New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

248 The New Imperialists
The declaration then went on to insist that the primary responsibility
for development in the least-developed countries rested with these
countries themselves, although they required “concrete and substantial
international support from Governments and international organisations
in a spirit of shared responsibility through genuine partnerships,
including with the civil society and private sector.” 32 After endorsing
measures to combat the H.I.V./A.I.D.S. pandemic, and other communicable
diseases, and to address desertification, the preservation of
biological diversity, the supply of safe drinking water, and climate change,
it then itemized one by one the elements of the new imperialist
consensus and the means by which they were to be achieved: increased
trade, to be pursued on the basis of a “transparent, non-discriminatory
and rules-based multilateral trading system” and the accession of the
least-developed countries to the W.T.O. through the fourth W.T.O.
Ministerial Meeting in Doha in November 2001, and through the recognition
of trade and growth issues in (World Bank) poverty reduction
strategies; increased domestic and foreign financing, to be pursued on the
basis of the creation of “an enabling environment for savings and
investment, which includes strong and reliable financial, legal and
administrative institutions, sound macro-economic policies and the
transparent and effective management of public resources” through the
Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002 in Monterrey,
Mexico; increased official development assistance; improved aid effectiveness;
and debt reform and relief, to be pursued through the H.I.P.C.
framework and the enhanced H.I.P.C. initiative. 33
The last of the ten points stressed the critical importance of “effective
follow-up to the Conference at the national, regional and global level,”
and placed responsibility for it in the hands of the Secretary-General. 34
What this meant was spelled out in the much more detailed Programme
of Action that accompanied the Declaration. It detailed, as was by now
to be expected, the entrepreneurial-, productivity-, and competitionoriented
character of the strategy to be pursued at national level, but also
devoted a section to “Arrangements for Implementation, Follow-up
and Monitoring and Review.” 35 As the title suggests, it proposed a comprehensive
framework for the close surveillance of the development
programmes of the least-developed countries, linking the U.N.’s own
Common Country Assessments (C.C.A.’s) and the United Nations Development
Assistance Framework (U.N.D.A.F.) to the World Bank’s Poverty