PM Vanhanen promises increase to Finland's development aid

Finland and Tanzania's Helsinki Process set to continue in revised form

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Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen gave an assurance on Friday that Finland is committed to raising its development aid to 0.7 percent of GDP by the year 2010.
      Vanhanen was speaking to a particularly absorbed audience at the closing ceremony of the Helsinki Conference, held in Finlandia Hall. The Conference tackled, among other things, the issue of helping underdeveloped countries.
      Vanhanen's only reservation was that simultaneously Finland has to "take its own economic situation into consideration".
      Next year Finland's development aid should stand at 0.42 percent of GDP.
     
The Helsinki Conference was the climax of the so-called Helsinki Process, a joint project launched by Finland and Tanzania in 2002. The purpose of the Process is to think of solutions to development aid questions and issues related to controlling the negative effects of globalisation.
      One of the key tasks has been to bring together different players on the globalisation field from civic organisations and governments to multinational businesses.
      PM Vanhanen pointed out that globalisation favours large-scale players and cooperation. As the number of national states has grown at the cost of the size of the countries, there is a great need for discussion arenas such as the Helsinki Process.
     
Minister for Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja confirmed on Friday that the Helsinki Process is not done yet. The message throughout the conference has been that cooperation between Finland and Tanzania should continue.
      The Helsinki Process is now searching for new partners as it "reinvents itself". The final form of future partnerships is still open.
     
In the future, more intensive cooperation is sought, for example, with a group of countries known as "friends". This group includes countries such as Great Britain and India, who have expressed their support for the Helsinki Process.
      The next conference, where the successes and continuation of the Process will be extensively evaluated, will take place in two years' time in Tanzania.
     
"Anti-globalisationist" was still a widely used expression a few years ago. Today, however, there is a different tone in the voices of those criticising this mega-phenomenon. They now talk of "controlling" it.
      While the big names were holding their meeting in the Finlandia Hall, the civic organisations dealing with development trade organised their own closing party at the Helsinki Makasiinit warehouses.
      "Rather than merely objecting to globalisation, we should also consider its positive aspects", said Piia Parviainen of the Finnish Peace Committee. "We have to accept the realities and think of constructive ways forward."
      The general notion at the Makasiinit was that globalisation should be opposed whenever it threatens to extinguish small local cultures.
      Localisation before globalisation was the message.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki Conference calls for action on managing globalisation (9.9.2005)

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