Graphic: Globalization: The View from the Top Our story begins here, high in the Swiss Alps, in the exclusive resort town of Davos. The World Economic Forum is holding its annual meeting to discuss global issues. PANEL MODERATOR: Our topic: Market driven economies around the globe. Here, corporate logos of every stripe are on display alongside national flags. Summits once staged by and for heads of state are now also run for captains of industry, CEOs, and the influential corps of economists who advise them. PANEL MODERATOR: George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management Among the participants in Davos are George Soros, the billionaire investor, speculator and philanthropist. SOROS: The Davos meeting is an enormous sort of cocktail party--a lot of contacts, people meet. It is actually symptomatic of the age because you have presidents and prime ministers courting the financiers and the industrialists. PROTESTERS chanting in Davos This concentration of so many powerful people in one place provokes protests by activists from all over Europe. PROTESTERS: Four thousand villages have been de-populated and destroyed. Ten of thousands have been killed, thousands in prison. Unlike previous years, human rights advocates have been invited inside to participate in the growing global debate. ARIEL DORFMAN: It certainly is a worrisome phenomenon, when people, who have not been elected except by their capacity on the marketplace, become sort of a shadow government of the world. This worries me enormously because it is a profoundly anti-democratic practice. Chilean author and activist Ariel Dorfman was surprised at what he found. DORFMAN: Many of these corporate people are in fact very worried about this. Whether they are worried because it will explode in their faces or because as human beings they do, in fact, feel compassionate and worry about this is something that needs to be debated. Most business leaders here contendthat globalization aids the cause of human rights. James Robinson is a former head of American Express. JAMES ROBINSON: I think it's helping human rights because what it's doing is it's giving jobs to people at salary levels that they never would have had access to before. So in time I think this becomes more self-corrective. United States Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich agrees. GINGRICH: There's clearly a rising general standard of living for everybody. That is, people overall are generally better off than they have ever been. But in the short run, in a period of great transition, those who are the most successful, pull away, and get even wealthier faster. But the historical pattern is that everybody else begins to catch up over time. But labor leaders like AFL-CIO president John Sweeney argue that workers are actually losing ground. SWEENEY: Workers are suffering and they're losing their jobs, or they’re being exploited, and it's about time that these leaders of Congress and industry hear the story of what working conditions are like. Sweeney warned business leaders that those who ignore workers rights do so at their peril: SWEENEY: If this global economy cannot be made to work for working people, it will reap a reaction that may make the 20th century seem tranquil by comparison. Sweeney huddled with other labor leaders like Britain’s Phillip Jennings who runs an international labor federation. PHILLIP JENNINGS: They are talking here in the World Economic Forum that they need some new rules for the game. What we've been saying is that those rules are there. They are in place, and they should be applied. There are international labor standards. There is a universal declaration of human rights that needs to be applied in this global economy because they're simply not. Labor officials cite the United Nation's 50 year old Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a point of departure. Itfirmly anchors labor rights and economic demands in a human rights context. That declaration established a principle that all people are entitled to the same human rights protections worldwide. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT at foundation of UNDHR: This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere. PIERRE SANE: Human Rights predate economic globalization. Pierre Sane is the head Amnesty International PIERRE SANE: These rights have to be universally applied if we want to live in a world of peace and justice. They cannot just be applied in certain parts of the world. And therefore, unless globalization proceeds with a determination to implement human rights standards everywhere in the world we are going to face catastrophes. The scope of human rights was expanded at such landmark U.N. conferences as this one in Vienna, Austria in l993. The conference embraced social and economic rights alongside more traditional civil and political rights like freedom of speech and assembly. Activists called for corporations and businessmen to make human rights a priority. Most business leaders say that’s not their role. ROBERT HORMATS: I think there's been a lot of progress on human rights but I don't think linking trade and human rights is a very productive process. Robert Hormats is Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs. HORMATS: There are human rights interests but they ought to be part of a separate discussion with other governments...The great beauty of globalization is that it is not controlled by any individual, any government, any institution. It provides people with the ability to communicate across borders, trade across borders, raise capital across borders. George Soros is not as certain as many of his colleagues that economic growth by itself will necessarily guarantee that human needs will be met. Soros fears the instability of what he has termed the 'capitalist threat'. GEORGE SOROS: The capitalist threat is that the system is unstable, liable to breakdown. That's one threat. And second, the system is very powerful. It's extremely successful. And due to its success it penetrates into areas of life -- of society where it doesn't really belong. There are other needs in society which cannot be fulfilled by the market and those needs are neglected. So there is some market failure but much greater social failure–in fact a failure of the political process. C. HUNTER-GAULT: So, in Soros’ view, political leadership is needed. But many politicians argue that they have less and less influence over global economic forces as the power of corporations grows in a market driven world. Nowhere is that more evident than in South Africa, the first stop on our global journey. There one of the country’s biggest and best-known industries has been devastated by the maneuvers of a small group of financial speculators. PROTESTING MINERS
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