From frameworks to self-determination
Liberty, individual free choice, solidarity, equity, a shared sense of responsibility in an age of interdependence belong to the ethic of the new global culture we live in. The new culture, if properly interpreted and guided, could lead to the authentic self-determination of developing nations and to integral human development, of which gratuitous love is an essential parameter.
Two distinctions must be made to disentangle the current global development agenda from those western minorities who hijacked it:
1. The holistic approach of the MDGs framework must be distinguished from integral human development - or genuine holism. 2. The ownership of the MDGs that the UN Secretariat encourages governments to have does not mean authentic self-determination.
1. Holistic versus integral The MDG process claims to be holistic, integrated, all-encompassing. The MDGs are interrelated and interdependent. They approach the challenges of poverty, food, energy, global recession, climate change, human rights, gender equality, governance, sustainable development and peace and security as belonging to a single development package. “The very fact that are all inter-related has presented the global community with a unique opportunity to tackle them together” (1, 64).
Integrated in this holistic package, however, is a reductionist and flawed anthropological vision, contaminated by a secularist ethic which retreats into immanence. Proof of this is the fact that not only are criteria such as gratuitous love, happiness, good and evil, spousal love, the respect for life from the moment of conception till natural death, motherhood, fatherhood and the family, absent, but paradigms and objectives that are radically opposed to them are being imposed. The subjects and objects of development are mere global citizens, i.e. they are not treated as persons and members of a family. “Well-being” for all is the anthropological horizon of the MDG.
Integral human development, by contrast, is open to transcendence. It is geared towards the plenitude of happiness for every human person. It integrates the gratuitousness of love.
The anthropological vision underpinning quality of life, reproductive health, gender equality, “maternal health” as the new ethic interprets it is incompatible with integral human development.
2. Ownership versus self-determination The MDG process increasingly insists on the fundamental importance of “national ownership of development strategies”. The UN recognizes that “one size fits all policies and programmes are bound to fail due to wide variations among countries in terms of their capacity and historical as well as geographical circumstances”. Hence “ownership is vital for national commitment to development goals”. (1, 48) Countries must not only “own” the MDGs but lead the process, supported by “global programmes, measures and policies” that would “align with national priorities and respect national sovereignty” (1, 85).
But a closer look at the UN concept of ownership reveals that governments are requested to own a development framework devised, not by themselves, but by UN experts. This alleged “ownership” must translate into national policies that conform to the UN framework. National priorities must be determined within, not without, the framework. In other words, national governments are bound to a framework that may ideologically differ from their cultures and values. They must look at the MDGs through a “gender lens”. Ownership of the UN development framework is imposed on them. Respect for national sovereignty applies only to the determination of priorities within the framework. But there is no respect for national sovereignty if governments are requested to prioritize gender equality, reproductive health and other agendas that are in conflict with their contract of society. What happens as a result is a sort of inculturation of a secular western culture in non-western cultures. The global development system in place does not tolerate thinking and operating outside the box: this is the paradox of the global culture of free choice that we live in.
The fact is that governments, nations, individual persons are free and sovereign. They do have the ability to turn the tables against those who hijacked “free choice”. As things now stand, “free choice” is the caricature of self-determination. Governments, nations, persons can and must determine for themselves who they want to be. Only then will “national ownership” be authentic.
“Frameworks”, “targets”, “indicators”, “best practices”, “lessons learned” forged by far-away experts are largely artificial and have proven not to work: not only do they stifle the creativity, liberty, responsibility and self-determination of peoples but they socially engineer them and enslave them to an ethic they would not have freely chosen by themselves.
A realistic look at the situation calls for a radical reassessment of development approaches. Now is the time to go back to the reality of work, human liberty and initiative, the family, love, local cultures, faith. Now is the time to move from global frameworks to a global solidarity rooted in authentic self-determination, from a reductionist and flawed development approach to integral human development, from a global deal founded on contractual interests to the civilization of love.
© Marguerite A. Peeters 2010 – Permission needed for any public or semi-public use of this module.
Source:
(1) Ban Ki-moon. Keeping the Promise. A forward-looking review to promote an agreed action agenda to achieve the MDGs by 2015. Advance unedited version. A/64/xxx. 2010.