NEW DELHI(PTI): Leading ‘Statesmen ven and World personalities attending the fourth Indira Gandhi Conference in Indian capital city OnNov.23 criticized the tendency na powerful nations of Forcing Compliance” in the areas Of peace, security, trade, investment, technology or intellectual property.
At the end of the five day deliberations on ‘Redefining the good Society,” K Natwar Singh, former foreign secretary and vice chairman of the Indira Gandhi memo Nal trust, issued statement, unanimously endorsed by the delegates, Stressing the need for a new world Order which Would require an international rule of law before which all were equal, the weak or Powerful, large or small, rich or poor. AS a minimum it was needed to have international rules and arrangement’s to enforce such law, equitably and speedily in regard to disputes, whether in relation to problems of peace and security, the statement said.
The conference called for a strong and consistent rejection of “the present tendency, we believe, of trying to enforce compliance in these areas through unilateral actions by the rich and powerful or by bending international institutions to particular interests of the rich.”
“If that vision of a new human order can be realized we will have come much closer than ever before to not only defining but also developing the global dimensions of the good society,” the statement endorsed by other participants including nuclear disarmament activist, Marjorie Thompson, Ms. Elena Bonner, widow of Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ms.Rigoberta Menchu and other said.
There is much that people in whose name the UN charter was pledged must do together in their common interest to secure good Society worldwide, the conference statement said.
The delegates felt there must be five basic targets: The provision of guarantees against external aggression that frontier whether political, economic or cultural should not be changed by force: Recognition of the rights of minorities within states and their right to redressal: mechanism to resolve regional conflicts or within a national without unilateral action by outside powers.
The other two targets included technical and financial assistance to developing countries to help accelerate their rates of social and economic advance and preservation of the global environment as abasis of sustainable development for all.
The conference suggested that in the present scenario of a world of shrinking economic and social democracy, when unemployment was rising, poverty and violence growing, one must go beyond diagnosis and look for new solutions and reorient or production systems to meet the basic needs of the people.
The conference expressed concern over the “decoupling of financial from real economics with the diversion of funds to speculation which neither produced wealth nor generated jobs.”
The conference felt that population was a vital problem that had to be tackled through investment in people’s health and education by employment creation and income generation and social development, broadly conceived rather than by “technological fixes” of new contraceptives.
Speakers at the concluding session said that self-determination and national integrity have to be reconciled not only by creating more and more nations, but by peaceful coexistence in pluralistic societies and nations.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 3, 1993
