Utrikesminister Erkki Tuomiojas öppningstal vid Helsingforsgruppens möte i Dar es Salaam

Utrikesminister Erkki Tuomioja höll ett tal vid mötet för globalisering och demokrati i Dar es Salaam på Helsingforsgruppens ordförandes, minister Tuomiojas och Tanzanias utrikesminister Jakaya Kikwetes, vägnar den 30 augusti. Talets ämne var: "Towards fair and sustainable globalization: New coalitions and involvement of parliaments are needed in global governance"

Today, hundreds of millions of people still live in poverty and insecurity. Thos who are most vulnerable are plagued by multiple, overlapping crises including violence, refugees, hunger, and disease.

Global governance is a code word for tackling a set of major problems that need to be rectified if globalization is to be made fair and sustainable. The Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy, facilitated by Finland and Tanzania, is in search of novel and implementable solutions to these issues of global governance.

Perhaps the most obvious fact in today’s world is its pervasive inequality, both between the nations, regions and within them. The development gap has remained a constant feature of the international system. It has also mobilized extreme reactions of discontent. There is an urgent need for new efforts to overcome the disease of poverty.

“To give a push towards more equal governance of globalization”

It is an undeniable fact that, due to the growth of global economy, the rate of poverty is declining in the world. Economic and social inequality, however, is growing among regions, social groups as well as individuals. Trickle-down development may, at best, reduce poverty, but it also increases inequality.

Increasing inequality widens the distance between the rich and the poor and allocates more absolute power for the rich both nationally and internationally. The liberalization of the world economy can be a positive force, but it cannot be sustainable over a long term unless the present constellations of power and institutions are restructured.

If we conclude that one of the major mega trends is that absolute poverty is on the decrease but inequality both between and within nations is on the increase, then that needs to be properly reflected in the Global Agenda. The international community ought to take a much more differentiated approach to the poverty issue and acknowledge that the same recipe does not apply universally. Trade liberalization is a positive incentive for countries with more or less comparable resources and conditions to utilize these possibilities, but for others with weaker starting points the consequences may be detrimental. Absolute priority in terms of international support should be given to the countries, most of them unfortunately in Sub-Saharan Africa, where both poverty and inequality still are on the increase.

Change does not just happen, but it must be pushed to move on. This is what the Helsinki Process is about. The Helsinki Group is meeting here in Tanzania, to give a global push towards more equal governance of globalization.

“To focus on actors, in stead of lists of challenges"

There have been many globalization commissions with many proposals of reform but with very few results. A key dilemma is, of course, that, to succeed, the reforms must receive a reasonable consent and commitment from all major parties, including the richer countries and the centers of economic power.

We need also to address the question of actors in global change. Reforms call for a tough analysis on where power is located and whether its holders are sources of change or resistance. We have to consider how actors could be reorganized and refocused to serve the reform agenda better.

The focus on issues may be useful as it helps to steer attention to specific problems whose solution calls for concerted international attention. There exist various lists of the main global challenges that should be tackled, but these lists are not particularly helpful unless they are not accompanied with concrete strategies of action.

As the policies of many leading actors are difficult to change, we need novel ways to accomplish change; in a sense, a new architecture of global governance is needed. The reduction of political and economic inequality calls for a new kind of multilateralism. To steer the world towards more fair globalization, we need coalitions of multiple actors.

"Bridges between North and South, public and private as well as executive and legislative branches"

Firstly, we need new intergovernmental coalitions to promote the interests of a specific group of countries. The G8 of leading economies of North represent traditional coalitions. The formation of new coalitions has been most visible in the Doha round of the WTO talks in which leading Southern countries have formed a counter coalition to balance the heavy influence of the North in trade talks. There is space for new coalitions that bring together governments from the North and the South in order to tackle the areas, like commodity prices, development funding and debt relief. It seems increasingly clear that without the establishment of a new, ambitious regime of debt relief, the development effort of most indebted countries cannot be jump started.

Secondly, we need new political strategies bring together public and private actors to address complex issues that no single category of actors can effectively deal with. I have referred to this challenge as building bridges between Davos and Porto Alegre, and also First Avenue (of NYC), referring to corporations of World Economic Forum, civil society movements of World Social Forum and member states of the United Nations. Multi-stakeholder governance could be used, for instance, in the preservation of world forests and biodiversity, the monitoring of compliance with human rights, and listening to the voices of the communities at risk. This kind of “hybrid governance” seems to be increasingly needed in such fields as the governance of the cyberspace and the control of the international trade in small arms.

Thirdly, we need to involve legislators, in addition to executive branches, more deeply in the processes of global governance. Connected with this goal, there is a need for feasible proposals that strengthen parliamentary oversight over the policies of global institutions as well as the intergovernmental negotiations. The most immediate way to make global governance more democratic is to enhance the role of national and regional parliaments in international trade and financial issues. Another area where parliaments could be more active concerns the monitoring of the implementation of MDGs. If the progress has been slow, or even reverse, the parliaments in many countries have budgetary powers to alter the trend.

Fourthly, we aim at bringing together a group of like-minded governments, North and South, in order to work on the implementation of proposals animating from the Helsinki Process. The bilateral meetings with other Foreign Ministers are to start at the UN General Assembly in New York.

These challenges are under discussion in the Helsinki Process. It is up to the Helsinki Group to prioritize these initiatives and develop them into political strategies.