US embassy cable - 05PARIS8057

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 008057 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM USMISSION UNESCO PARIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: AR, UY, UNESCO 
SUBJECT:  USUNESCO -- DRAFT DECLARATION FOR 
INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE - POLICY 
NEXUS TO BE HELD IN ARGENTINA AND URUGUAY, FEBRUARY 20- 
24, 2006 
 
 
1.  This is an action request, see para.  4. 
 
2.  The following is the draft declaration for the 
International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus 
to be held in Argentina and Uruguay February 20-24, 
2006.  The meeting is being organized by Unesco's 
Social Science Sector as part of its Management of 
Social Transformations (MOST) program.  The conference 
website says, " For five days, more than a thousand 
participants (academics, decision-makers and civil 
society actors) are expected to attend the meetings in 
Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba and Montevideo, to 
discuss the way in which social science research can 
accompany the decision-making process and encourage the 
development of innovative social science projects." 
The website can be found at: 
http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php- 
URL_ID=8667&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.h tml 
 
3.  Begin text: 
 
Draft Buenos Aires Declaration calling for a new 
approach to the social science - policy nexus 
 
Taking note of the Declaration of the 1995 World Summit 
on Social Development, of the United Nations Millennium 
Declaration, and of flagship reports on human 
development and equality by United Nations agencies and 
by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of 
Globalization. 
 
Sharing the concern expressed by the Secretary-General 
of the United Nations in his foreword to the 2005 
Millennium Development Goals Report that "If current 
trends persist, there is a risk that many of the 
poorest countries will not be able to meet many of the 
Millennium Development Goals. Considering how far we 
have come, such a failure would mark a tragically 
missed opportunity. This report shows that we have the 
means at hand to ensure that nearly every country can 
make good on the promises of the Goals. Our challenge 
is to deploy those means.". 
 
Taking into consideration the Lisbon and Vienna 
Declarations on Social Sciences, both of which stress 
the indispensable contribution of social science to the 
social development objectives of the international 
community. 
 
The International Forum on the Social Science - Policy 
Nexus, at its closing plenary session in Buenos Aires 
on February 24 2006, hereby offers its own diagnosis of 
contemporary challenges as they relate to the relations 
between social science and policy, and sets out and 
endorses an action plan to revitalize those relations. 
 
The erosion of the universal thrust of human rights, 
human dignity and justice under the pressure of 
contemporary social and economic transformations is a 
matter of urgent concern. The Millennium Development 
Goals and other internationally agreed development 
goals are not the ambitious statement of new moral 
purpose. They are the minimum threshold compatible with 
the proclaimed values of the international community. 
Failure to make serious progress towards achieving them 
would entail both moral bankruptcy and practical 
disaster. 
 
The means required to meet these challenges include, 
crucially, moral vision and political will. In 
addition, however, this Forum expresses its conviction 
that the challenges call for new knowledge used in 
innovative ways and the better use of existing 
knowledge. In this regard, the social sciences have a 
crucial contribution to make. 
 
Hunger and poverty, education, health, the environment, 
and development - the five areas to which the eight 
Millennium Development Goals relate -, are social 
dynamics. None is solely within the purview of social 
science, but without social science none is fully 
intelligible. Yet prejudice, dogma and spurious common 
sense too often crowd out rigorous social science 
research from policy design. The result is policies 
that fail, even in their own terms, prolonging 
avoidable human misery. 
 
This Forum states its conviction that better use of 
rigorous social science can lead to more effective 
policies. Such use requires a new approach to the links 
between social science and policies for social 
development. For the knowledge that social science 
seeks is precisely the knowledge that policy needs. 
 
It is with these urgent concerns and this diagnosis in 
mind that this Forum adopts the following action plan 
and commends it to the attention of the international 
community. 
 
1) The Forum encourages the establishment of new 
networks to bring together policy-makers, researchers 
and civil society around their shared concern for the 
urgent demands of global social development. 
 
2) The networks should encourage cooperation and 
exchange of information, research results and best 
practices with respect to the inclusion of policy 
relevance within project design and, to this end, 
should promote the development of innovative 
institutional arrangements and tools to facilitate 
linkages between research and policy communities. 
 
3) Recognizing the need for genuinely international and 
interdisciplinary social science research sensitive to 
policy concerns, the networks should facilitate 
cooperation in enhancing existing funding programmes 
for international social science research and in 
developing new modalities for productive work across 
disciplinary and national boundaries. 
 
4) Recognizing the need for policy-makers to be 
sensitive to research that questions existing thinking, 
the networks set up in response to this call should 
promote the sensitivity of policy-makers to critical 
and alternative social science research. 
 
5) The networks should pay particular attention to 
assisting developing country institutions, especially 
in Africa, in meeting their research needs and in 
restoring and ultimately enhancing their capacity to 
implement their social policy priorities. 
 
6) In order to perform their functions, the networks 
should be equipped with adequate Secretariats drawing 
on resources provided by all institutions committed to 
the spirit of this Declaration. The networks should 
consider, inter alia, follow-up events of a similar 
nature to this Forum and publication of reports on 
social science for social development policy in order 
to provide a focus for ongoing debates on paradigms, 
tools and practices and to draw together the full range 
of activity at the interface between academic and 
policy communities. 
 
7) The Forum commends this action plan to the attention 
of all relevant United Nations agencies and calls on 
them, along with national governments and other 
appropriate bodies, to endorse it and to provide it 
with such support and encouragement as may be 
appropriate. 
 
4.  Comment and action request:  We note some troubling 
language in this declaration.  For example,  the 
preamble states that the erosion of the "thrust" of 
human rights et al. is caused by "social and economic 
transformations"-ignoring the effect of autocratic 
regimes and implying that globalization and economic 
freedom are the cause of human rights violations, 
rather than their the best guarantor.   We also are 
concerned by the reference to the MDGs as the "minimum 
threshold" and that failure to meet them represents 
"moral bankruptcy and practical disaster."  Please 
provide guidance on how to react to this document. 
 
KOSS