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Dialogue on International Co-operation: Who Listens?
Angela Escallón Emiliani 1
A voice of a social development leader from Colombia
A dialogue requires, in the first place, that someone speaks and expresses
his/her voice, and that someone wants to listen and actually is able to do so.
In this case, I am speaking and my voice is my own experience as a citizen
and as a professional who comes from a developing country. But who listens
and reacts?
Who cares when international agreements and harsh realities, known and
accepted by all, do not lead to any changes whatsoever?
Who cares when studies on the consequences of globalisation show that
the poorest are the ones most affected by it?
Who cares when the Nobel Prize awardee Amyrta Sen puts emphasis on
the importance of believing in people’s capacities, while at the same time
a paternalistic and neo-colonial view is maintained by the north?
Who cares when social movements request dialogue, but people of authority
discuss various options when extreme violence appears?
Who cares when countries’ external debts extinguish their development
possibilities?
Who cares when the World Bank reports that, in the past ten years, there
has been a 20 per cent reduction in resources for co-operation projects?
Poverty is not just an economic problem defined as earning below one dollar
per day or the absence of basic services. Rather, poverty should be understood
as the absence of opportunities, alternatives and resources; to have to
migrate from one country to the next, to live marginalized, to feel
marginalized and to be marginalized.
It appears that the third millennium will be characterized by very significant
qualitative changes that will be contradictory: the speed of new
developments will increase the gap between north and south, new technologies
and science will isolate and serve very few. It seems that problems
rather than benefits, are being globalised. This reality demands reflection.
Still, among the various development institutions, there are great differ-
1 Angela Escallón Emiliani (Colombia), consultant and psychologist with ample experience in the
socio-political area and international co-operation. She has worked with youth-crime and drug
prevention programmes as well as Advisor to the President’s Office on social affairs.
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