Advancing the social agenda: two years after copenhagen

Abstract

"Why look to the future? First, because it is only by having our ultimate objectives clear that we can ensure that what is currently being done genuinely conforms with what was agreed in Copenhagen. And second, because the recently held "Rio Plus Five" event — though excellent in terms of high-level participation, affirmation of the United Nations as an international forum, and showing that the environment issue is very much alive — failed, in that it simply repeated an exercise already undertaken five years ago by re-opening negotiations on the text of an agreed document. I am adamant that this should not happen with Copenhagen Plus Five. We cannot afford to allow the special session of the General Assembly, which will coincide with the beginning of the twenty-first century, to negotiate on texts: it must negotiate on action and on initiatives. To get involved after the event in redrafting the Copenhagen documents would be to bureaucratize a political process. Rather, we must use this opportunity to concentrate our initiatives — whether these are at a global, regional, national or local level — to make it a wholly different kind of five-year celebration. I would therefore like to share with you some of my thoughts on what such a General Assembly would look like. First, it must bring together all the real actors — governments, parliaments, political parties, business, unions, banks and financial institutions, civil society organizations and citizens' groups, mayors and local authorities, religious and spiritual leaders, media and communications outlets. Ideally, it would have the capacity to convene such a range of actors, and to stimulate their imagination and sense of collective responsibility — for each of them has a role to play if the Copenhagen document is to become a reality. We have to remember that the Social Summit was a governmental meeting, albeit with many other ancillary activities — it represented a traditional way of approaching the issues. I would like to see a General Assembly that convenes these actors in a way that enables them to take forward the commitments within their own spheres of action. In other words, the United Nations should open up the spaces for society to be a part of decision-making processes, along with governments. We must be ambitious, as we were with the Social Summit itself: being so makes it possible to achieve even very difficult things. I would like to see us inaugurate the twenty-first century with the largest gathering of real actors that the world has ever seen, coming together around the most central issue of all — people. Only the United Nations could do this."(pg 7)