Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
social development, which was seen as interventionist, old-fashioned, and vaguely socialist in its orientations. Perhaps because of its novelty and also because of its paternalistic and somewhat intrusive overtones, the human development concept did not find its way into the Copenhagen Declaration or the Programme of Action of the World Summit. Its proponents, however, played an important role in limiting or reducing the focus on poverty eradication in these texts and in undermining support for the concepts of social development and social policy, as both were associated with redistributive social justice and State intervention. Two years after the World Summit for Social Development, the Agenda for Development was published by the United Nations. Conceived as a pendant of the Agenda for Peace, its preparation in the Secretariat had proceeded concomitant with preparations for the World Summit, but several years of further negotiation were required, and the Agenda was finally adopted by the General Assembly in June 1997. Comprehensive and ambitious, the Agenda for Development has a policy framework in which economic development, social development and environmental protection comprise three essential components of sustainable development. Social development is presented as agreed at the World Summit, with equal emphasis on the three major objectives of eradicating poverty and hunger, promoting employment, and achieving social integration. For many of those involved, the adoption of the Agenda represented a welcome conclusion to a long and arduous process rather than a constructive step towards fruitful international cooperation. It was becoming increasingly difficult to effect a reconciliation, or even some form of cohabitation, between the aggressive new orthodoxy and the familiar conceptions of development and international cooperation. If it proved possible to do just that in Geneva in 2000, it was because the Secretariat and a few delegations worked hard to keep the message of the World Summit for Social Development alive, and because the main powers decided to allow this celebration to proceed knowing full well there would be no further follow-up. At the same time, with the issuance of the report of the Secretary-General in preparation for the Millennium Summit,35the stage was set for the presentation of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals both as a synthesis of past efforts, notably the results of the conferences held by the United Nations in the 1990s, and as a blueprint for cooperation and for the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first century. As alluded to earlier, the ten-year review of the World Summit was reduced to a few days of debate at the forty-third session of the Commission for Social Development, and the short statement issued by the Commission had no real impact on the deliberations of the General Assembly in September 2005. The report of the Secretary-General36issued in preparation for this meeting focused on the relationship between development, security and human rights, with development understood as presented in the Millennium Declaration and Goals. No