Stop the 'Stockholm Syndrome'!: Lessons learned from 30 years of UN summits
Author(s)
Mooney, Pat
Abstract
As a culmination to 30 years of international summit, a series of global meetings in the first years of this century were supposed to restore development assistance, eradicate hunger and allow us all to grow sustainably. When 2003 rolled around, no one was cracking open the champagne. Predictably, the Monterrey Summit on Financing Development, the World Food Summit, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development met everyone’s expectations – and no one’s aspirations. When governments and UN agencies fail, we in civil society should scrap our boring rhetoric about ‘paradigm shifts’ and get on with ‘regime change’. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements that were embroiled in the summits must end the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – the pitiful pageant of pep rallies that have pacified civil society organizations (CSOs) since 1972 – and develop a tough love strategy for our intergovernmental work.
