There is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization edited by Veronica Benholdt-Thomsen,

Since its founding, the member states of the United Nations have again and again, often with great flourish, declared their commitment to the elimination of global poverty. In its Millennium Declaration of September 2000, for example, the states of the UN declared that they would “spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected ” (United Nations 2000). Similar commitments were made at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development meeting in Copenhagen where the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) presented “A World Social Charter, ” which included the following: “We are convinced that it is possible to overcome the worst aspects of poverty in our lifetime through collective effort. We jointly affirm that our first step towards this goal will be to design a global compact that ensures that no child goes without an education [and] no human being is denied primary health care or safe drinking water…”(UNDP 1994: 6). Other leading international organizations make similar declarations. For example, the institutional motto for the World Bank states, “Our dream is a world without poverty ” (Stiglitz 2002: 23). Conservatives, liberals and radicals all appear united in a commitment to end the massive avoidable suffering currently plaguing millions of innocents. The UN has gone beyond merely declaring abstract, rhetorical and aspirational goals to alleviate suffering. There is now in place a large corpus of international treaties negotiated through the UN which seek to define economic and social human rights. Through its “General Comments, ” the 133 V O L U M E 3 — 2 0 0