

The Helsinki Group, the high-level core of the Helsinki Process, comprises international opinion leaders from very different backgrounds: from Governments of the North and South, from International Organisations, from the international business community and from civil society. Bringing the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum to a closer dialogue with each other is one of the objectives of the Helsinki Process.

The work of the Group is supported and complemented by the work of three thematic Tracks: New Approaches to Global Problem-Solving, Global Economic Agenda, and Human Security. The Tracks focus on identifying specific issues from their particular fields - such as financing the Millennium Development Goals, new partnerships and coalitions for tackling global problems, and meeting challenges faced by the communities most at risk - and making suggestions for methods by which these issues could promoted by the international community.

The work programme of the Helsinki Group, which is still under development, asks four main questions: what is wrong with the world and why, what has been done about it, what needs to be done, and most importantly, how are we going to do it? Out of these four questions, the Group decided to focus on the last two.

In examining 'what needs to be done' and 'how are we going to do it', the Helsinki Group draws on the work of many previous commissions, most recently the ILO World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation, and examines the proposals made by them as well as how and why they have or have not been implemented. The aim is to find effective implementation strategies for selected proposals.

The work of the Helsinki Process culminates in the Helsinki Conference in September 2005. The aim of the Conference is to evaluate the proposals made by the Helsinki Group and Tracks for more effective governance and democratisation of Globalisation, as well as to find partnerships for implementing accepted proposals.

Partnerships are crucial in Global Problem-Solving - in fact one could argue that partnerships are the only way to tackle truly global problems. It is no coincidence that partnerships have been raised as a key theme at ECOSOC as well as by the Cardoso panel in its recommendations for future UN reform. In order to work effectively, partnerships have to be based on equality and they have to be goal-oriented, not simply for show. I believe that a good way to reach more effective multilateralism is to develop innovative partnerships between all stakeholders.

Another major obstacle, also identified in the Millennium Declaration, which is especially problematic for development, is the lack of policy coherence between key actors. I believe that the United Nations could play a key role in ameliorating the situation, and the Helsinki Process is also exploring the possibilities for promoting greater coherence between the development policies of the UN, its agencies, the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organisation, as well as other multilateral actors. To give a concrete example, Helsinki Process is working on a proposal that the World Bank, IMF and WTO draw up a joint report on their policies, which could then be assessed - according to certain criteria - with parliamentary oversight.

To put it short, it is one of the main aims of the Helsinki Process to promote partnerships between actors from the North and South, from Governments and Civil Society, as well as coherence between issues. The Helsinki Conference, subtitled 'Mobilising Political Will', will be crucial in translating multi-stakeholder dialogue into a method for implementing political commitments. Our hope is that the Helsinki Process will be able not only to offer a new methodology for more effective implementation of political commitments, but also to form new partnerships which will help to achieve what the international community has set out to achieve.

The thematic Tracks will complete their work at the beginning of 2005, feeding into the work of the Helsinki Group which will publish its report in May 2005. The proposals of the Tracks and recommendations of the Group will form the groundwork for the Helsinki Conference of September 2005. Like-minded governments, international organisations and other stakeholders will also play a key role in the preparations for the Conference.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the spirit of the Helsinki Process, I would like to invite all of you to participate in the preparations for the Helsinki Conference, and I would very much like to hear your views on how to reach more inclusive and equitable globalisation, especially in the context of the United Nations.