The World Summit held in Copenhagen from March 6 to 12, 1995, unlike other UN social agenda conferences in the 1990s, was unprecedented. It was the first major international meeting to be held on the subject of social development. This fact is recorded in the first preambular paragraph of the Political and Programmatic Declaration solemnly adopted on the occasion by the rulers present or represented in the Danish capital, in the following terms: "For the first time in history, at the invitation of the United Nations, we, Heads of State and Government, we come together to recognize the importance of social development and the human well-being of all, and to give these goals the highest priority, now and in the 21st century."
It may seem paradoxical to any observer of the history of modern times that the first multilateral conference of great magnitude on the subject of social development took place precisely at a time when neoliberalism, as an "efficient" alternative to the so-called welfare state, and the cult of the market, as a "natural" regulation factor of social coexistence, configure the dominant ideology on a planetary scale.
This paradox is real, but it only became effective a year and a half after the launch of the idea of the Summit, by Chile, in 1991, within the scope of the Economic and Social Council of the UN, upon its consensual endorsement by the General Assembly in 1992, emphasizing in the course of the preparatory process for the event. In the commitments and proposals for action adopted in Copenhagen, in 1995, such a paradox will only be partially configured, while other types of contradictions will become evident.
The first paradox regarding the World Summit on Social Development resides in the fact that the proposal for its realization was accepted more quickly by developed countries than by the group of developing countries. And he has an explanation.
As serious as the concerns with the subject and the motivations of the initiators of the proposal were, the resistance found among some developing countries, in the phase immediately after the end of the Cold War, had its reason for being. The triumphalism of the West developed with the crumbling of the former communist bloc and the alleged victory of liberalism over "real socialism" and statist bureaucratic centralism was reflected, then, not only in the notion of the "new international order" advocated by President Bush within of the Group of Seven ("club" of the richest countries) seen in a more threatening way by the rest of the world because associated with the concomitant dissemination of new dubious concepts, such as the "right of interference". It was also reflected in the insistence with which some developed countries brandished the notion of good governance, or "good governance", which included a critique directed at Third World countries as the exclusive locus of wasted resources and government corruption rather, naturally, Operation Manos Limpas in Italy, which turned the current political system upside down in the country, and the publicizing of more individualized corruption scandals involving rulers of several other developed countries. Thus, representatives of developing countries at the UN feared that the proposed conference would become a forum for North-South reproach, in which rich countries would try to impose new types of conditionalities on international assistance and cooperation.
In those circumstances, it was necessary for the Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations, Ambassador Juan Somavía, in his capacity as special representative of the Secretary General for this purpose, to carry out consultations on the matter over the course of more than a year, so that the Assembly General decided to convene the world meeting, at the level of Heads of State and Government, in Copenhagen, in 1995. He did so, then, in a very positive way, through Resolution 47/92, of December 16, 1992, declaring itself "convinced of the need to improve the social component of sustainable development in order to achieve economic growth with social justice, (...) aware of the need to establish ways and means to eliminate widespread poverty and to fully enjoy human rights, which include civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, as interrelated objectives", and noting that "poverty, unemployment and social integration are intertwined in all societies, with an impact particularly profound in developing countries".
For the forwarding of discussions and the preparation of documents to be considered in Copenhagen, the General Assembly established a Preparatory Committee which met in formal and informal sessions from April 1993 to January 1995 open to all Member States of the United Nations, represented by delegates specially designated for this purpose by the respective Heads of State and Government, as well as international agencies. The formerly neglected Commission for Social Development was instructed to hold an extraordinary session that attracted unprecedented influx and interest from governments and NGOs to address the Summit in 1993. UN regional Commissions, including ECLAC, received recommendations to prepare integrated reports with a view to holding the meeting. And all the specialized agencies of the UN and Bretton Woods system, the IMF and the World Bank were mobilized for the event.
Like the other conferences of the 1990s, the meeting in Copenhagen developed on different planes. Inaugurated at the level of official negotiating delegations, it extended, with the format of a large conference with 186 States and participating regional integration organizations from March 6 to 10, 1995, divided into a Plenary, a Plenary negotiating Committee and several negotiating groups for specific subtopics, gathered in parallel sessions to seminars, lectures and conferences of specialists and agencies of the United Nations. This was followed by the Summit itself, on the 11th and 12th of March, in which a record 117 Heads of State and Government took part, surpassing the 105 at the "Earth Summit" at RIO-92, and high representatives of other countries, which delivered a total of 232 speeches and adopted the documents previously approved by the negotiating conference. In all, the World Summit on Social Development brought together 14,200 people at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, of which 5,000 were official delegates, more than 2,800 journalists and communication agency workers, 2,300 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 2,700 local officials and security officers and 400 members of the United Nations Secretariat and its agencies. In parallel to the official events, an NGO Forum, held from March 3 to 12 on another island in the Danish capital, the island of Holmen, with 4,500 participants from abroad, held around 1,500 meetings, over 100 cultural activities and 400 exhibitions .
Global Saribra, through its experience and efforts, designs and executes projects to help nations achieve social development. This development provides well-being to the people and enables the Nation to achieve progress and a favorable economic and social position with other Nations.
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