Yet, the marginalized, dispossessed millions in whose name the whole extravaganza is being staged will never know what happened at Copenhagen. For most part, they do not even know where Copenhagen is-and, frankly, given the misery and squalor that they call life, they couldn't care less. What is infinitely more important is that whatever happens at Copenhagen is not likely to make the smallest difference in their lives.
If the experience of Rio and Cairo-and of Stockholm, Bucharest, Mexico City, and Alma Ata before them-is anything to go by, the World Social Summit for Development (WSSD) in Copenhagen will certainly be yet another gala event. Unfortunately it is likely to be exactly that, and no more. Maybe, just maybe, these conferences have taken a life of their own-the event has become larger than the goal. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to stop `conferencing' and start `implementing'. While government types do the `conference round' for a living, NGOs are getting hooked on playing `diplomat.' Indeed, getting interviewed by CNN at Copenhagen is far more glamorous than getting you hands dirty in Jhang. But maybe, just maybe, it is time we accepted the fact that true change comes about much more from the latter than the former.
This is not to suggest that those who arrange, lobby, and attend such conferences don't mean well. They certainly do. They come back feeling good, feeling proud, feeling as if they have made a difference, believing (in their nievity. or is it denial. or maybe arrogance) that mere conference statements by them and their fellow luminaries will not only be remembered but will help trigger true change. They return all gleeful from the exotic cities in which such conferences are held, brimming with nice sounding declarations, documents, resolutions. They lose no opportunity to remind you what a great success they (and their conference) have been. Sometimes one gets the feeling that by repeating this sentiment over and over to themselves and the world (as the Rio and Cairo crowd has been doing) they believe that they will create the reality!
However, to that little boy who still has to work at age five, to that little girl who still has to walk ten miles a day to gather fuelwood, to that poor peasant who is still being pushed to marginalized desertifying soils, to that young woman who is still being forced into marriage while in her teens. to all of them and many more all the rhetoric, all the resolutions, all the declarations, and all the promises of all the conferences put together has not made a single iota of a difference, and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Copenhagen will be any different.
So, as you pack your bags for Copenhagen, dear readers, remember that it is these individuals that you must answer to, and be held answerable to. The success of your endeavor does not lie in the treaties that you do or do not sign; it is not in the declarations you do or do not produce; it is not in the pledges you do or do not make. The principal-in fact, the ONLY-criteria of achievement is how what you say, do, or agree to at Copenhagen changes the lives of the millions of individuals who continue to exist in conditions that are still as brutish, short, miserable, and pathetic as ever. If Copenhagen does not materially and physically change that condition then it will be yet another wasted trip in a long line of wasted trips and we would once again have let down (lest I say `betrayed') our real constituency.
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