andersen-ottaway lecture

1999 Andersen Lecture
James D. Wolfensohn
President, The World Bank

Press Freedom: At The Core Of Equitable Development

Well, thank you very much, Jim Ottaway and Mr. Andersen, Mrs. Andersen, distinguished guests. Let me say, I feel very privileged to be asked to speak at this group, particularly in the year after Kofi Annan has spoken to you. I think you’ll find some resonance in what I’m saying with what Kofi said to you last year, but I hope I can give a slightly different twist to the  thoughts that he expressed to you at that time.

I should tell you first that the particular interest of The World Bank and the particular involvement of The World Bank relates to the world that is in development and transition. Just to set the framework, this is a world that’s part of our world of 6 billion people, which comprises 4.8 billion people. As the Chairman said a little earlier, 25 interestingly enough, the statistics on free press, although not identical, are roughly the same. You’ve got 1.2 billion people in the OECD countries, and you have 1.2 billion people who live with a free press. Freedom House came out with some statistics which said that 2.4 billion people live without a free press and 2.4 billion people live with a semi-free press, whatever that is, and what I am concerned about, and what we are concerned about at our institution, are really several things.

The first is that the 6 billion people that we have on the planet at the moment, will, in the next 25 years, grow to 8 billion people, and virtually all of that, 97 percent of it, will be in the developing world.

So the world that we live in is surely changing, and the second thing that you should know is that within that framework of that developing world, we will also have a demographic change because 2 and 1/2 billion of those people will move into cities. So we will have not only an increase in size and in waiting in the development community, we’ll also have concentrations of people, much more significantly, in cities and towns. 

The third development, of course, is the recognition of the fact that once we talked about this developing and transitional world with a sort of distance, it was something for overseas development assistance, it was something akin to a sort of charitable donation, except within the context of the Cold War in which the developing world was clearly someplace that had to be saved from the Communists, and therefore put a line down the middle politically, which allowed politicians and donors of funds to justify their support on the basis of political lines.

With the collapse of the Cold War, and the move more to a market system generally, the first reaction was to think, well, this developing and transitional world is now clearly something outside our wealthy OECD countries until it started to become apparent, as it has today, that the issues of this 4.8 billion people, soon to be 6.8 billion people, are really the issues that we face in the OECD countries. We’re linked clearly by financial systems, as was made apparent when you had the problems in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, previously in Mexico, Brazil. Some 40-odd financial crises bring home to us that instability in one part of the world is our instability as well.  Those parts of the world, which now account for about 18 percent of the world’s GDP, will, in another 25 years, become close to 30 percent of the world’s GDP.

So in terms of trade, and in terms of economics, and in terms of growth, it will be found in those countries, and that has a direct impact on us. 

A further thing that is clear is that the air that they breathe, the environment they live in, the admissions that they make or we make, all are a part of our same planetary bargain. We’re linked by health. We are linked by crime. We are linked by drugs. We are linked by immigration. We are linked by peace. We are linked by uncertainties and war. So that the first thing that you need to think of when you think of our world at The World Bank, is not that this is something for a multi-lateral agency to think of apart from our own thinking, it is integral, and it’s integral today.  But as in a 25-year perspective, you have to say, it’s even more integral, both in terms of size, importance, weight, and finally in terms of communications.

The drama in terms of linking up our planet, in terms of communications, is really something that we witness every day, and which is the largest single instrument to unify our world, both in terms of knowledge of what’s going on, in terms of the creation of expectations, in terms of enfranchisement of the people who live in those countries. It’s very difficult today not to know what is going on, even in those countries, and so the shape of the world has changed, and the responsibility for newspapers and communicators of information has changed dramatically. 

I just want to touch on one point in relation to the developed world, and that is the crucial importance of groups like this of understanding that the agenda of development, while emerging on a long term basis and not easily seen compared with immediate domestic political issues, is an issue of the moment. It is our issue, and leadership needs to come from the press and from communicators today, lest our children in 25 years be left with lack of knowledge of that world and with, unfortunately, not having done enough to ensure peace and stability in that world.

This issue of press freedom and leadership in our world, in terms of the assessment of that issue, is a crucial issue for our times in terms of freedom and democracy around the world, and sadly, it gets too little attention, either in the press or on Capitol Hill. This is clearly and irrefutably an issue that requires greater exposure and greater understanding.

But let me move to the developing world, and there let me talk about the role of The Bank, and the take that we have on the issues for that 4.8 billion people, soon to be 6.8 billion people.

When I first came to The Bank, I was told, you can’t talk about corruption. Corruption is the “C” word, I was told. You don’t talk about the “C” word because the structure of the institution is such that the charter states you should not get involved in politics. You surely didn’t talk about press freedom, because press freedom was very close to politics. What could be more intrusive on politicians than a free press? What is it that could enfranchise people more than a free press? And so our relations with the press at The Bank was characterized simply by press releases and, I think, a measure of transparency in relation to your questions. What became very clear to me after a year or two under this regime was that the issue of corruption and the issue of press freedom, while they may have political impacts, are, in fact, essential issues in terms of economic development. Corruption is the largest single inhibitor of equitable economic development, and so three years ago, I simply said that I’m redefining corruption, not as a political issue, but as an economic and social issue, and with that redefinition, the walls did not fall down, the roof did not fall in.

In fact, six months later we had a meeting  of the so-called development committee, and every minister was making a speech about corruption, even ministers from some countries that you might call corrupt, because they all wanted to espouse the belief, and their assertion, that corruption was in fact at the core of development. Of course, they knew this, because the strongest issue in political campaigns in the world of which I speak is, in fact, the issue of inequity. Poor people, to a degree, don’t mind being poor, but they get very angry when someone else is rich at their expense, when inequity raises itself, and so we launched on to the issue of corruption.

We soon discovered that to attack the issue of corruption, you could not do it from Washington or London or Paris, simply stating that corruption is something that must be overcome if you’re to have effective development. No statement by the President of The World Bank or GA leader was adequate. The response came. But you have corruption in your countries.  And we discovered, of course, that in quite a number of countries, payments for bribes was deductible for tax purposes, and given that that was true, and is still true today, though it is now criminalized by recent OECD findings which are being imposed over three years. It was sort of hard to take a pompous and high-minded attitude when your companies were out there paying bribes and the government was paying half.

So let me not suggest that corruption is the unique characteristic of developing countries. It is, I regret to say, known elsewhere as well. But what we certainly knew was, as we unleashed this debate on corruption, that the only way really to deal with it is from within a country. You cannot impose cultural or political change from without. First of all, that’s resisted. What you can do is to create a climate in the country for a movement on both corruption and on economic issues. That has to be done from within, and that’s where freedom of the press becomes crucial, because if you are to get ideas moving in a society, there is an absolute need to put the magnifying glass on activities within that society and set the framework in which the people have voice and can listen. 

We have just done a study of 60,000 individual poor people in over 60 countries. In the last eight months, we have, in fact, completed 20,000 in 26 countries, and we have published a publication that many of you may want to get at some point, which is called Consultations with the Poor. We have 1.2 billion people of the 6 billion in the world who live on under one dollar a day. We have 3 billion people that live under two dollars a day. We have 1 and 1/2 billion people that have no access to clean water, and 2 billion don’t have access to sanitation, and 2 billion without access to power. This gives you an idea of this globe in which we operate.

The poor people, the 1.2 billion which is growing, said a number of interesting things about poverty. I’ve visited now in over 100 countries slums and villages and have met with these poor people, who, by the way, are not objects of charity, they are part of the solution. They’re the best people you meet, by the way, on trips, because they have exactly the same motivations that everybody in this room. They want peace, they want family, they want a future for their kids, they want opportunity, and they know how to do things when they have any resources with which to achieve their objectives. 

But these poor people came out with some fascinating findings in this study, and the first one that differentiates poor people from rich people is lack of voice, the inability to be represented, the inability to convey to the people in authority what it is that they think, the inability to have a search light put on the conditions of inequity. These people we interviewed do not have PhDs, but they have the knowledge of poverty, and the first thing they talk about is not money, it’s lack of voice, it’s lack of the ability to express themselves. Second thing is they don’t trust governments, they don’t even trust all NGOs.

They want to express themselves and be able to express themselves. They want to be able to elect their own local people and gain access and representation. A free press is absolutely vital to that objective. If you remove the right to voice and to exposure of issues, you remove the right for equitable development. It is just that simple, and of course, it’s for that reason that governments who are oppressive in their regime and who want to retain the status quo try and remove the right to freedom of the press. That is really the other side of the argument about development.

Freedom of the press is not a gloss, it’s not an extra. It is absolutely at the core of equitable development, because if you cannot enfranchise poor people, if they don’t have the right to expression, if there is no search light on corruption and inequitable practice, you cannot build the public consensus to bring about change. 

It’s for that reason that I have launched into a belief that this issue which is before us and has been before you for years is at the very center of my job. Without the search light of transparency, any speeches and statements by international leaders or by The Bank are simply not effective. You have to create the environment inside a country for voice.

We have a lot of very interesting examples. In Brazil, in two states, they were giving luncheons to kids in school. In one state it was costing six dollars per kid. In another it was 75 cents. We put it in the newspapers. Within two weeks, each was charging 75 cents. In Uganda where we had teaching, and I see the Ambassador here, so she knows, in Uganda where there was the issue of payments to teachers who were not turning up, we took the opportunity of publishing in the newspaper the money that was going to different districts for education. When it was determined by the people that the teachers weren’t turning up, pretty soon they started to turn up, and you had efficient use of resources. I can give you, literally, hundreds of examples of the use of the press. 

Now as a consequence of that, in the last five years, we at The Bank have started to run seminars globally for people in the press. I saw in my notes that we had reached 3,000 people, 3,000 journalists in over 60 countries, and before lunch I called my colleagues at The World Development Institute, and I said, I don’t want to use hyperbole in front of this group. Is it 300, 00, 3,000, what is it? He came back five minutes before I left and said, no, it is 3,000. We are running courses on investigative journalism around the world. We are running courses on economic journalism, which we’re doing around the world in a variety of languages, and we are now running courses on fighting corruption.

We have just run a seven country series in Africa which we have run by video conferencing. We have satellite connections with our offices. Seven teams of people came to us in Washington, and then for 10 successive Saturday mornings, or Thursday mornings, we ran seminars for these people by video conference so that they could meet with each other, and talk to each other visually, and so that we could be at the center of that debate. Most recently, I was in Durban where we all came together again on a conference on corruption, where we had a mix of government officials, people from the press, civil society all coming together because the movement needs to be expanded. 

So we are walking the talk. We are part of this movement to recognize that free press is at the very center of effective development.

The poor people that I spoke of in this 60,000 person study are not objects of charity, but they do want to bring out their needs. They want to raise the issue of the increasing violence against women. They want to raise the issue of access to micro-finance and other resources. They want to raise the issue of equity of education. They want to raise the issue, interestingly, that for them the single biggest issue, beyond voice, is corruption, corruption in their daily lives, not in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, but in their ability to get access to services, or to get their kids to school, or to get a pass to work. Corruption hits poor people harder than it hits people in the middle class or in the powerful classes.

So this unity between this movement for equity, social justice, and corruption needs a free press for it to work, and it is for that reason that I am very happy to have been invited to speak to you, and it is for that reason that I look forward to working with many of you in this global fight in the years ahead. Thank you very much.