Remembering Cheddi Jagan
By Leslie Ramsammy
This article does not deal with the details of how the proposal came about and it does not seek to provide the in-depth details of the proposal itself. These could be found in the book A New Global Human Order by Cheddi Jagan, one of his many published books. It is also the subject of a UN Resolution (A/55/L.15/Rev.2) which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 24th, 2000.
Rather, I would like to focus on some of the initiatives that have come about throughout the second half of the 1990s and in the early part of the present decade, which are consistent with the views of the New Global Human Order. Since the formal launching of Cheddi Jagan’s call for a New Global Human Order, there have been a plethora of initiatives which are consistent with the proposals for a New Global Human Order. These include:
* The International Finance Facility: This was announced on February 28, 2006, in Paris by President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance) Gordon Brown of the UK. The fund essentially ensures the flow of money from the developed countries to developmental programmes in poor countries. In his proposal for the New Global Human Order, Cheddi Jagan had called for the establishment of a Global Development Facility. The establishment of the International Finance Facility is a visible translation of visionary leadership into a tangible flow of funds for the reduction of poverty and misery among the poor and is an excellent example of the New Global Human Order in action.
* The Airline Solidarity Levy Initiative: Cheddi Jagan had proposed that among the ways to fund a development facility might be the institution of a small tax on airline tickets for long-distance travelling. The signing of the agreement by 13 countries on March 1 to establish a global facility with a common pool of funds to purchase generic and other medicines for the poor demonstrates that these proposals are possible.
* The Global Alliance for vaccines and Immunization (GAVI): This initiative has resulted in more than 74 countries being assisted in establishing enhanced programmes for immunization. Bill Gates, together with several developed countries and in collaboration with the World health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, contributed to a pool of funds that goes towards countries to assist them in building strong immunization programmes that reduce morbidity and mortality among children. Guyana was one of the first beneficiaries of this programme. Guyana receives funding to purchase pentavalent (five-in-one) vaccines and also funding to establish its cold chain to store vaccines.
* The Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria: Many developed countries and the World Bank and other donor and financial organizations have come together to establish a pool of funds to be used to assist developing countries in their response to HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. Guyana has received three grants amounting to more than over a five-year period.
* Advance Marketing Commitment (AMC): The G8 countries recently announced that they would be establishing a revolving fund which would be used to pay in advance for certain vaccines in order to ensure that developing countries might gain access to life-saving vaccines. These vaccines include the vaccines against rotavirus and pneumococcus, two major killers of children from developing countries. These are two new vaccines that will be mostly utilized in developing countries. However, while the pharmaceutical companies (mainly Merck and GSK) have already established plants for manufacturing of vaccines for the developed world, there is no guarantee that such facilities would have the capacity to manufacture enough drugs for the poorest countries. Basically, the pharmaceutical companies are driven by the ability of poor countries to purchase the vaccines. The AMCs will essentially permit these companies to establish capacity since the common pool of funds within the AMCs is meant to ensure that poor countries will be able to pay for the vaccines.
These five initiatives are concrete examples of the New Global Human Order being put into action to bring relief to the global poor. These are lasting tributes to the vision of men like Cheddi Jagan. Today, we see a growing number of visionary activists around the world pursuing the ideals inherent in the New Global Human Order. These include Bill and Melinda Gates, Ted Turner, Bono, Jeff Sachs and many others. The common thread that binds these activists is that, like Cheddi Jagan, they believe that there is a global responsibility for ensuring an equitable standard of living for people wherever they live, the essence of the goals of the New Global Human Order.
It is the courage of persons like Cheddi Jagan who spent their lifetimes promoting global responsibility for achieving minimum standards of equity and justice and mercy that laid the groundwork for the rich diversity of philanthropy among wealthy individuals that today has emerged among the wealthiest people around the world. Thus, the world today is a little better off because of the philanthropy of some rich people that have led to large international charitable foundations in America and Europe, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the Ford Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Lily Endowment, Foundation Cariplo, Foundation Monte del Paschi di Siena, W.K Kellogg Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with assets of between .5B and .8B. These foundations contribute to reducing poverty in developing countries and in poor communities of developed countries. More and more the world is adding practice to rhetoric.
Thus, as March rolls on once again, I am grateful that I lived in a land that brought forth such a man. I am humbled by the fact that I lived; at least part of the time, while a man such as Cheddi Jagan roamed the land. I am happy to say that I met and worked with Cheddi Jagan. And I will never ever forget his warm embrace and his ability to always greet you with a welcoming, brotherly smile.
And in ending, we all should reflect on the words of Jane Addams about another great statesman, George Washington of the USA: The lessons of great men are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves - they are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of their highest ideals.
2006
by
James G. Rose, 9 August 2006
Introduction
Some ten years ago the leader of a relatively obscure small nation state issued a call to the world for a New Global Human Order. The concept though bold was not entirely new. Indeed after every crisis, national or otherwise, it seems the inevitable preoccupation of rational thinkers to demand a new order replacing the old which precipitated the just concluded crisis.
What was unique about this was the fact that it did not address sectional concerns but global. It was not the usual appeal for a new economic order or the familiar prayer for a rearrangement of world power or the nascent redistribution of global wealth. Dr Jagan was seeking the deliberate reengineering of the human kind. The Creation of A New Global Human Order.
Why Jagan?
Why the particular moment in time?
Why the urgency?
Background
We know that he was an international thinker and statesman. We know that he was a profound humanist and we know that the international management system was in transition/crisis Bi-polar to Uni-polar with a potential for profound after shocks.
The two other speakers will no doubt attempt to analyse and explain the implication of Dr Jagan’s appeal. I boast no such ambition. What I shall attempt is a cursory tour of the international environment to pinpoint a few of the critical concerns which might have motivated and justified his call for a new global human order. Where my figures differ from those used by Dr Jagan I encourage you to be persuaded by Dr Jagan’s since he has spent much more time and given deeper reflection to the issues than I have done. At no time since the Second World War did the outlook for peace, sustainable prosperity and an end to poverty look bleaker than on the eve of the Third Development Decade (1981-1990). In the shadow of recession, international relations reached an abysmal low point. Continued population growth in the South and over-consumption in the North were pressing harder on land, environment and energy sources. The struggle over the distribution of wealth, income and resources was intensifying both within and between nations and was reflected in the struggle between rival ideological systems. The perennial problems of unemployment and poverty persisted or worsened. These were very troubling times indeed.
A Burgeoning World Population
While there were signs that the world’s population growth rate was beginning to slow down more rapidly than expected, the absolute numbers added each year increased from about 76 million a year (9,000 an hour) in the late seventies to 93 million a year in the last five years of this century. Population pressure was felt most acutely in regions of rapid growth (middle America, East and West African grew at more than 3 per cent a year between 1980 and 1995) and of shortages of good land (Asia and Africa). Coupled with economic growth, it made itself felt worldwide in rising prices of scarce resources.
The Absolute Poor
Shortage of paying employment, including resources for self-employment, was the key factor in determining future levels of poverty. Surveys indicated that the Asian picture of high and increasing levels of absolute poverty were just as relevant to many countries in Africa and Latin America too.
World Bank vice-president Hollis Chenery estimated that in 1975 over 50 per cent of the population fell below a low Indian-based poverty line in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and Tanzania. For Latin America, Chenery’s estimates were much lower: between 14 per cent and 19 per cent in Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Colombia. But another survey using a poverty line more suited to Latin American expectations found an incidence of poverty of 40 per cent, with 19 per cent destitution. ILO surveys put the proportion of Latin America’s rural population in poverty in 1970 at 58 per cent, ranging up to 80 percent in Honduras.
On a global scale, estimates of poverty varied according to the definition of poverty. The World Bank averaged the number of absolute poor in 1980 at 780 million, the ILO, with a higher poverty line, at 1,100 million in 1980. Most projections saw the numbers of absolute poor declining by the end of the century, though few made sufficient allowance for the possibility that the unfavourable economic constellation of 1980 might continue for any length of time. The World Bank in 1980 projected that there would be 800 million poor by 1990 if unsatisfactory trends continued. Given faster economic growth and policies of redistribution, the number could be as low as 590 million. The ILO predicted a depressing 1,083 million poor by 2000 AD. The most pessimistic projection came from ILO economist Keith Marsden, who feared that the number of absolutely poor would rise to 1,500 million by the turn of the century if short-term, self-seeking economic strategies were pursued – or be cut to nil given much greater aid and more liberate trade.
Financing Development
Developing countries grew faster than developed countries in the latter half of the seventies; their GNP growth averaged 4.9 per cent a year between 1975 and 1980, against only 2.8 per cent for the industrialised western countries. Growth was fastest in the middle income countries but much of it was financed by an increasing burden of debt, made necessary by higher oil prices and slower growth of exports to the West. The total debt of developing countries rose from $265 billion in 1977 to a staggering $391 billion by the end of 1979, while debt service payments grew from $41 billion a year to $72 billion. The World Bank projected that by 1990 developing countries’ debts would reach $1,278 billion.
A general debt crisis, serious enough to hit back at western economies, was on the cards for the early eighties. Debt repayments were scheduled to bunch up at a time when developing countries would be facing larger than ever deficits on their balances of payments. The combined deficits of non-oil developing countries rose from the $28 billion of 1977 to $68 billion in 1980. These deficits had to be financed by further debt. In these circumstances many countries approached or passed the limits of their creditworthiness.
The Implications - Confrontation vs Co-operation
In many respects, international negotiations towards a new international economic order grew less productive and more embittered. The developed countries acted in concert to resist meaningful concessions. Major proposals were either scaled down or shelved. The Common Fund for Commodities, for which the developing world had asked $6 billion, got only $750 million. A fund for science and technology for the developing world, proposed at the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development in August 1979, was allocated $250 million for two years, instead of $2 billion a year suggested by the developing countries. The UN Industrial Development Organisation, at its third general conference in January 1980, advocated a new $75 billion global fund for the stimulation of industry in the developing world, but the conference collapsed without the West accepting this or any other proposal. The Brandt Commission argued cogently for mutual interdependence and a massive new world development fund financed by international taxation. But it did not find an eager audience in the West. Instead, the distant sound of martial music was heard. The world’s military spending topped $400 billion in 1979 - $100 for every human being in the world and nearly $1 million per minute.
The social alternatives were increasingly underlined:
• $15 billion a year could provide clean water and sanitation for all by 1990; less than $200 million a year could immunise all children against the six major childhood killer diseases by 1990;
• the price of one jet fighter could set up 40,000 village pharmacies or classrooms for 600,000 children;
• the agreed mutually-balanced reduction of 10 per cent of super-power military spending could double aid levels, at absolutely no cost in lost security.
But 1979 saw the start of a new arms race. President Carter, wishing to overcome his public image of weakness, would spend $1,000 billion in the five years to 1985.
It became obvious that not only world prosperity but world peace, too, had come to hinge on developments in the developing world. Superpower rivalry was more than ever before focused on control of, or influence over, developing countries, as sources of key resources and potential staging posts in strategic manoeuvrings that had taken over the entire globe as their chessboard.
The crises in two developing countries, Iran and Afghanistan, injected a new hysteria into international relations. It was not these events in themselves that created the inflammable atmosphere in which sparks could ignite a general conflagration; rather it was the conjuncture of economic and political conditions in the West. The failure of most Western governments to devise policies to cope with higher oil costs, continued inflation and rising unemployment, led to intensified social tensions, inclining many individuals and several governments to seek an illusory social cohesion in hostility to foreign bugbears.
In the wake of oil queue riots in 1979, the USA grew more anxious about the security of her oil supplies. Carter pronounced the extremely dangerous doctrine that the USA would intervene militarily to protect its’ oil supplies. This threat amounted to staking world peace on the shaky political stability of developing nations, as well as implicitly denying the right of these peoples to regulate the rate of use of their natural resources, to install left wing governments or to ally themselves with the countries of their own choice.
The dangers of more sparks being generated in the developing world also seemed to be increasing. Western recession and protectionism, plus rising oil prices, made it harder for governments in developing countries to meet the rising aspirations of their subjects. The number of refugees in the world – between 10 and 12 million in early 1980, four times the 1974 level – provided a thermometer reading of the heat levels. Yet the stability of Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman or El Salvador was threatened much less by Communists peering over their borders than by poverty and inequality within each country. Far-reaching reform was the only way to disarm revolution but the cold war meant that the West was more ready to arm reactionary governments, making it easier for them to stand firm against reform.
Conclusion
No one could help but be appalled by the continued failure of Western leaders to escape a narrow, short term view of national interests. Where disarmament and co-operation with East and South for development were needed, they lurched instead towards militarism and confrontation. If there was a Third World War, it seemed inevitable that it would almost certainly start – if not by accident – in the developing world.
A co-ordinated assault on poverty and inequality in the developing world, seemed the best way of avoiding such a war.
I respectfully suggest that this was the world scene which confronted Dr Jagan, prompting him to make his appeal for a New Global Human Order.
© 1999 Cheddi Jagan Research Centre. All rights reserved.
