World Summit for Social Development, 1995

Abstract

As with the other major conferences held during the 1990s, the decision to hold the World Summit for Social Development (popularly known as the Social Summit) was triggered by growing concern among UN member states, and the UN secretariat, that widespread social problems had been seriously neglected and in some cases had become unmanageable (UN, 1995a). Among the reasons given for convening the summit was that while prosperity had expanded for some, it was accompanied by an expansion of ‘unspeakable poverty’ for others. This ‘glaring contradiction’ was unacceptable and needed to be corrected through urgent action. The process of globalization was seen as a double-edged sword. While offering the prospect of new opportunities for sustained economic growth and development of the world economy, the rapid process of change and adjustment had been accompanied by intensified poverty, unemployment and social disintegration. More than one billion people lived in ‘abject poverty, most of whom go hungry every day’. A large proportion of them had ‘very limited access to income, resources, education, health care or nutrition, particularly in Africa and the least developed countries’.