In the biggest U.N. gathering in history, some 13,000 delegates and world leaders from 130 nations are meeting in Denmark this week for a world summit on poverty. Unfortunately, size probably will have little to do with effectiveness.
A draft statement being circulated among delegates already has drawn fire for being too vague, too general and too full of watered-down plans that will hardly solve a problem of epic proportions.The summit itself has been criticized as being too expensive for what it is expected to produce.
It's hard to see how a weeklong meeting involving so many participants and representing the conflicting needs and desires of so many countries could come up with agreement radical enough or even specific enough to make a difference.
In any case, proposals containing a costly bill for wealthier nations would probably be rejected by those same rich nations. The United States - represented at the summit by Vice President Al Gore - already has said it won't make any promises about foreign aid and debt relief.
The most the United Nations is hoping for is a sharing of experiences in fighting poverty and the production of documents that groups can use to pressure their national leaders. That would be an anemic result from such a vast conference, but this global war on poverty is likely to be little more than a war of words.
Yet world poverty is serious and can have repercussions for well-to-do countries as well as the poor ones. Turmoil, refugees, ethnic wars, famine, U.N. rescue operations and other problems in the post-Cold War world all are connected in some ways to the issue of poverty.
Some 1.3 billion people - about one in four worldwide - live in poverty, lacking even basic health care. And the disparity between the richest 20 percent of nations and the poorest 20 percent has doubled in the past 30 years. In 1960, the richest fifth had 30 times the income of the poorest fifth. That figure is now 60 times the income of the poor.
The argument for trying to do something about this disparity is compelling, but the summit is taking place in a time when even wealthy nations are dealing with budget deficits and are cutting back on social spending and foreign aid.
What is most likely to happen at the conference is a renewed cry for help by developing nations and a certain reserved reluctance on the part of wealthy countries - while both express moral platitudes.
In the end - and even U.N. officials admit as much - the ultimate responsibility for fighting poverty will rest upon the individual governments, rather than some global program.
Perhaps the most meaningful thing that might come out of the summit would be a change in emphasis for the United Nations. Many would like to see it switch from an international body concerned about peace and security to an international group whose chief concern is about about development, poverty, unemployment and the social contract.
In the absence of superpower conflict, those enduring problems are worthy goals and perhaps the Denmark summit can serve as at least a step in giving them the global attention they deserve.