15 July 2015 – Ambassador Cecilia B. Rebong, Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva and Chairperson of the Geneva Chapter of the Group of 77 and China (G77), organized the 2nd Gamani Corea Forum on June 30.
The Gamani Corea Forum was established during the 50th Anniversary of the G77 last year as a capacity building tool, which provides countries from the developing world with knowledge needed in the continually evolving field of development and it is named after one of the founding fathers of the Group of 77 and China and the main author of the Declaration of the 77. The forum allows G77 members to openly discuss the multifaceted challenges that countries from the developing South face.
The featured speaker for the session was Professor Ha-joon Chang from the University of Cambridge and famed author of “Kicking Away the Ladder – Development Strategy in Political Perspective” and “Bad Samaritans,” which showed the inconsistencies and contradictions between the actual economic policies that allowed developed countries to advance and their subsequent somewhat contrary current positions on key development issues.
Ambassador Rebong in her welcome remarks stated that “The world finds itself at a crossroads in the field of development. There have been difficulties in the negotiations on both the Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Third International Conference on Financing for Development.” She added that “Gaps between the developed and the developing countries must be bridged if we are to make progress during these upcoming major international development conferences, the outcomes of which will have a profound impact on our citizens.”
Dr. Chang in his presentation discussed the way countries such as the United States and Great Britain, which are now among the most ardent proponents of free trade, benefited in the very early stages of their development from protectionist policies, support for infant industries, high tariffs on goods, and other measures that are counter to the free trade principles that they now espouse. Once they had reasonably developed their industries only then did they give up the protectionist measures and shifted to free trade policies effectively “kicking away the ladder” so other countries could not follow.
Dr. Chang pointed out that in today’s multilateral venues such as the World Trade Center (WTO), which calls for a level playing field, it would be fair only if both parties in negotiations were also on equal footing in terms of levels of development and economic power. Otherwise a country that is considerably weaker would need certain concessions from the other parties in order to properly match-up with them. He concluded his lecture by saying that “the developing countries need to reform the Global Economic System to make it more responsive to their needs.” He pointed out that countries must decide on the proper mix of policies that will be beneficial to them, whether this is a mix of free trade and some level of protectionism will depend entirely on the country since there is no one size fits all approach.
The Group of 77 and China was established 51 years ago during the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1964 and is made up of 134 countries mostly from what is known as the developing South. It is a major negotiating bloc in the field of development and it has chapters in Nairobi, New York, Paris, Rome, and Vienna aside from Geneva. The Philippines is chair of the Geneva and Paris chapters for the year 2015. END