Making globalization work

Making globalization work
Globalization encompasses many things: the international flow of ideas and knowledge the sharing of cultures, global civil society, and the global environmental movement. The great hope of globalization is that it will raise living standards throughout the world: give poor countries access to overseas markets so that they can sell goods, allow in foreign investment thatwill make new products at cheaper prices, and open borders so that people can travel abroad to be educated, work and send home earnings to help their families and fund new business. Globalization has the potential to bring enormous benefits to those in both the developing and the developed world. But the evidence is overwhelming that it has failed to live to this potential. Economics has beendriving it especially through the lowering of communication and transportation costs. But politics has shaped it. The rules of games have been largely set by the advanced developed countries
In the early 1990´s globalization was greeted with euphoria. Capital flows to developing countries had increased sixfold in six years. The establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995- a goal that hadbeen sought for half a century- was to bring the semblance of a rule of law to international commerce. Everyone was supposed to be a winner-both developed and undeveloped Worlds. Globalization was to bring unprecedented prosperity to all. However the current process of globalization is generating unbalanced outcomes, both between and within countries. Wealth is being created yet too many countriesand people are sharing its benefits, furthermore they have no voice in shaping the process even in most of the developed countries, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer
In short globalization may have helped some countries – their GDP, the sum total of the goods and services produced may have increased- it had not helped most of the people in these countries, in additionthe worry is that globalization was creating rich countries with poor people, this realization raised five concerns:
The rules that govern globalization are unfair
Globalization advances material value over other values
The way globalization has been managed has taken away much of the developing countries sovereignty, and their ability to make decisions in key areas
While supporters ofglobalization claimed that everyone will benefit, there is overwhelming evidence from both, developed and undeveloped countries, that there are many losers- on both sides.
And last but not least, the economic system that has been pushed on the developing countries, is inappropriate and often grossly damaging. Critics of globalization point to the growing number of people living in poverty, which isconstantly on the rise. The World Bank defines poverty as living on less than $2 a day, absolute or extreme poverty as living on less than $1 a day. How can people live or better yet prosper on $2 a day? Worse still on $1 a day?
What is true for poor people is too often true for poor countries, while the idea of democracy has spread and more countries have free elections, developing countries findtheir ability to act eroded both by new constraints imposed from outside and by the weakening of their existing institutions and arrangements to which globalization has contributed. Making globalization work will not be easy. Those who benefit from the current system will resist change, and they are very powerful
There are many things that must be done. Six areas where the international communityhas recognized that all is not well illustrate both the progress that has been made and the distance yet to go. 1 the pervasiveness of poverty- poverty has at last, become a global concern. The United Nations and multinational institutions such as the World Bank have all begun focusing on poverty reduction. 2- The need for foreign assistance and debt relief- in tandem with the recognition that...