Friends of the Helsinki Process commit to follow-up
Press release 275/2005
9 September, 2005
Ministers or their representatives from Friends of the Helsinki Process governments, including Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, met for a breakfast meeting on Friday, 9 September. The Ministers reiterated their firm support to the Helsinki Process and their commitment to the follow-up.
At the meeting, the importance of multi-stakeholder cooperation in global problem-solving was highlighted, and the Helsinki Process concept for multi-stakeholder cooperation was seen as a particularly attractive model for such cooperation. Participants emphasised that recommendations should come from the bottom upwards – directly from different stakeholders at the grass roots level to state leaders – in order to make the process of global problem-solving more democratic and transparent. Furthermore, proposals need to be accompanied by the commitment to implement them in order to be effective.
The ministers also issued a joint statement which highlights their commitment to multi-stakeholder cooperation and identifies issues on which the Friends intend to take joint action, such as anti-corruption, effective global governance, gender equality, human trafficking, information and communication technology, poverty and development and migration. The statement is also a message from these governments to the United Nations Special Summit in New York.
Further information: Ambassador Jukka Leino, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, tel. + 358 40 507 3856
Statement of the friends of the Helsinki process ministers 9 September 2005
As we are preparing for the United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly - the Major Event - to review the progress that has been made on fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals, and to address the pressing need for better global governance, we are both encouraged and apprehensive at the same time.
We are encouraged by the many declarations, reports, recommendations and initiatives that have been issued in recent years and months by many international conferences, and other important international meetings, by many commissions and processes as well as many world leaders. We welcome the civil society –based World Social Forum and the corporate sector –based World Economic Forum as positive initiatives to debate development issues. We are encouraged by the fact that the key issues of both, at their annual meetings in the end of January 2005, were remarkably similar.
The proposals that have come from these different fora are far from identical. While some are clearly alternative ideas on addressing given issues, they are still all complementary rather than conflicting to each other and it should be possible to reach consensus on a common programme incorporating their key elements and goals - provided the political will is there.
Our apprehension comes from the fact that the political will needed to implement the necessary reforms in global governance has yet to develop fully. We are therefore particularly encouraged by the focus the Helsinki Process has put on mobilizing political will.
As Friends of the Helsinki Process, we have closely noted with interest the work of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy and actively participated in the Helsinki Conference of September 2005. We believe that solving the most challenging problems in our globalised world requires intensified cooperation between all major stakeholders: governments, civil society, and the business sector. These different stakeholders have such diverse resources and skills that by working together they can multiply each others individual efforts. We therefore fully support the multi-stakeholder concept for global problem-solving, proposed by the Helsinki Process. This concept is founded on the active participation of all stakeholders as well as an action-oriented approach to global problem-solving. We wish to emphasise the importance of such multi-stakeholder action in order to ensure the implementation not only of proposals from the Helsinki Process but also of the action plans of other recent conferences and commissions.
With policy proposals which have been developed using the multi-stakeholder concept, the Helsinki Process has already sought to demonstrate its value-added and concretely contribute towards global problem-solving. We believe that this multi-stakeholder approach highly increases the credibility, feasibility, and the practical implementation of the proposals. However, governments continue to be responsible for the decisions on different reforms and their implementation. Therefore we have come together as governments to see what practical steps can be taken, and we welcome all interested governments to join us in this effort. We have examined the proposals made by the Helsinki Group, and have chosen to take the lead in furthering selected initiatives to demonstrate our commitment to multi-stakeholder cooperation.
The world does not lack proposals for solving global problems, but it is clear that political will and resources are key to the implementation of these proposals. As an expression of our commitment to reaching the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals, as a start, we have selected to implement some proposals - on anti-corruption, effective global governance, gender equality, human trafficking, information and communication technology, poverty and development, and migration - and we invite all governments committed to multi-stakeholder cooperation to join us in furthering them.
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Ministry for Foreign Affairs Development Policy(Link to another website.)