But that will only be a further indication that many world leaders misunderstand the public debate about the future of our world economy.

The community of students, working people, environmentalists and people of faith demanding fairness around the globe is not a "backlash against globalization." It is a new internationalism born from the crisis facing workers and their families, and from the gap between the promise of international trade and the reality.

Architects of unbridled international trade and investment promised growth and development. But for tens of millions of people - from Americans displaced by jobs that have moved overseas, to Russians overcome by gangsterism instead of capitalism, to children enslaved in Asian sweatshops - the reality is very different.

The 200 richest people in the world have more assets than the 2 billion poorest - and according to the World Bank, the ranks of the most impoverished people have increased by 200 million since 1987.

While foreign investment has increased sevenfold in the last two years, 70 percent of it is going from one rich country to another, with another 20 percent going to just eight developing countries more likely to be dictatorships than democracies. The remaining sliver of investment is being divided among 100 nations, many of them the poorest.

As nations lumber under the debt from which the rich profit, countries around the world react by shredding their social safety nets, waiving environmental laws, ignoring food safety and public health regulations and outlawing workers organizing for a better life - all to meet the demands of global investment. Then, as poor nations try to export their way out of trouble, thousands of high-wage manufacturing jobs in developed countries disappear.

In Japan, workers have been in an economic depression for more than a decade and the security that once was a hallmark of their society is gone. In Europe, unemployment is chronic, creating pressures to cut back on public benefits. In the United States, a long term trend toward deepening inequality creates more and more families without basic health insurance or a living wage, and decaying schools and urban infrastructures.

Each day in developing nations, an estimated 250 million children focus on going to work instead of school, making goods that profit global corporations.

It is a positive sign that even the corporate and government architects of the current globalization crisis are beginning to listen to new voices.

The agenda of global institutions has been transformed. Debt forgiveness for poor nations and reducing poverty are now part of the agenda. The World Bank has rediscovered poverty as a crucial focus, and even recently acknowledged that unbridled free markets may not be the key to the kingdom after all. Global corporations have scrambled to put together codes of conduct to protect their reputations and begin to address shareholder concerns.

Global fairness is now on the agenda for discussion - but change has only just started.

From the shutdown of the World Trade Organization in Seattle 14 months ago to the mass student movement against sweatshops, a new internationalism is taking hold. The demand for workers' rights, human rights and environmental as well as consumer protections will not disappear.

Trade accords will face opposition if workplace and environmental standards are not included. Companies will face embarrassment for trampling on basic rights, and countries eventually will be challenged for allowing it.

The discussion about the future of the global economy must not be about softening a backlash, but about embracing a new internationalism - one based on the understanding that trade is an economic tool to meet the ends of development, democracy and a better deal for working people and their families around the globe.

The writer is president of the AFL-CIO, the federation of unions representing 13 million U.S. workers. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

© 2001 the International Herald Tribune

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