COMMENTATOR (COMM.): Previously on Life. . .

AMARTYA SEN: People die needlessly - millions of them - across the world - That's what I think we ought to focus on.

ROBERT REICH: When you are leading a very comfortable life, it's easy to forget that there are so many people who are not nearly as comfortable.

SUSAN GEORGE: The Social Summit was a non-event. There was very little in the way of, "this is the how we're going to do it and this is our plan for getting that done!"

STEVE BRADSHAW: Hello and welcome to Geneva in Switzerland - a city which next week will play host to what's being called the most significant gathering of world leaders in history. They'll be discussing not nuclear weapons or high finance but the everyday issues that between them confront almost all the Earth's six billion people - work, poverty and inequality. The issues that we've been looking at in this series called Life.

We began our journey in the globalized world with the carnival in Brazil and one face in the crowd - Geraldo de Souza. Like other workers he was taking to the streets in protest against a globalized economy that he believed had cost him his job. In the Philippines we found those who were unluckier still - young women trying to bring up families on Manila's rubbish heap. One point three billion people still live on less than a dollar a day.

Mexico - workers who'd tried to find better paid jobs across the United States border. We filmed them at the start of their journey, trying to beat the patrols and trying to beat the rules of a global economy which allow money to cross borders more freely than labour.

We followed British doctor Sam Everington to Bangladesh, the country where almost half his patients' families come from.

SAM: It's incredible - so many people on the streets. I just hadn't realised it was this poor.

STEVE BRADSHAW: And we went with him into the clinics that treat malnourished children - their life chances put in jeopardy as soon as they're born.

In the streets of Philadelphia we saw why the social summit will be looking at first world poverty too as workers and activists demand a decent living wage. In Washington we filmed demonstrators who say globalization is one-sided and has gone too far. Some say their protests could jeopardize the benefits of globalization. But others believe they're drawing attention to issues too often ignored by politicians.

Now, it may seem quixotic to suppose the world's statesmen and women can work out common policies to deal with these issues - but that's precisely the agenda of the United Nations Social Summit, here in Geneva. The story of this summit began in 1995 in Copenhagen when the United Nations held the first social summit - its aim: to combine globalization and free market economics with social justice. But it was only a partial success. So the idea of Geneva is to review what progress there has been and to recommit the world to those fine but still elusive goals. In the five years since Copenhagen globalization has of course accelerated, creating both winners and untold numbers of losers - many, though not all of them in developing countries. To find out what the Third World wants from this summit I spoke to one of its most eloquent delegates - Faith Innerarity from Jamaica. I asked her what the summit can achieve that economic growth on its own cannot.

FAITH INNERARITY: It's not, I think, what the summit can achieve that economic growth can achieve, underlining all the discussions that we have had since the summit is the link between economic and social development. Social development cannot take place unless there is economic growth. Economic growth by itself, though, does not ensure social development, there must be deliberate policies which would ensure that the benefits from economic growth are available to all within a population.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Wasn't the commitment to eradicate poverty, made at the Social Summit five years ago, unrealistic?

FAITH INNERARITY: These are realistic objectives. Realistic from the standpoint that the world is capable of doing this. Let us stop for a moment - look at what this world has achieved in terms of technological advances. We have advanced telecommunications technology. The world has become a global village as far as communications is concerned. We have made advances in the biological senses, look at DNA - what is being done with DNA. Mankind has the vast resources, vast potential. Why cannot these potentials be harnessed to address very fundamental issues such as eradicating hunger from the world?

STEVE BRADSHAW: So what, do you think, should happen now?

FAITH INNERARITY: Now we are at a crossroads and this is where the Social Summit has its greatest importance: in pointing the world again to the issue of equity; of social justice; of inequality; of the need for each society to provide for every citizen the opportunity to participate in economic life. The opportunity to have access to those goods and services which are essential for a decent quality of life.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Well, inequality is on the Social Summit agenda; do you believe there are issues that are in danger of being ignored?

FAITH INNERARITY: One issue which I think is not very often addressed and which many people shy away from is that of values. And spiritual values. The world has become extremely materialistic; the profit motive is very strong; selfishness is on the rise. We have forgotten some very good principles in terms of equity and a social justice. We have thrown out the baby with the bath water.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Sceptics in the West of course claim that all this talk about values is just a cover for what the Third World really wants: the First World's cash. Well, some kind of redistribution of wealth both between and within countries is very much on the agenda here in Geneva. There are some who even dream of new systems of international taxation - perhaps a tax on capital flows - leading ultimately to some kind of embryonic world government. You might think that's the kind of talk that will only take place in private - until you meet one of the first world's most persuasive delegates: Eveline Herfkens from the Netherlands.

EVELINE HERFKENS (Netherlands Minister for Development Co-operation): I think it's really important now that we improve the global governance. We have - the global village still doesn't have a village council. We have a sort of embryonic world governance where you have the international financial institutions: you have the World Trade Organisation, you have the International Labour Organisation - which I see as a beginning of a social affairs ministry for world-wide. And we have to make that system work better: increase coherence in that system, and let it work better together as a whole.

STEVE BRADSHAW: You talk about the ILO - International Labour Organisation - as being a sort of 'embryonic social affairs ministry'-

EVELINE HERFKENS: Yes.

STEVE BRADSHAW: I mean, that's dynamite in some countries, isn't it? I mean - the Americans, many of your European partners are not going to want anything that even begins to sound like "global government".

EVELINE HERFKENS: Well, I think that there is internationally a growing recognition of the need to make international institutions work better. I don't find it so radical to suggest that.

STEVE BRADSHAW: You see the Social Summit review as, as an opportunity to push for increased international co-operation?

EVELINE HERFKENS: Yes.

STEVE BRADSHAW: To a degree that would begin to amount to some kind of global government?

EVELINE HERFKENS: Yes. I see, indeed, what was fantastic in Copenhagen at the Social Summit proper, is that it was the first social summit where, for instance the World Bank actively participated and accepted the outcome of the process. A few years after that - only a year ago - also the IMF said we accept the objectives of the Social Summit being, guiding our efforts to wherever we put concessional resources in developing countries. So from that perspective you see enormous steps forward in improving the coherence of the international system. And the thinking of the international system because for way too long we have been dividing social development on one hand and the economic - hard-nosed economic issues on the other hand. Finally there's a recognition, internationally, that these are absolutely inter-linked. And that - so everybody's changing their way of thinking about it including the International Monetary Fund which is an institution which sets up parameters for development in many developing countries so that breakthrough is very important out there, in the real world.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Do you think that you've all been upstaged at the Social Summit by the kids at Seattle and Washington?

EVELINE HERFKENS: Not really. Er no, actually, and I must say that there is a lot of confusion out there. Let me tell you that I find civil society crucial in terms of their impact on getting a social agenda in different countries. There is, but there is a problem if the debate starts to be as uneducated as it seems to be amongst some of the civil society: that trade is bad; the World Bank is bad. In terms of the World Trade Organisation: there's a very strong anti-WTO mood out there! What I'm absolutely convinced is that in, in a decent world where you want justice you need more international rules, not less. Because lack of rules means you've got the jungle out there in which the strongest will win. So undercutting the embryonic parts of this future global governance is not helpful in terms of your future social agenda.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Just finally, you obviously have a vision which lies behind what you want to achieve at the Social Summit Review. What is that vision?

EVELINE HERFKENS: That vision is indeed, that this globe has become too small. It has become a global village. This village needs a village council. We have to get our act together in order to increase global governance to deal with the issues of globalisation.

STEVE BRADSHAW: And by "global governance" you mean? - In five, ten, fifteen years, what's at the end of the road?

EVELINE HERFKENS: Well - at the end of the road - if you would have a coherent system working together instead of working against each other, with clear mandates instead of the type of Missionskrieg we see in this system.

Where governments speak with one voice instead of saying different things different places, the effectiveness of the United Nations Development agenda could be greatly increased!

STEVE BRADSHAW: What, you mean the world becomes kind of like the European Union run from Brussels, only it's New York instead?

EVELINE HERFKENS: I hope they do it with less bureaucracy! But, yes.

STEVE BRADSHAW: After the break I'll be asking the man behind the Social Summit whether it's really an exercise in global hypocrisy.

PART TWO

STEVE BRADSHAW: Welcome back to Geneva - the city that's playing host to next week's United Nations Social Summit. Five years ago the world leaders who attended the first Social Summit drew up a short list of key pledges - from eradicating poverty to full employment and universal education. But since then most developed countries have actually cut their aid budgets while many developing countries continue to waste precious resources through bloated bureaucracies, corruption and armed conflicts. So when I spoke to the top United Nations official behind the Social Summit, Nitan Desai, I asked him whether he's simply creating a stage on which world leaders can make promises they'll never keep.

NITAN DESAI (Under Secretary General, UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs): I hope not and it's certainly not our intention to do that. And I do not believe that's why they come there. I believe they come there because they believe that they need to get together to reaffirm their commitment to something which is very close to their heart.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Well, the last set of commitments weren't really kept, were they?

NITAN DESAI: Some of them were. Certainly, there's a far higher priority being given to poverty eradication now in public policy, in aid policy, in international relations generally and in - certainly in domestic policy than what we had in the past.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Isn't it the fact that you are at the mercy and indeed the world leaders who'll be meeting at the summit are at the mercy of powerful economic forces that you can't control. You don't mention in most of your preparatory material that I've read the role of the Transnationals and many people would say they're more powerful than many of the government leaders who'll be meeting at the summit.

NITAN DESAI: I'd say that it's an important point that you've you - that you have raised and in some ways that underpins the need for global co-operation. Because what you're getting now is multinationals which no single government can influence on its own. Taken together they can. The issue is one government cannot do it on its own because they can always shift production to another place. They can always, you know, shift their activities because they operate on a global scale basis.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Do you ever feel that what the world faces is not a crisis of economics but a crisis of ethics . That in the end, after two thousand years of Christianity, much longer of some other religions, people don't really care about their neighbours?

NITAN DESAI: I'm afraid that is true. And that is a problem. And I believe that there is no way in which we can run any type of community without a core of shared values and ethics which include solidarity and responsibility. Without that no community can run - it doesn't matter whether you are talking of the world or whether you're talking of a village. Unless there is that core that we can constitute one community - and because we are one community we have certain obligations of solidarity and responsibility - we'll never get anywhere.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Give - give me one practical initiative that you'd like to see -

NITAN DESAI: Well, one for instance which has already been launched by the Secretary General, is on girls' education. A crucial strategic factor in social development. A socially developed society - a society which has, which you would deem to be socially progressive would almost certainly have a reasonably high status for women and that would be closely tied in with education.

There are other initiatives which are being discussed in the area of health, on HIV/AIDS for instance. Again, a relatively new thing, we were not quite as conscious of the scale of the AIDS epidemic in '95 as we are now. There are some specific initiatives which are being contemplated there. There is a discussion on issues of micro-credit which is part of this exercise.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Will you be pressing for increasing controls on financial volatility, some kind of regulation -

NITAN DESAI: I would say, I would say that this is under - being discussed, perhaps not as much in the context of the Social Summit but in the context of discussions on the "Financial Architecture" which are going on in Washington and elsewhere. And this is an aspect which is being er addressed and which is now more widely accepted: that we need to put, so to speak, some grit in the wheels of the market every now and then in order to make sure that we don't have wild speculative flows or are short of money.

STEVE BRADSHAW: But some people would say this is a "Trojan horse" - once you start talking about regulation, you're bound to end up with taxation. Taxation on an international scale.

NITAN DESAI: Well - firstly, there's no tax authority so there can't be taxation; second, the regulation is not international, the regulation is national. It's simply national governments doing certain things but knowing that certain other governments are also going to do them.

STEVE BRADSHAW: But isn't there a case for taxation - of taxing international flows to help the poor? I mean, it used to be said, "no taxation without representation". What you've got is representation without taxation.

NITAN DESAI: I would say that we, any - anything which er, as far as the global system, multilateral associations are concerned - they are associations. And like an association at a local level they have to work on contributions. If any such money is to be collected, it'll have to be collected by national governments. And made available to whatever purpose they think is appropriate at a - a co-operative, if they like, with other countries. But it's not taxation - it cannot be. The power - fiscal power - is vested with national governments.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Just finally; when it comes to gender issues - when it comes, for example, to the health and education of women - how can you hope that a Social Summit will do anything about that when these attitudes are deeply embedded in the cultures of many people?

NITAN DESAI: Ah, but they are, they - but it is changing. The very fact that this is being discussed is itself a major achievement. And this, you - is another thing that I would stress: for the first time in human history you really have people from every religion - people with vastly different historical antecedents, tremendous differences in their culture - talking about values. Talking about things like women's status in society, about children, about discrimination, about human rights, about equality, about fairness, about justice. And this is a fantastic achievement! It has never happened that people of such diverse persuasions have been brought together. And it's because you're doing that it's bound to be difficult. But it's - but that's precisely why it's worth doing.

STEVE BRADSHAW: Well, the question facing the leaders of over a hundred and fifty governments here in Geneva is about as difficult as you can get: how to make sure all the earth's inhabitants benefit from globalisation instead of just the few lucky winners. Answers - please - urgently required.

Now this city, Geneva, is of course the home town of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau who first coined the phrase the 'social contract': an implicit agreement between government and governed. What's needed now - many believe - is a new social contract between the rich and the poor, the "haves" and the "have-nots", the winners and the losers. That may prove too demanding an ambition. But Geneva may at least produce some promises the world community will try and keep. So we leave you with this wish-list from some of the key players at the social summit - from Geneva, goodbye.

CAROL BELLAMY (Executive Director, United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef)): My hopes are that the Review will produced some concrete actions. No; I think that there are plenty of indicators and plenty of goals out there, but let's identify the ones that seem to make the most sense, and commit ourselves to trying to move in that direction. For us at UNICEF it would be: All children have a good decent education. It would mean that all children have a healthy start and that young people do have an opportunity to realise their full potential.

JAMES WOLFENSOHN (President of the World Bank): Let's say to all the leadership in the world that we still underestimate the impact of poverty as a global issue, as an issue which affects every one of us, wherever we live. And it'd be my hope that we would go beyond the fine statements which are made by our leaders and that we will try and help in the education of people in our countries so that this can be perceived as really the issue for the next millennium.

DR GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND (Director General, World Health Organisation): What we do now is try to convince governments and civil society and NGOs that it is not only humanitarian - in you know, humanitarian in a good sense - but it also makes good economic sense to invest in the poor to help bring them out of poverty. Investing in their health, in their children and to give them access to the technologies that we have.

MARK MALLOCH BROWN (Administrator, United Nations Development Programme): We're pushing very hard for the empowerment of the poor because, you know, our vision of poverty reduction is not the philanthropic vision of "handouts" or "hand-downs" to the poor, it's much more the sense that poverty reduction only comes when the poor have political power.

JUAN SOMAVIA (Director General, International Labour Organisation): We are moving into a moment in which, because of the incredible capacity with the national communication people's voice are going to become more and more important: make your voice heard! I think that is a fundamental message that I would like to see coming out of the Social Summit.

CLARE SHORT (Secretary of State, UK Dept. for International Development): What we're trying to do, as a government, is just to say, for goodness sake, let's stop going to international conferences, signing up to wonderful things, going home - all of us, and saying, it's business as usual! Let's implement what we promised. Let's get serious. Let's use these targets for all the work of the IMF, the World Bank, all the UN agencies, let's get all the bilateral programmes to collaborate, let's measure progress year on year! Let's just really go for it!

END