Policy Dialogue: Towards a Shared Vision of Development
Next steps for the Region and the Role of International Agencies

Distinguished participants,

General comments

The Government of Norway is indeed very happy to be a partner with the IDB in shaping and acting on the social policy agenda. We are encouraged and stimulated by your engagement, and are ready to continue to support, watch and learn as we go. On this issue, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, you and PAHO are the international agencies we act through. So, if my topic is to say something about the role of International Agencies, you must forgive me, but I need to speak about you.

The Bank has taken a number of significant initiatives in the area of social policy. And the way you do it demonstrates the rare ability to create broad strategic alliances and link arenas and issues, rather than work in self-centered isolation. That is promising for the kind of partnerships we now require to meet the international development goals.

The courage of the Bank leadership to face up to sensitive issues and invite to open policy dialogue in ways that unpack complex issues, is also impressive. Both the Bank’s engagement in the broad issue of Ethics and Development and this dialogue on Social Exclusion demonstrates an institution where people and moral values matter, not just the money and the balance sheets. The people out in the streets, protesting against liberalization that is not sensitivity to people’s needs and against the old version of "blue-print structural adjustment" should be invited to a dialogue too, on these terms.

Their concern is marginalization and exclusion of a major part of the global community from the privileged opportunities and mutually re-enforcing relationships of the powerful and the influential - the "movers and shakers" of his world. That is hard enough to cope with and respond to for you as a Bank and for us as a stakeholder in international development. You have opted to go further and deal with the fact that there is a difference between poor and disadvantaged countries and poor and disadvantaged people. And that also among the poor and disadvantaged there are mechanisms of perpetual exclusion.

Ethnicity and Race, Gender and Disability are the kind of attributes that put people at risk of exclusion. In some cases almost inevitably. Dealing with these factors is not just a case of offering mainstream good development options. It is a case of actively and deliberately dealing with the vicious cycle of disadvantage, often passed on from one generation to the next. This is a fact in all countries and cultures I am aware of. The mechanisms and forces that exclude individuals and groups from opportunity and relationships appear to exist everywhere. But the way that these forces become manifest, and the basis on which they operate, vary from location to location and from country to country.

Therefore, the prime challenge is to understand the forces and mechanisms of exclusion in each society – preferably through the eyes of the excluded (if at all possible). This is the responsibility of governments, the responsibility of communities and institutions and the responsibility of neighborhoods and families.

Social exclusion with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean

Exclusion due to Ethnicity and Race has a long and painful history, not least in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yes, we need to move forward and look at next steps. But when we talk about social exclusion due to race and ethnicity, there is no way to go without facing the past, as openly and honestly as possible. In Latin America as elsewhere, the past didn’t go anywhere – it remains with us, whether we like it or not. Obviously, the past must also influence upon the doings of this development bank – inform its policy choices.

I know the challenge of dealing with the past is one of the big themes of debate in the preparations for the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (UNWCAR), to be held in South Africa in August.

I had the opportunity to participate with the World Conference on Mission and Evangelism in facing the history of slave trade at the harbor of Salvador in Brazil in 1996. Central in the event was the process of claiming ownership to the truth about the trade, on both sides of the ocean. Only through agreeing on the truth, through repentance and repair, can true reconciliation come about. We all have a history to come to terms with, whether oppressor or oppressed. (I will share with you some of our Norwegian history in a few moments).

At the same time, your region - and maybe more than any other place, the Caribbean - has a tremendous resource of multicultural and multireligious experience as building blocks for national identity. We need also to study some of the good examples of multiracial social inclusion as we move forward.

Poverty, deprivation and vulnerability have been central concerns in Latin American studies for several decades. According to much of this research, poverty and deprivation are structural socio-economic phenomena. - In short, social exclusion goes much deeper than "lack of integration" into society. I’d be the last to oppose such a viewpoint. This nevertheless does not negate the need to understand and act on social exclusion as such, but rather calls for examining how factors such as gender, disability, race or ethnic background may cause added vulnerability in the cycle of poverty and deprivation.

Social Exclusion in Norway

A few words on my own country, Norway. - People sometimes come up to me and ask me, "I assume there are no socio-economic problems to speak of in Norway, your country being one of the richest in the world?" – Good question. – But flawed premise. – Social exclusion is not correlated with a country’s GNP per capita in a fixed manner. For instance, there are a lot of lonely people in Norway, especially among the elderly. Racism is an increasing problem. Highly qualified immigrants and refugees with university degrees and extensive job experience try for years to get a job in Norway. Experienced entrepreneurs with viable business ideas have problems getting loans from Norwegian banks to establish their own business. They are excluded from the labor market because of the color of their skin. Injustice done to our own indigenous people, the Sami people, is not exclusively a thing of the past, either. And finally, despite the strong sense of solidarity underpinning the Norwegian welfare society, we increasingly see the contours of a new class of relatively underprivileged individuals and families, some of which must be considered poor.

How can we improve this situation, in Norway as elsewhere? - I believe in change agents, or social entrepreneurs, at the local level. - Innovators who pioneer new solutions to social problems, changing the patterns of the society. A Norwegian social entrepreneur wanted to give immigrants and refugees better opportunities to start their own businesses. She established the project "Network Credit for Refugees and Immigrants in Norway" within the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid. As a matter of fact, she got the idea after having visited microfinance institutions in other parts of the world. Hence, Norway learnt how to promote social inclusion from a developing country.

The way forward

While the UNWCAR is important in and of itself, it is also serving as a catalyst to create innovative approaches to confront the challenges of racism and discrimination in the context of socio-economic development. Day-to-day racism must be exposed. Barriers to inclusion must be tracked down. Compensatory measures must be taken, perhaps in the form of "affirmative action". Questions on race and ethnicity could, to a larger extent, be included in censuses, in order to improve the understanding of the socio-economic status of traditionally excluded racial and ethnic groups.

No one organization can undertake the task of promoting social inclusion. The IDB must continue to actively seek partnerships in promoting social inclusion in LAC with the objective of raising awareness and stimulating policymakers to invest in indigenous, Afro-Descendants and other traditionally excluded groups. The Bank must also use its unique position in the region to promote the issue of social inclusion in the dialogue with the borrowing countries. External actors could never do half as good a job of promoting inclusion in the LAC.

Final remarks

Norway strongly supports the various initiatives in the IDB’s Action Plan for Combating Social Exclusion due to Race or Ethnic Background, for instance efforts to contribute to broadening the regional dialogue on combating social exclusion by gathering data and doing research on these central poverty reduction issues. We look forward to hearing more about how the IDB plans to use the results of these initiatives to better incorporate dimensions of gender, race and ethnicity into regular program and policy design. This being said, awareness raising and changes within the Bank might be a precondition for successful promotion of social inclusion. Indigenous people and Afro-Descendants are clearly under-represented among the IDB staff .

I’d say that would be a pretty good place to start

– and we’d support you all the way.