Civil Society, Development & Aid, Europe, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT: Straight Talk Expected at Post-Helsinki Roundtables

Sanjay Suri

HELSINKI, Sep 12 2005 (IPS) - Action must follow talks on international development at the Helsinki Conference last week, agree government and civil society leaders, many of whom have grown impatient with words that don’t lead anywhere.

The development model known as the “multi-stakeholder approach” is itself an achievement of the conference, Ilari Rantakari, ambassador to the Helsinki Conference from the Finnish foreign affairs ministry, told IPS.

“We hope it will lead to action through emphasising the multi-stakeholder approach, and that this approach will be taken up further in the United Nations, at inter-governmental meetings and on other occasions,” Rantakari said.

The approach marks an ambitious move by Finland to influence progress in development under the Helsinki Process. This process, in its second phase after Finnish attempts to support rights in Russia in the Cold War era, was launched in 2002 together with Tanzania.

In its new phase the Helsinki Process seeks to build new means for development with use of the multi-stakeholder approach, bringing civil society, governments and businesses to the table to take decisions and then take action towards bridging the gap between the developing South and the industrialised North.

The approach seeks to emphasise civil society and business participation, with government representatives at hand to listen and implement.

The participating governments – known as “friends of the Helsinki Process” – include Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Thailand, besides Finland and Tanzania. Ministers from these countries agreed to follow up recommendations at last week’s conference.

Some of the areas where the ministers agreed to take action are corruption, global governance, gender equality, human trafficking, information and communication technology, poverty and development, and migration.

“But we are still studying the exchanges at the conference and drawing conclusions from them,” Rantakari told IPS. “Based on the discussions, wishes and expectations, we will have a two-year period of trying to get the proposed roundtable established.”

The idea of the roundtables continues from five such discussions through the Sep. 7-9 conference. “It was agreed that the roundtables would continue with relevant friends of the Helsinki Process,” Rantakari said. The proposals made at the roundtables at Helsinki “will be looked into carefully in coming months.”

Ministers from the “friends” countries expressed the hope at the end of the conference that, given the complementary ideas at this and also at other conferences, “it should be possible to reach consensus on a common programme incorporating their key elements and goals – providing the political will is there.”

But the ministers acknowledged misgivings about political will itself.

“Our apprehension comes from the fact that the political will needed to implement the necessary reforms in global governance has yet to develop fully,” they said in a statement. “The world does not lack proposals for solving global problems, but it is clear that political will and resources are key to the implementation of these proposals.”

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and now president of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative, an effort she leads towards a more just globalisation, reported after the conference that the Helsinki Process will now move to a wide consultative group. The work will be steered by a small group of about ten people who will meet at least every other month.

Robinson said she is tired of reports that do not lead anywhere. This process would be a push towards action, she said. “We are not re-inventing anything that has already been invented.”

Much of the follow-up work after the conference will be on “mobilising political will” -the theme of the conference.

“As Friends of the Helsinki Process, we believe that solving the most challenging problems in our globalised world requires intensified cooperation between all major stakeholders: governments, civil society, and the business sector,” the ministers said in their statement after the conference.

“We believe that this multi-stakeholder approach highly increases the credibility, feasibility, and the practical implementation of the proposals,” they said. But they emphasised that governments “continue to be responsible for the decisions on different reforms and their implementation.”

That could make governments who have joined the Helsinki Process a test case for implementing what they have agreed. Civil society groups could monitor what governments in their countries will do following what emerged at the conference.

But no formal plan to keep an eye on implementation was agreed at the conference.