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Over 9,000 diplomats, press, and NGO representatives from 148 countries descended on Copenhagen in early March to participate in the UN's World Summit for Social Development. The city shivered under rain and high winds, but the Danes offered guests a warm, well-organized welcome and lots of free umbrellas.

In the huge concrete and glass Bella Centre outside the city, nearly 4,000 delegates negotiated final details of official conference documents. A record-setting number of VIP's-- including François Mitterand, Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, Sheikh Jaber al-Sabah, and Al Gore -- poured into town and motorcaded to meetings and news conferences.

Meantime, the NGO Forum held busy, alternative sessions in the 300-year-old former Holman Naval Base. Tents filled with NGO display booths transformed a cavernous old PT-boat shed into a lively fair called the "Global Village." Amid fireworks and passionate speehes, an electronic "clock" counted off the relentless increase in world poverty--more than forty thousand every day.

The Summit addressed some of the globe's most tenacious problems: unemployment, poverty and alienation. When Chilean Ambassador Juan Somavia first proposed a Summit in 1991, many observers hoped it would produce bold new initiatives to make development truly "people-centered." UN advisor Mahbub ul Haq further heightened expectations with a series of creative proposals, floated in the 1994 Human Development Report. Countries of the South drew up their own wish-list, headed by debt cancellation and higher levels of development aid. But from the beginning, the United States government expressed its doubts, Britain's ruling Conservatives displayed outright hostility, while the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund insisted that nothing disturb their efforts to promote privatization, social budget-cutting, and economic deregulation.

As diplomats hammered out Summit documents in the months before Copenhagen, hundreds of international NGOs, hoping for policy breakthroughs, participated in the long and tedious Prepcom process in New York. Rich countries, beset by economic problems and unwilling to reduce further their large military spending, refused to make financial concessions to address global poverty. Governments of poor countries, even more economically strapped, opposed social commitments and sovereignty-eroding international mandates.

Creative proposals by ul Haq and others--such as international taxes to reduce currency speculation, redirecting resources from military to social programs, and higher proportions of development aid for social purposes--got caught in global gridlock, as the Summit documents accumulated platitudes. Again and again, negotiators chose to affirm social development as "the highest priority," or "a matter of urgency," while refusing to incorporate concrete commitments. The United States in particular insisted on watering-down operational language. As months of preliminary negtiations passed, many governments around the world cut their social program budgets, leaving a widening gap between rhetoric and reality.

The NGO Committee on Aging at the UN, of which I am Chair, shared in the early euphoria about the Summit and organized an Older Persons' Caucus, chaired by Helen Hamlin of the International Federation on Ageing, to bring aging language into Summit documents and to frame recommendations in terms of aging concerns. Bette Mullen, Director of the AARP International Activities Office, took another important initiative, by polling aging organizations around the world, to develop consensus ideas for inclusion. The UN convened its own European conference on aging, as a preliminary to the Summit. The language finally adopted for the Copenhagen documents proved idealistic but lacking the clear benchmarks and program commitments we had hoped for. The documents disappoint by framing aging issues largely in terms of "vulnerable groups," rather than productive aging. And in their discussion of unemployment, the documents surprisingly neglect age-based employment discrimination.

The United States, Japan and the European Union, concerned about rising costs for pensions and health care, held the line against new approaches to aging that might raise government and employer costs. Poor countries, in the throes of punishing Structural Adjustment Programs (Bretton Woods loan packages that force governments to slash spending), insisted even more firmly that aging should stay off the docket and remain a "family responsibility."

In spite of these setbacks, the documents reaffirm past commitments and they provide a basis for building and discussion in the future. (see box) So I headed off for Copenhagen with a number of NGO Committee colleagues, to participate in what promised to be a lively NGO process. I was representing the World Federation of Methodist Women as well as Global Action on Aging, a new interntional network of grassroots advocates in the aging field, of which I am president. In Copenhagen, the NGO Committee and Global Action on Aging jointly sponsored a booth, which was colorfully decorated and well-stocked with literature, flyers and newsletters. Located in the "Steelyard," a huge Holman shipbuilding shed, the booth attracted some 3,000 visitors and was the scene of hundreds of conversations and "networking" sessions with NGOs from every continent.

Thanks to an invitation from the Social Summit Secretariat, the NGO Committee organized a "Special Event" on "Critical Emerging Issues Facing Older People," held at Eigtveds Pakhus, a beautiful renovated warehouse next to the Danish Foreign Ministry. Our event addressed the three main Summit topics--poverty, unemployment and alienation. Among the participants were Aida Gindy from Egypt, Bishop Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo from Uganda, Prema Mathai-Davis from the United States, Marguerite Fassinou from Benin, and Armonia Diaz from Argentina.

Speakers made it clear that conditions were worsening for older persons in most countries worldwide. The two speakers from Africa provided evidence that millions of families no longer care for older members and that governments are refusing to assume responsibility as well. Others talked of unemployment in later life, as jobs close off to older people, even though they may have no other source of income. In Europe, three-quarters of all workers have now been pushed out of the workforce before reaching the official retirement age.

Several speakers addressed the pension crisis. Roger Beattie of the International Labour Organization criticised the World Bank's proposals to reduce or eliminate public pensions and substitute private savings-based plans. He argued that the switch-over puts an additional burden on employed workers, puts great pressure on social spending and only worsens the economic basis for pensions in the long run. Armonia Diaz of Argentina talked about the terrible blow to older Argentines when the government drastically cut pensions in 1992 to pay off international lenders. Speakers asked why Social Summit documents had not referred to the pension crisis and why they had not said a word to criticise the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for their role in pension-cutting and socially-destructive Structural Adjustment Programs.

Carl Jorn Mathiesen of Denmark gave one of the most moving talks at the Special Event. After many grim presentations, he inspired us anew with a description of the excellent old age programs in his country. He was not uncritical, conceding that these programs were under pressure and that the government had already cut funding for some. But the vision and the spirit of inter-generational solidarity and the effective organization of Danish older people at the grassroots level gave us all hope that change and renewal is possible.

In addition to this event, Global Action on Aging held a workshop entitled "Where have all our pensions gone?" at which we discussed the debate about pension "reforms" and heard testimony about the deep erosion of pensions in Eastern Europe, the pension crisis facing China's 100 million older people, rising rents and pension cutbacks in Western Europe, and how Latin American pension "reforms" have taken billions of dollars in income out of the pockets of the poor and middle-class elderly. I had the opportunity to make a presentation directly to the official delegates at Bella Centre, where I summarized the conclusions of the Pakhus event.

Unhappy with official Summit documents, a number of NGO's produced an Alternative Declaration, sharply critical of the government texts. The NGOs proposed global taxes to fund social development, democratization of international institutions, and a clear, time-bound commitment to eradicate poverty. They charged that official support for free markets and free trade, deregulation and government withdrawel from the social sector "aggravates, rather than alleviates, the current global social crises."

Some observers tried to emphasize the Summit's bright side: This was the first time that governments had undertaken a global commitment (though admittedly vague) to eradicate poverty and to promote full employment. The role of women in development had been strongly affirmed. Development thinking had been reoriented towards human needs.

Still, all was not well at Bella Centre. Even speeches of Summit Chief Juan Somavia reflected a gathering sense that, at the official level, the Summit was falling short of its potential. Prior to Copenhagen, Somava had often referred to the event as the "Summit of Hope." But in Denmark, he began to refer to it somberly--as a "cry of alarm."

At Holman, NGOs debated, discussed, marched and sang together for over ten days. Peasant leaders with leathery hands, idealistic student militants, gray-haired defenders of elderly rights, humanists, Buddists, trade union activists and determined women's advocates possessed among them an impressive spirit. Holman, in its undiminished idealism, held out hope that one day genuine social development will be the birthright of all humanity.