by Michel Tchanou, Cotonou, Benin, 11 August 1997
THEME = DEVELOPMENT
In international circles, Benin is known as the country which invented and successfully tested the method of a Sovereign National Conference, so as to facilitate the smooth transition from a rigid dictatorial regime, to multi-party politics and democracy. Since then, the formula has been tried in many other African countries, with varying degrees of success.
Once again, this small West African country has attracted the attention of the world community. In March 1996, Benin consolidated its democracy by a successful change of government. Mathieu Kérékou, the former Marxist dictator, now converted to democracy, was returned to power. Benin now turns its attention to the very root of its problems: poverty. Though it has no oil on which to base its economy, ideas it has a-plenty. Through the intervention of Albert Tevoedjre, formerly a highly placed official in the ILO and now Benin's Minister for Planning, Economic Reconstruction and Employment, a new idea has been launched which has now become the government of Benin's official policy - it's called The Minimum Common Social Standard.
As defined by Benin's government, The Minimum Common Social Standard MSC claims to be: "An integrating and mobilising idea, rooted on the principle of community development based on reality, daily living, and the circumstances of the different groups which want to take charge of their own advancement". Moreover, this idea conforms to the proposals of the Copenhagen World Summit, which recommended universal access to essential social services, necessary for lasting human development. It also meets the guidelines of the Oslo Agreement, which held that the promotion of universal access to essential social services, is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.
For the moment, the Benin government is limiting its field of application to four essential areas: Sufficient food; basic education; primary health care; the development of an ability to generate wealth. For three whole days, the participants at the Cotonou Symposium, in nine working groups, tried to draw up strategies and especially plans of action to put the MSC into effect. It must be admitted that this idea is not new, but even more serious, it does not meet with the unanimous approval of Benin's population.
Many of the participants were not wholly in agreement with the formulation of the idea. Some stressed that a "social minimum" cannot be "common", in as far as the "minimum" is in itself a relative concept, which varies from one social class to another. They concluded that a "necessary social minimum" would be more appropriate. However, apart from the formulation, it is rather the idea's content which raised most controversy. The Opposition, represented by the political group Nicéphore Soglo, Benin's former head of state, took the podium to condemn the attempt to impose what amounts to a "poverty situation" on Benin.
This point of view is shared by many civil servants and intellectuals. In an article published in the government daily La Nation on the eve of the Cotonou Symposium, the director of the African Centre for Positive Thinking, Jérôme Carlos, published an article castigating "this veritable plot against God", as he described it. "The social minimum", he says, "is an idea contrary to human nature. It involves renouncing a human privilege to grow, to increase, to complete in some way, the magnificent work of the Creator." He uses the words one of his Brazilian friends to support his position: "In Brazil, it is by means of a kind of minimum common social standard that they succeeded in putting black people "to sleep", i.e.tranquillising their consciousness, castrating them socially speaking, making them feel guilty, making them accept their lot and their subordinate position in Brazilian society". And because one should not sow in the minds of the young "the seeds of an ideology of mediocrity, pouring into their minds the poison of fatalism, defeatism and resignation", Carlos invites them to reject the dangerous ideology of minimum common social standards.
These reservations and rejections are nevertheless far from discouraging Benin's government. On the contrary, it flatters itself on the support which its newly-found idea has found among its principal development partners. In fact, for the resident representative of the World Bank in Benin, Michel Azefor, the Cotonou Symposium is "very useful, because it agrees with the preoccupations of those who provide funds".
The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, Mrs Nafis Sadik, goes even further: "Through this symposium, Benin has taken an important step forward in the process of making operational, the idea of basic social services for all. And this in a country where nearly 20,000 children die each year before reaching their first birthday, and where 1,500 mothers die each year in childbirth. This sad reality", she concludes: "should challenge everybody, particularly the public authorities".
We may leave the conclusion to Mr Albert-Alain Peters, director of operations for West, East and Central Africa of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees: He says: "I think that Benin's government is perfectly right in wishing to assure a minimum for the whole population, but that does not mean that one should limit oneself to the minimum. Those who can have the maximum can go ahead... It is a question of providing so that everybody has something, and that there are no islands of complete misery".
END