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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Ambassador Harriet C. Babbitt, USAID Deputy Administrator
Partners In Transition Conference
Warsaw, Poland
October 5, 1999
It is a rare pleasure to visit this beautiful city, and an honor to participate in this extremely important conference.
A great drama is taking place as the nations of Europe and Eurasia carry out a historic transformation of their political and economic systems. History will record that at the turn of the 21st century you were rewriting the future, not only of this region but of the world.
The era of Big Brother is dead. Today, governments reach out, to one another and to their own people, to find the energy and ideas they need to meet the challenges of the modern world. As Prime Minister Buzek said yesterday: the energy of citizens is critical for reform to take hold. We hope this conference will facilitate enhancing and utilizing that "citizen energy."
My government greatly values the dedication you bring to your difficult transitions to democracy and open markets, and we are proud to extend to you our friendship and support. The presence of Hillary Rodham Clinton at this conference makes clear the importance we attach to your work.
Other nations face many of the challenges you do, but your job is especially difficult because you must confront them, with limited resources, in the midst of a transition that is reshaping virtually every element of society.
Yet I look around today and see reform leaders who are committed to a successful transition, and who have already made important progress.
Some of the transition countries of Europe and Eurasia have made progress in economic reform and, as a result, incomes are rising. Some have carried out democratic reforms, as reflected in free elections and an independent media. Some countries have done both.
Still, throughout the region, we see that the problems of the social transition, the problems of people, continue. We must be concerned that such problems will not only cause hardship for individuals, but can undermine support for the reform process itself.
The social challenges you face include serious health problems: the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, a rise in infant mortality, a drop in life expectancy, and increased alcoholism and suicide.
These challenges also include environmental health issues. In many nations of this region, decades of neglect have led to contaminated air, water and soil - with health consequences we are only beginning to understand.
Education is another concern. School enrollment is down in some countries in the region. Many schools are unable to offer computer training, or the instruction in foreign languages and business skills that will allow your countries to be competitive in the new world economy.
The challenge is to use the transition to adapt old systems of education to the new demands of the global marketplace and the jobs it will generate.
Throughout the world, in hard times, it is the most vulnerable citizens who suffer most, particularly the young, the old and women who are heads of households.
In your region, during privatization, women have been laid off disproportionately, have sacrificed more during their retirement years, and have suffered because of rising alcoholism and violence.
The key to prosperity and a good quality of life for all citizens is, of course, ensuring that people have opportunities to improve their well being and to find productive employment.
Teaching workers new skills and offering them new opportunities is primarily the job of the private sector. But governments can help with incentives and policies that promote job creation and job security, innovation, training and labor market flexibility. Business managers, labor unions and government should work in partnership to promote these goals.
These and other social issues are of such great importance because a large, productive middle class is basic to healthy democratic systems and dynamic economies. Deteriorating health, education and job security can threaten the entire transition process.
We in the United States have faced comparable challenges in the past. They included a terrible civil war in the 19th century, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and our continuing quest for racial justice. We have been working to perfect our democracy for more than two hundred years - and we still have far to go - and most of the countries of this region have had less than ten years.
We hope that you can benefit from our experience -- both from our successes and our failures - as well as from your own experiences within this region.
We in the United States do not pretend to have all the answers, but one lesson we have learned, time and again, is that investments in our own people have always been repaid many times over.
For example, in the aftermath of the Second World War, our government supported college educations for its veterans. Hundreds of thousands of low-income veterans attended college who otherwise would not have- simply for lack of money -- and their generation became the cornerstone of a greatly expanded middle class and of a national prosperity that continues to this day.
Your needs today are different, but the principle remains the same: It is the extraordinary importance of investing in the social transition, and in the people who are your most precious resource.
The investments I speak of are not only financial. You can invest in teaching people preventive health care and healthier life styles - and thus save both money and lives. You can invest in new kinds of partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and others in the private sector, and thus mobilize resources to complement scarce government funds. You can invest in learning from the experiences of others, as you are at this conference.
Ten years ago, when the Berlin Wall came down, the first thought on most minds was how to restructure formerly state-directed economies and how to achieve democracy. And it is true that the creation of a democratic system, fiscal responsibility and the privatization of state enterprises are important elements of reform.
But the social transition is an equal challenge. Even as we address the economic systems of a country, we must also invest in the human skills and services that both shape the everyday lives of citizens, and also profoundly influence the economic health of a nation.
For example, good primary health care for children leads to more learning, and ultimately to better jobs and higher incomes. The same applies to worker productivity - healthy workers contribute to a stronger economy.
Many of you are working to give higher priority to sustainable health care.
In some countries, citizens now have a choice of health care providers. Some are starting to meet the terrible challenge of HIV/AIDS. Others are improving primary health care and implementing effective family planning programs. Some of you are developing reform legislation and programs to promote more effective financing for health care.
When health problems are so enormous that central governments can address only a fraction of the needs, the active involvement of citizens and citizen groups can make a huge difference.
We have, in the United States, a tradition of a strong civil society - of professional associations, religious and charitable groups, and other nongovernmental organizations that supplement the work of government and are advocates of change. That is another lesson we have learned: the profound importance of mobilizing the energies, skills and compassion of people.
We are gratified to see that kind of citizen action springing up across your region. In Slovakia, for example, "healthy-community" programs have mobilized citizens to address such diverse issues as drug abuse, environmental protection and cardiovascular diseases. Citizens have worked together to evaluate problems and resources, and to implement programs that will make their communities safer and more healthy.
In the nations of Central Asia, the Counterpart Consortium Initiative has supported the creation of nongovernmental organizations that address a variety of social issues, including consumers' rights in Kazakhstan, housing conditions in Kyrgyzstan, and employment for rural women in Uzbekistan.
In Albania, a coalition of seven NGOs is seeking better treatment for disabled persons. A new network of consumer groups has responded to thousands of complaints about impure food and water, inadequate medical services, and environmental damage. The Women's Center in Tirana helps women address issues of sex education and domestic violence.
Such nongovernmental action, building civil society and encouraging people to take control of their lives, can only strengthen the transitions you have begun.
We at USAID have begun a program called Lessons Without Borders that seeks to bring back to the United States lessons we have learned all around the world.
For example, a few years ago, Baltimore, Maryland, needed help in dealing with childhood immunization rates that were far lower than they should have been. USAID found that part of the problem was that the city's immunization services were promoted almost exclusively by the use of written materials, despite the fact that more than twenty percent of the city's population was functionally illiterate.
Our agency advised city officials to use techniques, learned from other nations where illiteracy is common, such as radio and television advertisements and door-to-door campaigns. Soon Baltimore's immunization rate for school-age children rose from 62 percent to 96 percent.
In programs all around the world, we see that investing in people is not only compassionate but is good business.
For example, in recent years, we have sponsored literally millions of microenterprise loans around the world, most of them to women. The loans are small, usually only fifty or a hundred dollars, but they often have a huge impact on people's lives.
In Cambodia, a woman named Chart Sok could not feed her family properly on the small income she and her husband received from chopping wood. But with a small microenterprise loan from a village bank she bought a cart. She and her husband chopped wood together and hauled it in the new cart to the village market to sell. She repaid her loan with the proceeds and obtained another to expand her business. Now she owns not only two carts but her own home, and she and her family have plenty to eat. This demonstrates how just a small investment can profoundly impact the physical and mental well being of a whole family.
In Ukraine, a USAID worker arranged for a woman to attend a three-week business course at the University of Connecticut. The woman returned to her hometown, greatly expanded her small pharmaceutical supply business and formed the town's first women's business network and credit union. She told her USAID friend that she had thrown out all the Marxist theory she learned in school and was relying entirely on what she learned in Connecticut. Now she has one of the few successful women-owned businesses in Ukraine. The Ukrainian woman's energy and tenacity were the fundamental elements of this story; but we were pleased that USAID's investment in training allowed her to maximize her contribution to her country's transition.
In Botswana, since 1982, USAID has enabled more than 800 Botswana citizens to study in the United States and trained another four thousand in their home countries. Most of these people were senior level employees in government and business, and we believe this focus on education and professional development has helped Botswana advance from being one of the poorest countries in Africa to one of the richest.
Throughout the world, investment in people pays off.
We at USAID hope to play a catalytic role, in cooperation with you, and with other donors and partners, in helping with your region's social transition. We can draw upon our experience with policy reform, and human and institutional capacity development, and on our ability to carry out innovative pilot projects that may mobilize larger investments from other donors and institutions.
I know, as you do, that we meet today with many more questions than answers. In today's breakout sessions, you will address many issues that make up the great challenge of the social transition.
I urge you, because of the wealth of talent gathered here, to focus not only on broad themes but on specific policies and programs, based on your own experiences, that may suggest solutions to the challenges you face. And I congratulate you on the energy and courage you have shown.
In my own country, we faced a comparable moment of social change during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he saw, as he said, one-third of America ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished. Refusing to accept that reality, he embraced an activist political philosophy that inspired the American people and changed our society. Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the value and dignity of every human being.
Today, we remember President Roosevelt with gratitude for his bold leadership, his willingness to innovate and his passionate commitment to social justice.
You, today, face a challenge of equal magnitude, and I call upon you to provide that same boldness, innovation and commitment as you lead your nations into the new century.
George Orwell wrote in 1946, "No honest person claims that happiness is now a normal condition among human beings; but perhaps it could be made normal, and it is upon this question that all serious political controversy really turns."
My government's foreign assistance program, for fifty years, has been based on a belief that, someday, a decent life of dignity can be made normal for people everywhere. We believe it can happen in our own country, in your countries, and all across the world. And we believe that to achieve that goal nothing is more important than to invest in the health, education and well being of every citizen.
My colleagues and I look forward to knowing you, learning from you, and supporting you in the great work that you have begun.
Thank you.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
