By Austin Long-Scott
Writted for the Women's Economic Agenda Project
February 1, 2010

WEAP Executive Director Ethel Long-Scott flew to Cairo, Egypt, in December, accepting an invitation to bring WEAP’s perspective to her second international conference of 2009.  The first, held near Paris in March, gathered organizers of the world’s dispossessed and downtrodden looking for ways to make their voices louder on the world stage.  The Cairo conference brought together leading thinkers concerned that globalization is making the world less democratic.

“This conference started a public discussion on things that working people need to be talking about,” Ethel said afterward.  “Globalization is an express train that has already run over millions of people, wrecking their lives while it makes huge amounts of money for people who are already fabulously wealthy.  Globalization has helped to destroy the old social contract that promised average people a decent life in exchange for working hard and following the rules.  We have to create a new paradigm of power that spreads the world’s wealth to everyone, instead of concentrating it in the hands of a few.”

Organizers of the Cairo conference, titled “Conceptualizing Global Democracy,” gave the 40 participants from 29 countries a series of questions to discuss.  They included what does “rule by and for the people” mean in a globalized world?  Those attending emerged from three days of intense discussions and arguments with 17 conclusions, including:

“Currently predominant forms of globalization are severely undemocratic. ‘Rule by and for the people’ is very weak in relation to global companies, global communications, global ecology, global finance, global health, global knowledge and global migration.”

In her address to the conference, Ethel said three global realities guided her as she prepared her conference remarks.

The first global reality, she said, is that the world’s biggest economic system, international capitalism, “is currently undergoing a revolutionary transformational restructuring” that is destroying jobs, increasing poverty, widening the gap between rich and poor, and shredding the social safety net in major developing countries like the United States.  It amounts to a destruction of the old social contract, she said, and a declining standard of living for workers and low-income families.

“The second global reality is that global democracy should increase the proportion of justice and decrease the proportion of injustice that the world’s people live with.”

“The third global reality that guided me is my understanding that all of the world’s governments, democratic and undemocratic, have depended for stability on developing techniques . . . that force groups who are out of favor to the bottom of the economic system, where they become voiceless and mired in the formidable task of just sustaining themselves and their families.  Conceptualizing global democracy must include ideas for stopping the management of fundamental dehumanizing injustices such as poverty, that have been so convenient to the agendas of the world’s ruling elites.”

In their speeches and presentations, other participants voiced similar as well as different concerns.

Paul Oquist, who has been a senior adviser to presidents and prime ministers in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Philippines, told the conference the Nicaraguan government believes that achieving sustainable development is impossible with the current capitalist system.  He said Nicaragua seeks the creation of a new model that guarantees justice, equity and the eradication of extreme poverty.

Edgardo Lander of the Central University of Venezuela noted in his presentation that the worldwide historical process that brought democracy, scientific technology and material abundance to the world’s developed countries had a still ongoing “dark underside” of colonialism, genocide and slavery “for the majority of the planet’s population.”

“The most urgent global challenge that humanity faces today is the one represented by the limits of Planet Earth and the predatory process that are systematically destroying the conditions that make life possible,” Lander said.

Eva Erman of Stokholm University said one characteristic of today’s globalized world is the growth of problems that cross national boundaries and can’t be solved by nation states alone.

In a jointly-authored paper, Ma Ben, Xu Jiajun and Peng Zongchao of Tsingua University in Beijing said traditional Chinese concepts of “people-oriented governance” and “cooperative-harmonious thinking” would be a good basis on which to build global democracy.

Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow, wrote that capitalism has eroded democratic institutions and the world is entering “a new epoch of conflicts, crises and revolutions” that will destroy “a significant part” of the social order we are used to.

After three days of deliberations the Cairo Conference issued 17 conclusions, which they called “propositions.”  They included:

“Global democracy needs to encompass and include many peoples: not only nations, but also communities based in shared class, disability, ethnicity, faith, gender, generation, and sexuality.”

“Gender injustice has undermined all national democracies. Global democracy should be grasped as an opportunity to work towards gender equity at all levels.”

“Youth by their challenging ideas, innovative practices and dynamic movements provide a leading force in constructing global democracy.”

The discussions covered many aspects of democracy.  At a Cairo University presentation for interested students on whether global democracy is possible, three of the delegates spoke from very different viewpoints.  Sitiventi Halapua from Fiji and Honolulu said the Talanoa framework used in Fiji for the creative settling of disputes could allow the intercultural listening and learning that would be necessary for global democracy.  Patricia Mohammed of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad focused on opportunities global democracy would provide for resisting colonization and forging new identities.  Moema de Miranda of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis said global democracy would need new perspectives and new solidarities to resist capitalist domination.

The students also heard from participants seated in the audience, who came from China, India, Venezuela, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Ethel was the only participant invited from the United States.  The organizers said they were careful to invite a mix of activists, academics and people involved in politics and government.  A key question, they said, is whether traditional models of democracy can regulate global issues, “or whether a more global world requires that notions of democracy be reformulated.”

“A number of social and political theorists have begun to examine such questions over the past two decades,” the organizers wrote. “However, the debate remains underdeveloped, particularly as thinkers on the subject have tended to remain separated along regional, cultural, disciplinary and ideological lines. Moreover, little interchange has transpired between scholars and the practitioners who would need to put ideas of global democracy into action.”

The Cairo conference was billed as just the beginning of a multi-year process to raise the level of discussion about global democracy among innovative thinkers who have been widely separated by geography, ideology, age, gender and race. Perspectives at the conference included feminist, Gandhian, Islamic, liberal, postcolonial, socialist and more.  The 29 world regions represented included the Caribbean, East Asia, East Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, the Pacific, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Western Europe.  The organizers said they want the conversation that began in Cairo to continue with different participants in New Delhi next year, and in Rio de Janeiro the year after that.

Months before the Cairo conference, its organizers circulated 10 position papers written by academics who have published books on globalization.  Among the academics were:

• Nadia Mostafa of Cairo University, author of “Beyond Western Paradigms: An Islamic Perspective on Global Democracy.”

• Ma Ben, Xu Jiajun and Peng Zongchao of Tsinghua University in Beijing, co-authors of “A new Global Democracy from the Perspective of Chinese Culture.”

• Edgardo Lander of the Central University of Venezuela, author of “The Decolonisation of Global Democracy.”

• Regina Karega of Kenyatta University, author of “Gender Empowerment and Global Democracy”

• Ram Jee Singh of New Delhi, author of “Global Democracy: Preconditions and Predicament.”

Some of the academics were also activists.  Ram Jee Singh, for example, in addition to authoring or editing more than 50 books, is a Ghandian scholar and peace activist who participated in India’s freedom movement in 1942 under Ghandi’s leadership.  As an activist protesting against the blinding of prisoners on trial, he was imprisoned for almost two years in 1975-77 by the Indian government.

At the conference, the academic papers were initially commented on by participants like Ethel, whom the conference called “discussants.”  In addition to Ethel, some of the discussants included:

• Paul Oquist, currently the Minister-Private Secretary for National Policies for the Presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua.  He told the conference the Nicaraguan government understands that achieving sustainable development is impossible with the current capitalist system, and seeks the creation of a new model that guarantees justice, equity and the eradication of extreme poverty.

• Shaista Shameen, a journalist, filmmaker, lawyer and teacher and former director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission.

• Bob Rae, a Liberal Member of Canada’s Parliament in Toronto Centre and foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Party of Canada.  He served as Ontario’s 21st Premier, and was elected nine times to federal and provincial parliaments.

• Jan Kavan,  a leader of the 1960s student movement in Prague, former Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign and Security Policy of the Czech Republic, and president of the 57^th session of the United Nations General Assembly.  He is the author of hundreds of articles and several books on human rights, international relations and diplomacy.

• Rajindar Sachar of India, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi, former President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and a member of United Nations commissions.

• Gladys Mutangadura of Addis Ababa, an Economic Affairs officer in the African Centre for Gender and Social Development of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Her areas of expertise include food security, gender equality, women’s empowerment, poverty, governance, security of land rights, inequities in health, social integration, human rights and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

Major issues that came up for discussion included the challenges of building global democracy under capitalism, the contributions of Islam to conceptions of global democracy, the relationship between global democracy and gender equity, the undemocratic nature of globalization today, the ability of global democracy to negate cultural diversity, the need for accelerated citizen learning about global democracy, and the destruction of the social safety net.

Conference organizers said they plan to issue a policy brief on the discussions that will be available on their website in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

You can read more about the conference at its website,
http://www.buildingglobaldemocracy.org/content/conceptualising-global-democracy