*{Globalization with a Human Face: Towards a Values-Added Society [http://www.weforum.org/site/knowledgenavigator.nsf/Content/Globalization%20with%20a%20Human%20Face%3A%20Towards%20a%20Values-Added%20Society?open&topic_id=300250000&theme_id=300]

            02.02.1999

            Annual Meeting 1999}

            *partie=titre Gordimer questions the values in globalization process *partie=nil 

            Nobel Prizewinning author Nadine Gordimer came down hard on the process of globalization, telling the world's leading business executives that it has increased consumption unprecedentedly, but in some respects jeopardizes truly human prospects, including sustainable human development for all.

            Gordimer said the issue is nothing less than whether the gap between rich and poor countries can be narrowed by this increasingly widespread process. "What role can globalization play in eradicating world poverty?" she asked. "Poverty puts an inhuman, outcast mask on more than three billion of our world population."

            The South African author, who is a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme, told the plenary session: "While those of us who have been the generations of big consumers need to consume less, for more than one billion of the world's poorest people, increased consumption is a matter of life and death and a basic want - the right to freedom from want." Consumption is necessary for human development "when it enlarges the capabilities of and improves people's lives without adversely affecting the lives of others," she said.

            Gordimer suggested that the power of becoming consumers needs to be extended to the entire population of the globe. She placed responsibility for this on those who control world finance, on international law and on the European Community which, she said, "flouts the principles of globalization through its blatant protectionism." She added that national governments also have responsibility to bring about a just consumerism.

            She noted that equitable globalization is also threatened by a recession which affects 35% of the world, wars which rage throughout Africa, instability which affects Russia and tyranny which has crippled the economy of Iraq. "Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls," she said, "when it sounds in one stock exchange, its note reverberates throughout the world, shaking the haves as well as casting down even further the have-nots."

            Britain's H.R.H. Princess Anne, President of The Save the Children Fund, UK, also addressed the session. She held the business and economic community responsible for the transformation from a rural to an urban society in much of the world, and its impact on the world's children, the most vulnerable segment.

            His Holiness Bartholomew I, The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, said he believes religion is the soul of the whole process of globalization, it is the part that has been missing, the part "that is here to show the way." He said the lack of a religious dimension creates some drawbacks and some dilemmas for people of the regions.

            Warren Bennis, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California, USA, stressed the importance of the human community. He quoted an Italian couplet to illustrate the importance of working together:
            We are all angels with only one wing/
            We can fly only when we embrace each other.                  

                  *{Contributors:       Bartholomew I Dimitri
                  Bennis Warren
                  Gordimer Nadine
                  H.R.H. Princess Anne, The Princess Royal       Smadja Claude}