This second White Paper on International Development stands alongside our first - Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century. The first White Paper committed us to focus all our development effort on the reduction of poverty and the mobilisation of the international system to meet the International Development Targets.
We have spent the last three years working to achieve these objectives. We now have unprecedented consensus - across the UN system, the IMF and World Bank, most Regional Development Banks, leaders of developing countries, the G8 and the OECD - that the achievement of the Targets should be the focus of our joint endeavours. We have set out in our Target Strategy Papers how this can be done.
This Second White Paper analyses the nature of globalisation. It sets out an agenda for managing the process in a way that could ensure that the new wealth, technology and knowledge being generated brings sustainable benefits to the one in five of humanity who live in extreme poverty.
We are living at a time of profound historical change. Great wealth and great squalor exist side by side.
We could move forward to a period of massive progress and the removal of abject poverty from the human condition. Or we could see growing poverty, marginalisation, conflict and environmental degradation. Neither prospect is inevitable. The future is a matter of political will and change.
Cynicism and negativism are the enemies of progress. It is when people see that progress is possible that the demand for reform and advance is energised. I hope that this White Paper will help people of moral conscience and those with an intelligent concern for future generations - in all parts of the world - to join together to achieve a more decent and sustainable future for us all.
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Clare Short |
December 2000 |
