Social Watch 2013 - Politici Selhali - na řadě je veřejnost

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (Photo: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas).

"A life of dignity for all" should be the common goal of world governments, says Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations in the report sent on Friday August 16 to the General Assembly of the UN.

The sixty agencies and programs of the UN dealing with development currently guide their actions by the Millennium Development Goals proposed and imposed at the beginning of the century by donors, without the member states having had a chance to discuss them. The MDGs "expire" in 2015 and their replacement by a new development agenda is being hotly debated by the international community, including now also civil society organizations, philanthropic foundations, corporations and even the Internet-based social media.

"Citizen monitoring and accountability of governments, corporations and international institutions are essential for a new development agenda to succeed".

Roberto Bissio, Coordinator of Social Watch, shares his reflections on the Social Watch Philippines' National Consultation on the High Level Report on the Post 2015 Agenda.

Photo: CEDLA.

For Bolivia – and generally the rest of Latin America—the demands for economic and social inclusion during the 1960s and 70s were associated to the struggle for greater political participation and the transition to democratic government. Therefore, social organizations devoted their energy to fighting dictatorships, considering that political rights and democratic openness would bring as a consequence the much-awaited economic democratization and the improvements in life standards for the whole population.

But political participation in democracy through voting (but delegated in terms of representation to the monopoly of the political parties) and progress in respect for individual political rights (recognition to ethnical, gender and other differences) came together with a liberal economic model based on deeply despotic premises.

Photo: ECLAC.

Authorities from several countries and international experts took part in a high-level panel discussion in the context of ECLAC's First session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean in Montevideo, Uruguay, where they highlighted the importance of a paradigm change in the current development model, with a view to constructing a post-2015 regional agenda.