Sharing power is not easy...

The Doha Financing for Development Conference is over and my partner Rebeca will start quizzing me tomorrow. How did it go? What really happened?

Well, the two day pre-conference of the Civil Society was rather good. In a serious process of consensus building we went right through the first draft outcome document of the Doha conference. We had enough expertise in our networks and 250 people attending to have well researched argumentation in the room, and we put together a solid civil society paper of improvements and additions on all issues for our governmental delegations. The Qatar government funded southern participants – but only for the pre-conference, so more then half had to leave before the official conference opened.  

The official UN meeting opened against the horrific backdrop of the Mumbai attacks with blood and violence on our TV screens. It proved that no ‘war on terrorism’, masculine competition and a ‘winner takes all’ mentality can stop terrorist, communal or domestic violence. Growing fear feeds violence. We need global justice and cooperation, values taught in schools which do not miss a single child. We need more women in leadership, respect in practice for human rights and lives at household, national and global levels.  

A press conference gave us the opportunity to hand over our input to the President of the General Assembly who gave an impassioned speech about the urgency of putting need above greed, and changing paradigms in our world to solve the multi-crises we face. He spoke of our input in his opening speech to the General Assembly the next day where Gemma Adaba from ITUC was our strong civil society voice, high on the five-minute speakers list.  

French president Sarkozy, holding the EU presidency, made a strong plea for urgent solutions especially for Africa – and for an African seat at the table of different multinational institutions. But for me he was too ‘pro’ his own G20 initiatives and rather ‘divide and rule’ towards the G77 as well as the EU, in stressing the French bond with Africa. His proud claims about 60% of official development aid coming from Europe and the extra 1 billion Euro for the food crises that has just been decided on made me snort cynically…..yes 60% of about 100 billion euros. And the French are still not near reaching their promised 0.7% of GNI for aid or supporting fair trade practice. He didn’t mention the 260 billion Euro either, which the EU just approved for stimulating the economies of Europe itself: encouraging consumerism in order to keep production going.  Save the car industry, who cares about climate change.  If that money was spent on eradicating poverty we could build have two billion more people to build sustainable economy with decent production and consumption patterns.  

The USA delegation was the same, they kept boasting about being the biggest bilateral aid donor, and having doubled that in the last 8 years. As it was only 0.16% of their GNI in 2007, and they have never committed to the 0.7% they too talk better than they act.  After all twice (nearly) zero remains (nearly) zero. 

Strong speeches came from the two special envoys to this conference: the development minister from Germany, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeuland (on urgency and content) and the finance minister from South Africa Trevor Manuel (demanding solutions, and a stop to power games between Washington and New York). 

Negotiations begin

Then the circus of negotiations and official round tables and side-events started – for four long days. The six round tables started badly, with civil society invited but given virtually no airtime. Only on the last day the roundtable on systemic issues allowed for three CS speakers allowing for some real input and dialogue at last. 

The side events suffered always from having too many speakers, but were actually very good and interesting.  My favourite was on Decent Work, chaired by Mary Robinson with a great line up of speakers : ambassadors from Norway and Bangladesh, multilateral institutions, UNCTAD and more good civil society input. We also had a great dinner with UNIFEM – arguing about needing a new UN women’s conference in 2010, not called Beijing plus fifteen…. with new, young energy,like we saw in Porte Alegre, Brazil in 2005. It needs to be about designing and implementing transformational gender strategies, as well as exchanging notes on stopping violence and making more inroads with quota’s and gender mainstreaming.   

Contact with official negotiations, was mostly bad news. The paragraphs on climate change and tax evasion were tricky, some found there to be an overdose on gender….but the main fight in town was about where the follow up process was to be placed.  

There were strong attempts from the Bush administration on its last legs, to ensure that the responsibility for redesigning and overviewing the financial architecture of the world stayed with the Bretton Woods institutions, and/or in the hands of the G20.  

The G77 doesn’t trust the IMF, correctly concerned that their standard recipe is in their macro-economic DNA: cutting down on governmental spending and keeping education, health and wage bills low which means keeping the next generation stupid and poor. The IMF now wants to sell its gold to pay for its own oversized staff, but would not consider that to solve the food crises or to invest in local agriculture.  Giving this responsibility to the IMF was referred to by someone like asking an arsonist to put out the fire. For me it is like letting a wife-beater who has no sense of guilt or shame back into the house.  

Actually the top of the IMF and the World Bank didn’t even bother to show up, illustrating their lack of respect for the UN and the developing countries. A Dutch dimplomat told me this was because the G77 didn’t want them to come – quite incorrect, but a telling example of blaming the south in northern diplomatic gossip. The G77 obviously wants to be involved in the follow up, for which this process must stay in the hands of the General Assembly of 192 countries. Europe first backed the G77 completely, but then threatened not to hold a firm stand, not to challenge the USA enough, and started to favor some developing countries above others.  

I heard from many sides that this is the usual UN pattern ….first lots of agreement, just a few paragraphs to solve. Europe starts supporting the developing countries, then the USA plays out their power position, goes for the lowest common denominator, threatens a veto and a failed conference. That forces compromises in which Europe gives in too much – and finally often a rather weak result which particularly the global south is not very happy with. 

The Civil Society Ballot Box

We as civil society got so frustrated on the second day, that we staged a quick and fun action with two ballot boxes, asking delegates what they voted for: ‘democratic people centred development’ or ‘Bush&co’. We got quite some attention and publicity, made delegates laugh – and we heard later from negotiating delegates that this had an impact in isolating the USA.  

Outcomes

It was nice to hear that the Dutch Minister of Development Bert Koenders played an important role in the last phase of negotiations. And yes, the end result of four days was back to the original text: ‘the UN will hold a conference at the highest level on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development’…..run by the president of the General Assembly. On content the outcome document is not too bad, reaffirmation of Monterrey’s agreement to eradicate poverty, no slippage on the volume of aid, better gender and decent work language, a little advance on stopping tax leakages and acting on climate change. But many issues were referred to the next conference -  with a different and hopefully more democratic USA player at the table. 

So this was a victory for inclusive global democracy, for developing countries and for civil society. But do we have time for these kinds of power battles? It took most of the official UN energy during the four days, which should have been spent on the real issues, the urgent crises and on working towards solutions with the corporate sector and civil society present. In this sense it was very much ‘business as usual’- although every speaker claimed it was not, that we need urgency, paradigm shifts etc. etc. 

The Crises get left for another day

What a result - four days spent agreeing to another expensive UN meeting. If this power play could have been finished on day one, the excellent governmental, UN and Civil Society brains present could have got on with making real plans for the bail out of the most vulnerable peoples. Men, women and children starving, selling their last assets to survive, not getting water, energy, education or health service, needing support in their local agriculture, microfinance, small but growing trade… in the short term this Doha Conference offers them nothing. And how I long for world leadership which connects the dots of the different crises. We need leaders who grab this opportunity to design sustainable production and consumption patters, to really eradicate poverty and educate the bottom billions so that they can be the motor of a home-grown real economy. Leadership which challenges us in the developed world to change our lifestyles in the name of justice but also for the survival of our human species. 

As Tuesday’s Civil Society press release concluded: Doha: A missed opportunity...

Written by Sylvia Borren, GCAP Global Council Co-Chair