Thursday, September 9th, 2004
Reviewing the Global Development Agenda
Vinay Bhargava, Director, Operations and International Affairs at the World Bank, discusses the global development agenda with students from Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies.
Students from Kobe University's Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies (GSICS) had the chance today to discuss the current state of global development with Mr. Vinay Bhargava, the World Bank's Director of Operations and International Affairs, in a videoconference between the university and the TDLC in Tokyo.
Mr. Vinay Bhargava, Director, Operations and International Affairs, the World Bank, during his presentation with graduate students from Kobe University.
The conference was moderated by Koichi Omori, Communications Officer for the World Bank's Tokyo office, and also attended by Yukio Yoshimura, World Bank Vice President and Special Representative, Japan, and Ryu Fukui, the TDLC's Partnership and Programs Manager.
GSICS is one of the seven major schools of development studies in Japan and one of three (along with Hiroshima University and Nagoya University) that support the Bank's Public Information Center (PIC) in Tokyo. Convening the group in Kobe was Professor Motoki Takahashi of GSICS, a specialist in economic development in Eastern and Southern Africa. Professor Takahashi also serves as the chair of the Multilateral Development Banks Research Group organised by the Japanese Ministry of Finance.
Mr. Bhargava presented a paper on the recent state of global development activities in which he outlined the evolution of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals were adopted at the UN's 'Millennium Assembly,' the 55th Session of the General Assembly, which established common ground and targets for poverty reduction. An hour-long discussion with the students then arose out the post-presentation Q&A session.
In his presentation Mr. Bhargava examined subsequent international conferences such as the Fourth Ministerial Conferences of WTO (Doha, Qatar, November 2001) which recognised the importance of more equitable trading systems for developing countries, the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, Mexico, March 2002) where participants pledged greater and more effective development assistance, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg (August 26 - September 4 2002) which identified priorities for action in areas such as water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity.
Mr. Bhargava noted that while some countries, notably India and China, are on track to meet most of the MDGs by 2015, some critical regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa will present considerable challenges.
The significance and opportunities of the current global agenda, however, are not in doubt. The international community has set clear and measurable goals based on an unprecedented common ground. There is agreement that the decline in real terms of development assistance seen over the last 20 years must be reversed, and civil society, youth, and other non-state participants have been much more closely integrated into global decision making, creating in a sense a 'new multilateralism.'
The focus now must be on effective implementation. As Mr. Bhargava said, "We know what needs to be done. Now let us do it."
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Related Links
About the Millennium Development Goals:
http://www.developmentgoals.org/Aboutthegoals.htm
Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies
http://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/~gsics/index.html
The UN Millennium Assembly website:
http://www.un.org/millennium/
World Bank Public Information Center, Tokyo:
http://www.worldbank.or.jp/04data/01pic/pic_top.html
(Site in Japanese)
