Sessions summaries Agents of the Global Agenda: Working Together
Reference Dialogue: The world today

EVELYN HERFKENS spoke about the Millennium Development Objectives, in her role as Executive Coordinator of the worldwide campaign aimed at meeting them. There are eight goals in all, with eighteen targets and forty indicators, which have been drawn from the agreements reached in international conferences and world summits during the decade up to 1999. The basis is the Platform 2015, comprising 110 NGOs, which considers ways of solving the problems of poverty and underdevelopment.

HERFKENS argued that young people should be seen as the present, not the future. The Millennium Declaration is a commitment to put pressure on governments, a platform for meeting and dialogue aimed at creating the conditions for, and awareness of, peace. It must be based on providing help in education and social services.

Another idea discussed was that of mobilizing people to put pressure on governments so that they fulfill their obligations. One of the actions to be promoted is liberalizing markets to enable Africa to compete in product sales.

JEFF SWARTZ, president of Timberland, talked about the relationship between this multinational company and the third world, particularly with respect to women in Bangladesh, where the company has a factory. They provide a lot of work to underdeveloped countries and this business helps promote development. He argued that the private sector has an important role to play in sustainability.

These countries now have greater access to medicine and families have managed to set up their own businesses, thanks to the availability of microcredits, and make investments. R. VILA-SANJUAN, of Doctors without Borders, said that action is required if the objectives are to be met by 2015. The basic problems facing the world result from the fact that a so much power lies with a single player. Humanitarian action is needed to tackle the current humanitarian crisis (for example, AIDS). Change must begin with action being taken to address small issues. States must provide responses to the questions raised by society.

He went on to argue that the lack of medicinal drugs in some countries of South America and other third world countries is due to resistance on the part of their governments, and added that corruption is one of the major problems facing underdeveloped societies. It is civil society which must respond to this situation.