Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
managed to convince powerful Governments and powerful international organizations, notably the Bretton Woods institutions, to accept and follow its leadership. This fact should cause all internationalists and multilateralists to rejoice. With its commitment to eliminating poverty, the United Nations has launched a goal commensurate with the ambitions of its Charter. The commitment to fight extreme poverty and hunger represents a concrete response to the Copenhagen Declaration's insistent call for social justice. Furthermore, it is consistent with the principle of solidarity evoked in the Millennium Declaration: "Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most" (para. 6). Poverty reduction is the ultimate goal of all development efforts. It is an objective that cuts across economic and social policies, putting the different approaches to economic development, social development, and human development into perspective and exposing the limits of the debates and quarrels surrounding these approaches and disciplines. An economist, a political philosopher, an international lawyer and a sociologist can all agree on the usefulness of lifting people out of material poverty. Furthermore, it is difficult to conceive of a better bridge between the human rights perspective and the development perspective than the shared determination to fight poverty in the world. For the United Nations and other international agencies, concentrating development efforts on poverty reduction is not only the best and most direct way to help people improve their actual living conditions, but also the least intrusive and most respectful assistance strategy from the perspective of the people and Governments of the developing countries themselves. Reducing poverty strengthens a country's economic base, giving residents more choices arid greater control over their future. Notions such as individual autonomy and respect for cultural diversity and for the traditions and social mores of communities and nations have more direct relevance and can flourish only when survival is no longer a constant challenge and preoccupation. Again, this is true for individuals, for families, and for nations. True freedom is impossible without a solid, stable economic foundation. To reduce poverty is to promote both social justice and international justice. The above notwithstanding, most of the Forum participants had a somewhat different view on the affiliation between the Copenhagen Declaration and the Millennium texts and on the merits of the Millennium Development Goals and their focus on poverty reduction. There are important differences in the manner in which the goal of eradicating poverty is approached in the texts of the World Summit for Social Development and in the Millennium texts. The Copenhagen Declaration