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Globalization and Its Impact on Human Rights by George Mathews Chunakara (ed.) Published by Christian Conference of Asia, Hong Kong. The Indian Edition was published in October, 2000 by Christava Sahitya Samithy, Tiruvalla - 689 101, Kerala, S. India, and is used by permission of the publisher. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
Introduction The advocates of ‘globalization’
described it as the panacea for all economic woes, and that the only path to
prosperity is to adhere to free-market principles. The nations in the South, in
particular, are being urged to deregulate and open up their economies to free
trade and foreign investment, to ensure their speedy transition to the status
of developed economies. But it is also held that globalization has brought in
its wake, great inequities, mass impoverishment and despair, that it has
fractured society along the existing fault lines of class, gender and
community, while almost irreversibly widening the gap between rich and poor
nations, that it has caused the flow of currencies across international
borders, which has been responsible for financial and economic crises in many
countries and regions, including the current Asian financial crisis, that it
has enriched a small minority of persons and corporations within nations and
within the international system, marginalizing and violating the basic human
rights of millions of workers, peasants and farmers and indigenous communities. Christian
Council of Asia focused on these concerns during an international consultation on
“Globalization and its Impact on Human Rights” held under the auspices of the
Cluster III programme units of the Council. The main
objectives of this Consultation were to analyze globalization and its impact on
human rights; to study ethical and theological considerations with regard to
globalization; to search for alternative development paradigms; to study the
policies of developed nations on development and trade policies in the context
of globalization; to gain inputs on the experiences of indigenous people, workers
and farmers who are affected by globalization; to consider the response of the
Churches to the challenges posed by globalization and to study and identify
concerns that the Asian churches can take up in order to address the adverse
impact of globalization in the Asian context. This book
comprises edited versions of selected presentations at the Consultation.
However, this book is not the synthesis of the rich diversity of the whole
discussions in the Consultation. Hope, the papers included in this book will
help clarify several issues related to globalization and its impact and to
initiate more discussion on how the rush towards globalization is presumably
affect our lives. Mathews George
Chunakara |