Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
Chapter 6
Are international justice and social justice politically obsolete concepts? There have been increases in various types of inequality, changes in the orientations of United Nations pronouncements on matters of justice and development, and a shift in the international language. Words such as "equity", "equality" and "redistribution" have largely disappeared from mainstream United Nations documents, as have the words "compassion" and "solidarity". The term "social justice" appears only once in the Millennium Declaration. Further, the closing of the development gap between developed and developing countries is no longer a mobilizing objective. What are the reasons for the weakening of these once powerful ideas? Is it a temporary decline linked to the current global political configuration, or is it a manifestation of profound societal changes? Have the people of various regions, in particular the poor and the middle class, lost interest in equity and justice, or does the apparent change in the spirit of the times simply reflect the domination of a new international upper class?
6.1 Less redistribution because of lack of resources? At the global level, rates of economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s were lower than those registered in the 1960s and 1970s, though trends for individual countries and regions varied widely during the later period. In the former Soviet Union and in Central and Eastern Europe national income actually declined for a number of years, and there was no growth in most of Africa and Latin America (per capita income essentially remained the same in the latter region between 1998 and 2003), while extremely rapid growth was recorded in many parts of Asia. The earlier period had been characterized by greater evenness in terms of economic performance; much of the developing world, including Africa and Latin America, had experienced steady growth and an overall improvement in living standards, at least when demographic pressures were not too extreme. The downward trend during the past couple of decades has meant that a number of countries in both the developed and developing world have had fewer resources than before to distribute among competing sectors and social groups. This last observation must be qualified in several respects. The world as a whole has been wealthier during the past quarter of a century than it was in the 1970s. There has been no real financial justification for curbing public expenditures or reducing social transfers, as advised or even demanded by international organization~, in particular the major internationalfinancial institutions. Moreover, it has not always been the Governments of countries with lower rates of economic growth that have decreased their involvement in matters of distribution and redistribution and allowed