At the 2005 World Economic Forum, global poverty and disease pushed trade and America off the front burner
Laurent Gillieron / AP
Actress Sharon Stone shook up a session about world poverty
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Meyer
Newsweek
Updated: 1:18 p.m. ET Jan. 29, 2005
Jan. 29 - One of the more dramatic moments of Davos 2005 featured a spikey-haired young woman, rising from a sea of business suits and leveling a finger at Masoumeh Ebtekar, the vice president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. ’ÄúCome clean,’Äù she shouted, her voice shaking with indignation. ’ÄúYou speak of democracy and human rights, yet women are being stoned!’Äù
advertisement
The Iranian leader, herself a woman and draped in a headscarf, was visibly shocked. ’ÄúWe have a moratorium on this issue,’Äù she replied, adding that women in Iran have made huge strides in recent years, from gaining admission to universities in greater numbers than men and entering professions from which they had long been excluded. None of this mollified her questioner, a fiery Canadian feminist and TV personality named Irshad Manji, whose recent book ’ÄúThe Trouble with Islam’Äù has stirred such controversy that she’Äôs been forced into hiding for fear of her life. ’ÄúYes,’Äù she concedes, more Iranian women are indeed attending university. ’ÄúBut they are still being stoned. Just ask Amnesty International.’Äù
There were other such moments. On Friday, another woman stood up among a crowd of CEOs and international political leaders busily debating solutions to global poverty and disease. ’ÄúPeople are dying while we are talking,’Äù said Sharon Stone. Thereupon the actress famous for such top box-office bonanzas as ’ÄúBasic Instinct’Äù announced she would donate $10,000 to combat malaria in Tanzania, whose president Benjamin Mkapa was speaking. Would anyone else join her ’Äúteam?’Äù About 30 more people rose and did just that. Within moments, they had pledged $1 million.
This is the famous World Economic Forum? For decades, Davos has been the place where the world’Äôs high and mighty congregated to debate trade policy, speculate about the dollar, hobnob with corporate executives and leading politicians. They still do, but this year something very different took place. French President Jacques Chirac caught the new mood succinctly. ’ÄúIt’Äôs time for ethics,’Äù he said in a dramatic speech calling for a new global ’Äúwar on poverty’Äù and pleading especially for leaders to turn their attention to the devastating problems of Africa.
With that, the floodgates opened. British Prime Minister Tony Blair strode into the limelight to declare his own personal crusade. Africa’Äôs struggle with everything from AIDS to education to poverty is so serious as to defy description, he told the Davosians who rarely think about such issues. ’ÄúIf what was happening in Africa happened in any other part of the world, there would be such a scandal and a clamor’Äù that governments would fall and the world’Äôs resources and energies would be mobilized. But Africa? ’ÄúThe continent has been going backward for 30 years,’Äù said Blair, while the countries who best can help are standing by. As for himself, he would make these issues top priority as Britain prepares to take the helm of the G8 and EU presidency later this year.
Scarcely before he could exit, stage left, another panel took the floor to strike the same theme: former U.S. president Bill Clinton, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the rock star Bono. By acting now, ’Äúwe can save two million of the six million Africans likely to die of HIV in the next year,’Äù said Clinton. An American economist once renowned for helping (some say messing up) the emerging democracies of eastern Europe, Jeffrey Sachs, then grabbed a microphone and challenged Gates, in particular, to buy every kid in Africa a ’Äúbed net’Äù to help conquer malaria, the continent’Äôs biggest killer. ’ÄúWhat a transformation,’Äù said one member of the audience. ’ÄúHe’Äôs gone from a champion of unfettered free markets to an apostle of African aid.’Äù
And so it was everywhere in Davos this year. ’ÄúThis is my fifth time here, and it has never been like this,’Äù says Jianmin Wu, head of the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. ’ÄúPeople are suddenly talking about Africa. They are talking about disease, poverty and education in developing countries’Äîand they are serious. This is very heartening. I think maybe it is the beginning of something important.’Äù Indeed, the optimism seemed to be contagious. Gone, for example, was the acrimony that defined previous meetings concerning the Middle East. Over late-night drinks, Clinton and former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres agreed that peace between Jews and Palestinians could be at hand. Everyone knows what the solution is, and what they must do, said Peres. Clinton rated the chances at a settlement in the coming year as ’Äúbetter than 50-50.’Äù
Curiously, America hardly figured on the Davos agenda. In contrast to previous years, not a single senior U.S. official came. Sessions with U.S. congressional leaders were attended mainly by ’Ķ Americans. When discussion did turn to Washington, it was often to laugh (or worry) over president George Bush’Äôs incendiary inaugural address. The Iraqi election, scheduled for the forum’Äôs final day, was the subject of a single session. Nor was there any sense that America was missed. After all, the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that the subjects everyone else is talking about’Äîpoverty, global warming, international human rights issues’Äîscarcely concern a country obsessed with the ’Äúwar on terror.’Äù
This is a distinct and profound change’Äîwith unsettling implications for America’Äôs role and leadership in the world. Three years ago, the world sprang to America’Äôs side after September 11. Two years ago, Davos was distinguished by an angry anti-Americanism as Washington prepared to invade Iraq. Last year was defined by resignation: America will do what it will do, and go its own way regardless of what others might think. Today? ’ÄúIt’Äôs as though the rest of the world doesn’Äôt consider us particularly relevant anymore,’Äù said a U.S. investor from Boston. David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, puts it simply. ’ÄúThey’Äôve moved on without us.’Äù If loneliness is the price of going it alone, America these days is isolated indeed.
/peacock_7788aa.gif){kind=small}
