Navin Chanderpal, Special Envoy for the President on Environment and Sustainable Development of Guyana was in Toronto to engage international discourse on the New Global Human Order (NGHO) initiative, and to expand the civic continuous feedback loop helping to flush out issues and move the concept forward.

The aim of this neural network of individuals, organizations, students and academics is to eventually make NGHO a household term around the world. Tasked with devising creative methods to engendering global cooperation and assistance, the idea is not to allow the ideology of others to be a stumbling block, but to work in harmony with the essential premises on which those ideologies are based.

NGHO, the brain child of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, is a practical blueprint for sustainable human development. At its core is the principle first articulated by Dr. Jagan’s friend and colleague – the late Mahbub Ul Haq of Pakistan, that: there can be no sustainable development without Sustainable Human Development at its foundation. The blueprint further spells out the rationale for a NGHO, suggests methods of funding it and establishes social benchmarks that recipient nations should commit to.

In visionary statements in the mode of his stature as an internationalist whose thinking transcended national borders, Dr. Jagan sounded the alarm as far back as 1994 that contrary to the New World Order then being touted at the time, world systems were in disorder – not order. Needless to say, subsequent events and the current unprecedented Global Financial Crisis have validated his arguments.

Before his death, Dr. Jagan presented his NGHO concept at international conferences in Guyana and in Rome in 1996. From there it has gone on to UN, where support has grown from a handful of initial co-sponsors to more than 70 co-sponsors in 2007 including the two most populous countries China and India. And particular elements of Dr. Jagan’s blueprint have subsequently appeared in a three or four proposals put forward by other world leaders.

In his address to the NGHO conference in Guyana in 1996, Dr. Jagan made the case that there is enough to fulfill humanity’s basic needs, greatly reduce suffering and improve security for all:

‘The scientific and technological revolution and the information revolution have transformed our world to the point where mankind is in a position to expect universal prosperity. However, this great promise, especially with the ending of the sharp ideological/political confrontation of the cold war period, to meet man’s basic needs and provide individual and international security is far from being fulfilled.’

Yet half of the world-population still lives on less than US$2 a day. And 9 million children under five die annually from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition. When, just a three per cent (3%) redirection in defense spending is all it would take to address this.

In Rome, a few months later Dr. Jagan further elaborated on the need for a framework of global governance especially in the wake of capital and technology intensive globalization, the benefits of which are largely skewed towards accruing to invested capital not people in general, which is further widening the gap within and between countries in both north and south:

As we approach a new century, the South is faced with aid cuts and the North with “jobless recovery” and “jobless growth.” Consequently, we need a new global partnership for sustainable human development, good governance and a development strategy, which will provide the world with sufficient food to have such food resources equitably distributed. Poverty is the root cause of food insecurity and only its rapid and permanent elimination will produce improved economic and social relations for a more equitable world order.

In an increasingly globalised environment of disorder and confusion, there is little room for concepts of development which place prime emphasis on the promotion of narrow national interests above the common good of humanity. A stop must be put to an unjust global economic order; an order which robs the South of about US$500 billion annually in unjust, non-equivalent international trade; an order where the poor South finances the North with South to North capital outflows of US$418 billion in the 1982-90 period as debt payments – a sum equal to six Marshall Plans which provided aid for the rehabilitation of Europe after World War II. Those payments did not even include outflows from royalties, dividends, repatriated profits and underpaid raw material.

Globalization has also engendered a new form of colonialism where poorer and indebted countries of the south continue to pay the North with its most precious commodity, its human resources.

Research indicates that 72% of graduates from the University of the West Indies and more than 80% from the University of Guyana migrate north bound. This movement of qualified, skilled human resources follows a similar pattern for most countries of the south. Suffice to say that the free import of high quality labour, on the promise of a better quality of life, has replaced the 19 century’s sugar, bananas and coffee as new forms of tradable commodities, but with a difference. The supplying countries of the south get no direct compensation for this precious commodity.

Through his work and advocacy on these issues, Dr. Jagan succeeded in setting the stage for significant debt forgiveness for Guyana and other highly indebted nations. But the growing disparity between and within nations has continued, even as the world’s and north/south interdependence intensifies with globalization.

There is an urgent need for consensus on global socioeconomic development that addresses in a coherent manner a number of international issues to provide economic security and Sustainable Human Development in the developing world.

For example, there has to be more empowerment of the U.N. And global governance needs to be strengthened – no one wants to see another breakdown in multilateralism like the invasion of Iraq, or another global credit crisis in which the international community is held hostage.

The mandates of institutions like the IMF and World Bank should be reviewed with respect to how much weight is given to the impact policies have on people. And on the environmental front, the burden of safeguarding and restoration should be borne more equitably. Countries whose own economic development was achieved at the cost of environmental degradation are now indignant over similar environmental mismanagement in the developing world.

Also, developing countries need more of a say in global policy making and autonomy in their own decisions locally. At the same time they have to demonstrate greater cohesion of their actions at international and local levels with a people centered and multi dimensional approach to poverty eradication with emphasis on vulnerable groups. Micro credits are needed to help lift people out of the poverty cycle. Systems of justice and the rule of law have to be strengthened.

These are hugely challenging issues, both at national levels and at an international level. But in Mr. Chanderpal’s words, this is Cheddi Jagan’s legacy and we are tasked with keeping Dr. Jagan’s vision of a New Global Human Order moving forward.
Dr. Jagan Addressing the U.N. General Assembly