World View: Peadar Kirby: Ireland has this week been love-bombed by the international development community. It was clear from the choice of Dublin for the world launch of the prestigious United Nations Human Development Report last Tuesday and from the group of world-level development experts who spoke at Trinity College on Thursday that much is expected of us.
Ireland has bucked the trend of declining international aid by pledging to reach the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2007 and the UN wanted to hold this up as an example for other states to follow.
The well-known US development economist, Prof Jeffrey Sachs, now an adviser to the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, hoped Ireland would put pressure on his country to raise its very low levels of international development aid. He also called on Ireland to use its forthcoming presidency of the European Union to champion the cause of Africa.
Of course it was acknowledged that aid on its own will not be enough. It needs to be combined with debt forgiveness and with opening markets to imports from developing countries. Much attention was devoted at the Trinity conference, organised by the college's new Institute for International Integration Studies, to combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS, described as the world's worst health crisis in 600 years.
Yet, while much moral indignation was expressed at the appalling inequalities that characterise today's world and impassioned pleas were made to change this situation, the week's events largely avoided the issues of reforming government structures at both national and international level.
Mrs Mary Robinson in her address made it clear that "good governance" applies at home as well. The challenge of combating inequality also applies to developed countries, she emphasised, and she highlighted Ireland's bad record in this regard.
At the conference, the importance of strong directive governance in achieving development was implied in the regular references to the success of China and India in reducing poverty. Indeed, it is that very success which may allow the UN to meet its target of halving world poverty by 2015 since these two countries contain almost 40 per cent of the world's population.
But no one pointed out that this success owed much to the fact that neither of these two countries followed the strong advice given by the World Bank in the 1980s to reduce the size and scope of government. Inspired for much of the past half century by more socialist than free market ideals, their success carries uncomfortable lessons that were completely ignored this week.
Instead the focus was almost exclusively on 59 impoverished countries mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa which have grown poorer over the past decade. The impression was given that poverty in the rest of the developing (and developed) world was being successfully dealt with. Yet, as we know in Ireland, economic growth often causes greater inequality and dislocation of the poor and that decisive government action is required to deal with this.
Comparisons were, however, made between rich and poor. Prof Sachs estimates that the income of the 400 top earners in the US, $69 billion last year, is more than the GDP of the four African countries visited by President Bush this week where 166 million people live. Yet, the means of doing something about this, namely taxing the rich more, never became a subject of attention this week.
Mr Richard Klausner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation informed participants of how his well-endowed foundation is helping combat health inequality in the developing world. It was an example of how the goodwill of the super rich may generate resources for development; by implication it also seemed to endorse the shift from public to private power.
Despite this, the issue of corporate power and how to harness it for development was never addressed. Mrs Robinson's eloquent plea for accountability at national and international levels limited itself to public authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). She failed to mention the most powerful bodies of all in our world, the exercise of whose power so affects the poor - multinational corporations.
The issue of good governance seemed to be addressed mostly to the small guys, namely impoverished African countries. True, the mobilisation of civil society to hold authorities accountable did emerge as a theme. In his address on Thursday, Bono urged passionately that we highlight the "blind spots" of our age, and "tell its secrets".
Yet the week's events seemed to conspire against any dissenting voices finding expression. There was widespread dissatisfaction at the Trinity conference at the lack of time for debate. Mr Peter Sutherland's impassioned defence of the World Trade Organisation had the potential to generate some fruitful debate, and identify some of the real differences that exist on the issue, but it was cut off as it began.
I am in no way implying this was deliberate. But it underlined that a week devoted to emphasising the need for accountability and democratisation in addressing development challenges showed little of these in practice. The world's development establishment came to town with their message. We were preached at and praised to the skies. But there was little listening or learning. It was not a heartening experience.
Dr Peadar Kirby is senior lecturer in development and international relations in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. His latest book, Introduction to Latin America: Twenty-First Century Challenges, was published by Sage Publications last month