A camel, it is said, is a horse designed by a committee. This is unfair to camels. They may be ugly and truculent. But they are marvellously adapted to their harsh environment. The same, alas, is rarely true of the products of committees.

Last week's report from the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation, sponsored by the International Labour Organisation, is no exception*. The report is long on pious aspirations and short on rigorous analysis. Above all, it suffers from "right-thinking", or rather "left-thinking", evasion of some of the dilemmas the world confronts.

For all its limitations, the reader should welcome at least four points: the age of globalisation has seen important economic advances for important poor countries; the trade policies of the rich countries are indefensible; the financial liberalisation adopted by many developing countries has frequently had damaging consequences; and, finally, a necessary condition for alleviation of extreme poverty is greater international assistance targeted on the poorest countries.

In 16 developing countries, containing 45 per cent of the world's population, gross domestic product per head rose by more than 3 per cent a year between 1985 and 2001 (see chart). Among these are the two Asian giants, China and India. This is cheering. Yet in 23 countries, containing 5 per cent of the world's population, GDP per head declined. In another 14, containing just under 8 per cent of the world's population, incomes per head rose by less than 1 per cent a year. In all, some 750m people live in countries that are failing. Globalisation has created opportunities. Many have benefited. But many also have not.

Again, the record on trade liberalisation by high-income countries in areas of most interest to developing countries is appalling. The report is commendably outspoken on this, given the participation of John Sweeney, the American trade union leader. "Agricultural protectionism," it argues, for example, "is a major obstacle to the reduction of poverty."

On financial liberalisation, the report argues that the instability of financial flows has damaged developing countries. For this reason, they "should be permitted to adopt a more cautious and gradual approach to capital account liberalisation". On this, the report is pushing at an open door.

Last, the report is right to stress that official development assistance is now little more than 0.2 per cent of the high-income countries' GDP. The US is spending more on Iraq than all the high-income countries are spending on all developing countries. This is indefensible.

Nevertheless, this report also has noteworthy blemishes. These come partly from its grudging acceptance of the role of market forces in development and its unwillingness to confront the silliest critics of globalisation head on. But they also come from its avoidance of painful choices. Consider just three areas: democracy, sovereignty and labour standards.

The report calls for "a democratic and effective state". Most would agree. Yet democratisation has proved to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for economic development. The most important and, over the past two decades, most successful developing country is China. China's success is merely the most striking example of a more general east Asian phenomenon: these countries' advance began not under democracy but under authoritarian regimes.

Again, consider sovereignty. People's ability to engage in productive economic activity depends, more than anything else, on the quality of the state. Unfortunately, the countries that contain the world's poorest people are, almost by definition, ill-governed. To this the report responds by calling for "good national governance, built on a democratic political system, respect for human rights and gender equality, social equity and the rule of law". Yet what exactly is one to do when these virtues of Scandinavian social democracy are altogether lacking?

The world's 20 poorest countries are just about as poor today as they were 40 years ago. That can be changed only if they start to function quite differently from before, which will take a great deal of outside help. But it will also require radical domestic transformation. If the sovereignty of such dysfunctional states is protected, their peoples will remain impoverished. If their people are to be helped, the sovereignty of their states must be challenged. This is a dilemma, which will not be solved by platitudes about good governance and respect for human rights.

Now, look at labour standards. The report is, as would be expected of a document from the ILO, exercised by the omnipresence, in developing countries, of unregulated, informal labour markets. What is missing is any recognition of how labour markets actually work in economies with huge surpluses of unskilled labour.

A malign relationship exists between the relatively high standards, and costs, in formal labour markets and the absence of such standards, and the low costs, in informal ones. The formal sector's growth is stunted by regulation, generating a larger surplus of workers for an undercapitalised informal economy. The result is a dualistic economy, with a small, relatively well-paid modern formal sector and a huge, unregulated - indeed, impossible to regulate - informal sector.

These are far from trivial difficulties. It is irresponsible to pretend that we can have every good we wish for, without ever having to make painful choices among them. Democracy, sovereignty and higher labour standards do not always, or even necessarily, go together with faster economic growth and more widely spread prosperity. Sometimes, we have to choose. Such a report needs to advise us how to do so.

If the world is to take as one of its priorities the promotion of faster development in its poorest, most fragile and worst-governed countries, such evasions will not do. Only honest governments with sensible policies and decent institutions will do the job. But we must also be willing to tolerate the operation of market forces, in rich and poor countries, uncomfortable though they may be. The task we confront is huge and some of the choices painful. Let us not pretend otherwise.

* A Fair Globalization: Creating opportunities for all, www.ilo.org