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4. Describe how the UN paradigm became the principal roadmaps informing the debate on international poverty.

The UN has been more reluctant than the Bretton Woods institutions to abandon the North-South roadmap. After all, the promotion of this world-view was one of the principal raisons d'etre of the organisation for more than 20 years. Since the end of the Cold War, however, references to the North-South divide have been increasingly rare in the UN's discourse. To fill the void, a new field of reflection and activity has emerged around the notion of 'global poverty'. This development has recently attracted much attention from the media and the public through the holding of the Copenhagen Summit. Attended by 121 heads of state and government, this UN conference examined three interrelated themes: the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of employment and the enhancement of social integration.74 By virtue of its agenda, the Copenhagen meeting has been emblematic of how, over the past few years, the entire UN system has been involved in the elaboration of a new vision of poverty and international inequality.The idea of a UN paradigm on poverty is, of course, an analytical construc- tion. The UN system is too fragmented and too complex to speak with one voice. Through their complementary contributions, however, institutions with mandates as diverse as the ECOSOC, UNDP, ILO and UNICEF have produced an innovative and strongly integrated interpretation of international poverty. One consistent feature of that interpretation is that, in comparison with the Bretton Woods paradigm, the UN paradigm on poverty is more pessimistic. First and foremost, the UN paradigm is founded on a contradiction that appears both politically and morally unacceptable in the present world order. As stated in the Copenhagen Declar- ation: 'We are witnessing in countries throughout the world the expansion of prosperity for some, unfortunately accompanied by an expansion of unspeakable poverty for other'. 75 While recognising the immense social and economic progress that has been accomplished everywhere in the world over the past half-century, the UN emphasises the unequal distribution of the fruits of development. In his speech at the Copenhagen Summit, former Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali summarised the UN paradigm in the most concise manner possible by affirming that 'the gap between rich and poor is getting wide. Of all the UN agencies, it is probably the UNDP which devotes the most constant effort to the study of poverty. In its work on domestic poverty, the UNDP has documented how patterns of income distribution vary significantly across nations. In countries as different as Bangladesh, Brazil and the UK the dispari- ties are growing worse, whereas in Colombia, India, and Canada they are being attenuated. While taking into account the diversity of national situations, however, the UNDP highlights the increasing polarisation of incomes at the international level. The organisation reports that between 1960 and 1993 the gap in annual per capita income between the developed and the developing countries rose from $5,700 to $15,400.77 Moreover, according to UNDP evaluations, between 1960 and 1994 the share of world income of the richest 20% rose from 70% to 86%, while the share of the poorest 20% declined from 2.3% to 1.1%. The ratio between the two groups thus increased from 30:1 (1960) to 78:1 (1994)78 An even more striking illustration of the magnitude of global inequality is the UNDP's estimation that the 447 wealthiest individuals have a net worth equivalent to the income of the poorest 50% of the world's population, that is, over 2.5 billion people From a geopolitical perspective, the analysis of world poverty proposed by the UN includes elements of both continuity and change in relation to the traditional North-South approach. In terms consistent with that approach, the UN paradigm suggests that developing countries face particular difficulties in adjusting to globalisation because their economies tend to be more vulnerable to external shocks originating in the commodity and financial markets. Poverty, according to this reasoning, continues to be posited at times as a Third World idiosyncrasy. In general, however, the UN tends less and less to treat developing countries as a homogeneous group confronted by the same economic constraints. Although Asia continues to shelter the largest number of poor people, that region's economic 'take-off' is increasingly emphasised. In particular, the UN emphasises that income growth rates attained in East Asia constitute 'a record exceeding anything experienced', and that, until the mid-1990s, Asia was the only continent of the South where the percentage of poor was decreasing. Hence, the UN paradigm breaks with the old North-South interpretation by recognising more clearly the growing differentiation within the Third World. Yet it is even more innovative in presenting poverty as a plague that has crossed over into the developed nations. In the mid-1990s, the UNDP observes, there were 37 million unemployed and 100 million people living under the poverty line in the OECD countries.81 In other words, the broadening of the gap between rich and poor and the extension of poverty are now problems '[which] are global in character and affect all countries'. 82 Of course, the UN admits that there are enormous differences between the situations of the developed and developing countries. Poverty is much more severe in the South than in the North.83 Furthermore, the deterioration of living conditions in the developed countries stems from specific causes, notably from a 'bifuraction in the occupational structure which is segmenting the job market between highly skilled and well-paid jobs and low-skilled, low paid and precarious work' . While setting out these differences, however, the UN maintains that, in the North as in the South, poverty is aggravated by the same process of globalisation, that it mainly affects women and children, and that it leads to social disintegration. Clearly, the parallel now established between the poor of the Third World and those of the developed countries brings 'new dimensions to the global poverty picture' and places further doubt on the pertinence of the former North-South roadmap