Globalization holds the
key to ending world poverty
Paris, 30
June 2000 - Writing
in the International Herald Tribune, ICC Secretary General Maria Livanos Cattaui
has called on governments to resist being stampeded into futile attempts to
stop or slow globalization.
She said: "Those who
really want to alleviate the poverty of hundreds of millions of people in the
developing world should look at practical remedies instead of making globalization
a scapegoat."
Deploring recent UN figures
indicating that the number of people living in absolute poverty has increased
since 1995, the ICC Secretary General says: "This terrible picture is depicted
as an indictment of globalization, evidence that it has failed."
"Given the steady rise
in the world population - up by almost 400 million to 6.1 billion over the five
years - how much worse would the figures have been without the benefits of trade
liberalization, foreign investment and the knowledge economy?"
Mrs Cattaui observed that
numbers can be used to prove almost anything. "But there can be no getting
around the fact that economic growth must be the point of departure for all
improvements in living standards.
"How will it help the
poor if governments try to strangle globalization by stemming the flow of trade,
information and capital - the three components of the global economy?"
She added: "It is surely
no more than common sense to say that the more wealth in cash and kind that
is moving around the world and the more widely it is distributed, the better
for everybody."
Full
text of the ICC Secretary General's article
The
case for the global economy
|