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HELSINKI PROCESS: Farewell to a Unique Forum for Dialogue

DAR ES SALAAM, Nov 29 2007 (IPS) - The Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy was launched five years ago by Finland and Tanzania with the aim of addressing international divisions, to achieve an inclusive globalisation process based on human and environmental security.

This week, however, at a conference held in the Tanzanian financial centre of Dar es Salaam to review the second phase of the process, it was sentenced to die young.

In September 2008 its sponsors will deliver a final report to the United Nations secretary-general summarising the work and proposals of the initiative. Without the passionate drive of Erkki Tuomioja – Finland&#39s minister of foreign affairs until March this year – it is likely that the Helsinki report will simply add to the seldom read and rarely implemented analyses of global problems piling up at international organisations, diplomats said.

The Nov. 27-29 conference revealed little – if any – enthusiasm on the part of the new centre-right Finnish government to follow up on what many in Finland&#39s political establishment considered a whimsical project of the leftish, unconventional Tuomioja.

Whimsical it may have been. Nonetheless, the Helsinki Process was a unique forum in which nothing was deemed politically incorrect, nobody too insignificant to be present, and participants did not necessarily belong to the usual collection of development speakers.

Even before the review of two years of discussions on issues such as peace and security, poverty and development, human rights, governance, informal diplomacy and the environment, Tanzanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Membe announced the end of the process. This came in his inaugural speech, surprising many.

During the closing ceremony Thursday, Finnish Foreign Trade and Co-operation Minister Paavo Väyrynen said that “the Helsinki Process will continue in other fora”. Directly afterwards, however, his Tanzanian colleague said it would instead evolve into a Dar es Salaam-based “Regional Centre for Policy Development”.

The centre had been mentioned by Membe at the start of the conference as something “offered” by Finland. This generated some local headlines but irritated Finnish officials, who told IPS that shrinking an ambitious world-saving project into an East African think tank was not exactly what Helsinki had envisaged.

The contrast between the first conference of the Helsinki Process, held in December 2002 in the Finnish capital, and the latest gathering, was telling. In 2002 a parade of ministers from the centre-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party moderated debates, while the meeting was addressed by both the president and prime minister of Finland.

For this week&#39s proceedings, held under the theme &#39Inclusive Governance – Bridging Global Divides&#39, the highest-ranking Finnish official present was Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Teija Tiilikainen, until the late arrival of Väyrynen to deliver the closing speech.

Consequently some of the so-called “Friends of the Helsinki Process” – countries which assisted in the second phase of the initiative, from 2005 to 2007 – sent low-level diplomats to Dar es Salaam, or nobody at all in the case of Brazil, Canada and Great Britain. The sole exception was Egypt, represented by Assistant Foreign Minister Raouf Saad.

Countries that joined as friends are Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Great Britain, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Spain and Thailand. The first phase of the process lasted from 2003 to 2005.

However, the lack of senior diplomats did not deter delegates from flooding the various conference events with opinions and ideas.

An Indian participant suggested that instead of setting up a Regional Centre for Policy Development, the process should establish a “Centre for Bitter Confrontation” between North and South, between transnational corporations and the dispossessed.

Rick Samans, a managing director at the World Economic Forum and former aide to U.S. president Bill Clinton, said the process had a present and future role as a unique, inclusive forum for generating consensus and ideas. He added that, in addition to Finland and Tanzania, the Friends of the Helsinki Process should ensure the process continued and was properly funded.

But, a diplomat from one of these countries told IPS that in view of developments in Dar es Salaam, she would advise her government to revise its policy in the process.

A participant who had formed part of the “Tracks” – groups that helped set priorities for the process – expressed frustration at the fate of work done in two years of drafting papers and engaging in debates.

And, a U.S. business representative complained about the absence of other business leaders, even local representatives.

The last word on the Helsinki Process may not have been said. But, it seems clear that Finland is not keen to keep footing the bill for an exercise that is not delivering quick political returns.