From the conference there emerged the Fancourt Commonwealth Declaration on Globalisation and People-Centred Development. The declaration is intended as a blueprint for survival for the poorer countries of the Commonwealth in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific. Its publication comes on the eve of the World Trade Organisation conference due to convene in two weeks' time in Seattle. The terms of the text are forthright enough. Despite the progress of the past 50 years, half of the world's population lives on less than two dollars per day.
Many millions live in conditions of extreme deprivation.
Some kind of action is certainly needed, as the sort of economic evolution orchestrated by the International Monetary Fund continues to exact a heavy toll on the continent of Africa. Yet any transition is still likely to be tortuously long and hard. And any further economic decline risks undermining their already fragile democracies. Let us hope too that in the wake of the Fancourt Document, the AIDS epidemic may come to act more as a salve than a sore. Between 1994 and 1997, the number of orphans in certain African countries has doubled, tripled and in some cases even quadrupled.