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BILL CLINTON
Certain initiatives deserve to be
“Systematized”
To ensure globalization with widespread
peace and prosperity, world leaders must work to create
mechanisms that can be applied on a large scale to address
inequality and other challenges.Hundreds of business,
political, religious, academic and civil society leaders
were
gathered
in the Swiss mountain resort for a five day meeting, the
theme, “Partnering for Security
and Prosperity.” They listened as Former US President, and
Founder of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, William
J. Clinton, said that many of globalization’s opponents
“have got their criticisms right”. He added: “There is a
broad conflict between the ‘have’ and the ‘have-nots’.
Clinton,
speaking at the opening of the
annual
meeting
of the World Economic Forum,
2004. he said,”To
ensure globalization with widespread peace and prosperity,
world leaders must work to create mechanisms that can be
applied on a large scale to address inequality and other
challenges. There are lots of wonderful people
dealing with the rough edges of globalization,” he
continued, “but we do not have the systems the world need to
respond in a comprehensive way”. Clinton cited the battle
against HIV/AIDS as an example of how “systematization”
might work.
He described how he and former South African
President Nelson Mandela launched a 'road show'
asking for aid to fight the dreadful disease. He said,
the head of the Caribbean
branch of the program said, they would not have the
infrastructure to spend the money, nor would they have
enough money to buy medicine anyway.” Clinton said, he
changed his focus to helping build local clinics and
bringing down the price of HIV/AIDS medicine. “Capacity
building at the local level is key to the process”, he
commented. Certain initiatives deserve to be “systematized”,
Clinton said, they include the Grameen Bank, a community
loan program in India, and a campaign led by Hernando de
Soto, President of the Instituto Libertad y Democracia in
Peru, to guarantee property rights to the poor. “Soto is, to
my knowledge, probably the most important living economist
today,” said Clinton, “though many might think that the term
‘living economist’ is an oxymoron.
Clinton also advocated greater global
support for politicians who are willing to take greater
risks to promote democracy, such as Ernesto Zedillo, former
Mexican president, who ended one-party rule in his country,
and Mikheil Saakashvili, President-elect of Georgia.
“Are you just going to pat [Saakashvili]
on the back?” Clinton asked participants. “Or can we give
him help in some systematic way so that all those other
countries of the former Soviet Union want to get in
line?”
Half the people here today deserve medals for their
work,” said Clinton. “But we ‘have’ need to systematize our
responses. When you hear about a good thing during these
next few days, think about how we can systematize this to
scale.”
Source:
World Economic Forum
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