Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the World Summit for Social Development

[Delivered at the Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, March 12, 1995]

Social development and
the dignity of humankind

IN FEBRUARY 1986 the world witnessed in my country a nonviolent revolution unlike any other. It showed the world that change can be achieved with peace, and that change must come from the people.

Our “People Power” Revolution gave clear proof that the most potent force of any society is its people.

Barely five months ago, the Philippines played host to a conference of 54 Asia-Pacific ministers and high officials in preparation for this world summit. This conference adopted the Manila Declaration—a common agenda for action of social development for our part of the world, where three-fifths of humanity lives.

Democratizing development

The Asia-Pacific is now the world’s fastest growing region. Our concern is to ensure that growth achieves more than simply enriching the traditional elites.

We need to democratize development—to make Asia-Pacific prosperity truly meaningful, not just for a few but for the many.

I come here today to reaffirm my country’s and our region’s solidarity with the entire global community—in recognizing that the human being must be at the center of all our development efforts.

Three priorities to guide our actions

Your Majesties, Excellencies:

I come to this gathering to share with you a development agenda for peace for my nation.

In this effort we pursue the three priorities of poverty alleviation, job creation and social integration, the same “core issues” this summit is addressing.

We share the belief that Government must provide the policy environment and basic services that empower ordinary people to participate actively in the development processes at the very outset.

The agenda that we bring strengthens the role of civil society in designing, implementing and evaluating public policies. In so doing, we recognize that people empowerment is the best assurance of true democracy.

It is an agenda that recognizes equality of women and men, and assures the protection of women and children.

It is an agenda that seeks to protect the rights of workers, especially migrant workers who are among the best of my country’s globally shared resources.

I welcome with great satisfaction the commitment of this summit to the promotion of the goal of full employment as a basic and urgent priority. I also fully support the provisions of the draft program of action for the promotion of the rights of migrant workers and their families, a recognition that is long overdue.

Political stability and economic reforms

To ensure political stability—a vital prerequisite to sustained economic growth—we immediately and persistently pursued reconciliation with dissident groups. We forged closer collaboration with our Congress to ensure that crucial economic and social reforms are put in place.

We democratized our economy by dismantling monopolies and cartels injurious to the national interest. We brought down barriers to trade and investments that prevented our producers from attaining innate strength to face global competition.

Our fundamental economic and fiscal reforms are now paying off. Philippine GNP increased by more than 5 percent last year; inflation is down to 5.1 percent; and more than 700,000 new jobs were generated.

But all of the positive economic developments in our country will be meaningless unless the benefits of economic growth are shared by all.

Guaranteeing minimum basic needs

This concern led us to draw up a Social Reform Agenda that guarantees for our basic sectors their minimum basic needs—food, shelter, health, productive assets and work. It is an agenda we drew up together with business and civil society, including the basic sectors—our farmers, fisherfolk, urban poor, the indigenous peoples, women, children, youth, persons with disabilities.

Through this agenda we shall ensure that programs, including those involving structural adjustments, will include social development goals of poverty eradication, employment generation and social integration.

This historic meeting affords us in both the developed and developing world the occasion to achieve agreement on the rights, resources and responsibilities that improving peoples’ lives entails.

Underpinning our work is the recognition that all nations have a right to development.

Investing in people is not without cost. Although most of the resources will have to come from our own national budgets, many nations in the developing world will require supplementary resources from the more affluent among us. This includes reducing or canceling debts, whenever their servicing prevents governments from adequately meeting their people’s basic needs.

We support and urge the wider implementation of the 20/20 formula. And we call on the rich nations to make good on their standing commitment to devote at least 0.7 percent of their GNP to official development assistance.

Having asserted our rights and laid claim to increased resources for social development, we must also highlight our responsibility to translate rhetoric into commitment, sympathy into policy, and compassion into action.

The Manila Declaration set for its 54 signatories clear deadlines for meeting social goals and targets. Meeting those deadlines requires coordinated and cooperative actions from all of us in the global community of nations.

Rooting out social instability

Many issues still divide us in this summit. But I believe there is sufficient convergence to achieve cooperation and partnership among nations and between governments and civil society. We must work to make this convergence stronger.

After all, we owe it to our peoples to diminish if not eradicate the root causes of social instability in our society. We owe it to them to work at those measures that will bring about a just and lasting peace.

Our peoples aspire to a life where their options are not limited to mere survival, where the opportunities for human development are expanded so that they may choose their own future and control their own destiny. They dream of societies where justice, equal opportunities, their right to development, respect for human dignity, and prosperity reign supreme.

We owe it to them to undertake meaningful reforms, and to undertake them now.