Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
the following: "Poverty has various causes, including structural ones. Iltj is a complex multidimensional problem with origins in both the national and international domains. No uniform solution can be found for global application. ... Poverty is inseparably linked to lack of control over resources, including land, skills, knowledge, capital and social connections" (para. 23). The absence of such policy orientations in the Millennium texts cannot really be explained by the preference for brevity that constitutes a characteristic of the current diplomatic culture in the United Nations. Developing countries are apparently expected to rely on existing policies, including those recommended or imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions and other international entities, to achieve poverty reduction. The implication is that economic growth alone is sufficient to reduce poverty and that distributive and redistributive policies are therefore unnecessary. Further, it is implicitly understood that economic growth will derive from the liberalization of economic forces and the progressive or "brutal" integration of national markets into the global economy. The Millennium texts, which include few national policy recommendations, do focus somewhat on the creation of an international environment to facilitate development and poverty eradication, but the approach is more general and less commitment-oriented than that reflected in the texts of the World Summit for Social Development. Ensuring that globalization "becomes a positive force for the world's people" is identified in the Millennium Declaration as the "central challenge" in these modern times (para. 5). As in the Copenhagen and Geneva texts, and as is now customary in international circles, globalization is presented as offering both "great opportunities" and great challenges, as its "benefits are very unevenly shared while its costs are unevenly distributed" (para. 5). The Millennium Declaration emphasizes that "only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and equitable" (para. 5). This is admirable language, but the efforts required "to create a shared future" are not further defined, and the Millennium Development Goals incorporate nothing even remotely related to the management of the globalization process for the general benefit of humankind. Similarly, "good governance at the international level" is not elaborated. The measures that industrialized nations are to take for the benefit of the least developed countries, including the provision of "duty- and quota-free access" for their exports and the "granting of more generous development assistance" (para. 15), are indeed aimed at creating a favourable economic environment for these poorer countries, but in a somewhat circular fashion, as the support is dependent on "demonstrable commitments" by these countries to poverty reduction. The recommendations relating to increased cooperation between the public sector and the private sector and to the strengthening of the latter are potentially useful