Dr. Jagan cannot be credited with the NGHO concept but rather bold advocacy for its implementation

Mar 11, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Reference is made to Sunday’s Editorial, March 8, 2009, in Kaieteur News, titled “Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the world crisis.”
Dr. Jagan is not the originator of the “New Global Human Order” concept. Distinguished Caribbean thinker Norman Girvan in a presentation titled “Notes on the New Global Human Order” in Georgetown, Guyana, August 25-28, 2000″ clearly said: “For most of the period since the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s agitation for a more just and humane global order has came come mainly from NGOs as representatives of international civil society and from certain agencies in the United Nations system.
Three questions may, therefore, be posed with respect to the initiative for New Global Human Order. First, to what extent is the New Global Human Order a “new” initiative as distinct from a convenient label applied to a “package” of existing currents and proposals? Second, what is the likelihood of success of an attempt to launch a new proposal for a broad international development partnership between the South and the North along the lines of New Global Human Order, given the experience of similar initiatives in the 1970s and in the more recent past?
First what, if anything, is new about the concept? And second, what is the likelihood of greater success given the experience of similar initiatives in the 1970s and in the more recent past? And third, what is the most appropriate strategy or mix of strategies to achieve. More generally, what strategies may usefully be pursued to achieve objectives of this kind?
Regarding the first, a content analysis of the statements related to the New Global Human Order suggests that it is more in the nature of a package whose elements are drawn from a variety of sources than a distinctly new initiative. There is little, if anything, that is new. The proposals advanced by Dr. Jagan in November 1994 and in the Georgetown Declaration of 1996 are, in the main, borrowed explicitly from existing documents and initiatives, particularly the UNDP’s Human Development Reports and the World Social Summit.
The latest document from the Government of Guyana seems to recognise this, for it declares that “the time has now come to push for implementation of the various recent and on-going initiatives that have been negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations…” and that “the Government of Guyana wishes to advance the concept of President Jagan’s New Global Human Order in partnership with the UNDP and mount a regional and international campaign to increase awareness of the issues involved and to meet the challenges of the emerging New Global Human Order” (p. 3).
The document therefore places the emphasis on implementation of existing initiatives and on public education — a position with which one could hardly disagree.
President Jagan is to be commended however, for his courage and vision in promoting [What is notable though, is that Dr Jagan had the courage and the vision to be promoting, what was at the time, an unfashionable concept, when most of the world was mesmerized by seemed enraptured by the hype over globalization.] If the content of the New Global Human Order is already contained in a range of existing initiatives and proposals, is there any particular value in gathering them all together under one concept with a new or distinctive label?
If the concept gives coherence to what has hitherto been a set of loosely related and disparate ideas, and if it serves as a convenient and effective slogan for the mobilization of coordinated international action, the answer would be “yes”.
It is not clear, however, that either of these conditions is met. President Jagan’s proposals of November 1994 were rather detailed and specific with respect to changes in the UN system and the Bretton Woods institutions and for the financing of development and the funding of the Global Environment Facility. It amounted to a “shopping list” of priorities selected from the existing shelf of proposals.
The Georgetown Declaration of 1996 retreated somewhat from this approach by mixing general principles with some specific proposals, and finally deferred the issue by calling for a Task Force to review current initiatives and the mounting of a campaign.
The movement in this direction has gone further with the current document from the Government of Guyana, in which specific measures are not mentioned at all and the emphasis, as we have noted, is on the ‘implementation and campaign’ approach.”
Dr. Jagan cannot be credited with the NGHO concept. He can be credited for his bold advocacy for the NGHO implementation when the world had a different focus.
M. A. Bacchus

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