|
Editorial
The 1999 Human Development Report (reviewed in this issue of the African Security Review) points to the fact that the income gap between the fifth of the world's population living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest had deteriorated from 60 to 1 in 1990 to 74 to 1 in 1997. Not only is the rate of disparity accelerating, but the relationship between those at the top and the bottom of the human development index is also worsening. A global system within which the assets of the three richest people in the world are more than the combined total gross national product (GNP) of all the least developed countries and their citizens is clearly not structurally balanced.
Recent years have shown an increasing divide between the concentration of income, sources and wealth of a smaller percentage of people, corporations and countries, largely among member countries of the Organisation Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the rest. Global trade imbalances reinforce the marginalisation and vulnerability of a region such as sub-Saharah Africa that is not only dependent upon a very small range of basic export commodities, but is also more vulnerable to turbulent global markets. In this region, exports constitute nearly thirty per cent of GNP, compared to only nineteen per cent for the OECD. Yet, the UNDP points out, these countries hang on the vagaries of global markets, with the prices of primary commodities having fallen to their lowest levels in a century and a half. As a result, wealth and opportunity - indeed the benefits of globalisation - driven by market expansion, accrue to a handful of countries, and an increasingly smaller portion of the global population.
In the aftermath of the demise of ideological conflict, there are many who fear that future conflict may occur along the fault lines between civilisations and cultures. Economic marginalisation, often a result of globalisation, will inevitably reinforce irredentism in a potent new ideology of global apartheid. Poverty, not politics, lies at the root of these divisions.
In the era of globalisation, efforts to meet this challenge will cut to the heart of the international system, the United Nations in particular. Without a change in the character and focus, away from a body dedicated to the prevention of interstate conflict in the interests of rich countries and towards a global, rules-based institution that places equitable human development at the core of its concern, the world body will become incrasingly irrelevant to the global strategic challenge of diparity. This cannot be met by reforms built on a system of global governance and the myth of the quality of nations. For many poor, weak and marginal countries, national sovereignty remains the only protection from the power of globalisation that is often viewed as a predatory and unregulated agent of the powerful. For the weak, national sovereignty provides some measure of protection against the power of the global market - against a system that serves a complex, integrated high quality economy of which they are not part. The relentless pressure of the market entrenches the monopoly of the educated elite countries and tightens the bondage of the poor - whether by defining research agendas, through controlling intellectual property rights and patents, instituting increasingly stringent ecological standards or 'first world' labour requirements that cannot be met in developing countries. In parallel with the question of disparity, a balance will therefore have to be sought between the impact of globalisation and the protection offered by national sovereignty.
|
|
|