Week of Global Action against Debt and the IFIs
October 21, 2007 at 6:27 pm Leave a comment
Semana de Acción Global contra la Deuda y las IFIs
Por la Anulación y No pago de todas las Deudas Espurias
Versión en español al final del artículo en inglés
Week of Global Action against Debt and the IFIs [International Financial Institutions] for Cancellation and Non-payment of all Spurious Debts
Translated by Martin Allen
From Haiti to Argentina, passing through Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Paraguay and other countries of our region, Jubileo Sur/Américas [‘South American Jubilee’] joins the Week of Global Action against Debt and the IFIs to condemn the domination still exercised by those instruments of oppression, and to give voice to our proposals for setting up solid foundations for the working of an autonomous financial system, serving peoples’ needs and rights.
For that purpose, the Week of Action being held worldwide from 14th to 21st October begins in Latin America and the Caribbean on October 12th, uniting us with the mobilisation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in defence of their territories, cultures and resources, and supporting their rejection of the policies of indebtedness, opening-up and imposition of conditions driven by International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank. The encouragement given by those bodies to open-cast mining, deforestation, monocultures, establishment of polluting industries and control of water supplies, bio-diversity and even the air we breathe, demonstrates the part they play in maintaining and increasing the millennial smash-and-grab and appropriation of the very sources of life.
The Week of Action also begins on 12th October with the establishment in Nicaragua of the Permanent Tribunal of Peoples, to judge the case of the Spanish corporation Unión Fenosa, sadly re-christened Unión Penosa on account of the havoc caused by its activities in privatising electricity in that and other countries of the region.
Irrefutable evidence will point to the central role of agreements with the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, not only to impose everywhere the policy of ‘privatisations’ – parallels will be seen with, for example, the privatisation of water supplies in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, at the hands of an Italian company – but also to ‘assist’ the setting-up of privatised companies, generating new financial, social and even ecological debts, payment of which is demanded at the cost of indigenous peoples’ hunger and exclusion.
The Week of Action is a response of movements, campaigns and social organisations throughout the world which consider that debt and IFI policies are not simply a matter of finance, but an ethical and political problem with profound implications for the lives of millions of people. In the South as in the North, we unite our voices and our actions to demand:
- Repudiation and cancellation of multilateral and illegitimate debts;
- Holding of complete audits of the debts and the IFIs;
- Transparency and citizen control of the processes of cancellation;
- An end to imposition of conditions and to neo-liberal policies;
- Autonomous and sovereign financial alternatives.
The multiple actions to take place in Latin America and the Caribbean will not only take into account the continuing burden of Debt – both foreign and internal – and the IFIs, despite the policies of reduction and ‘lightening’ imposed by the lenders or some governments’ anticipated payments, which guarantee impunity for crimes committed by Debt and the IFIs under the pretext of supposed independence.In Ecuador, for example, they will publicise and support the start made two months ago of an official audit of the debt demanded of that country, to determine its legality and to back the President’s decision not to pay what is not owed. Likewise, this week’s decision of the Senate of Italy to involve the Italian government in a public Audit of the credits of which it demands payment.
In Colombia they will propose a complete and participative Audit in order to make clear, among other aspects, the relationship between the spectacular growth of the country’s public debt and the development of strategies of war and repression.
They will reject the half-hearted reforms proposed by governments to paper over the disasters provoked by the IFIs and will ask what responses they have offered to the study commissioned by the World Bank on the existence of Odious and Illegitimate Debts.
In Argentina they will ask the presidential candidates what they propose to do about the failure of the Federal Justiciary, which declares the debt accumulated during the dictatorship to be fraudulent and arbitrary.
In Brazil they will publicise the results of the people’s plebiscite on the privatisation of the country’s biggest mining company, the Vale do Rio Doce, privatised ten years ago in a scandalous manner, supposedly to resolve the country’s debt problems.
In Haiti they will campaign against the signing of an Economic Association Agreement with the European Union, condemning its connection with debt and the policies of IFIs.
In El Salvador they will assemble in front of the Ministry of the Economy to demand action against the consequences of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) and recognition of European countries’ ecological debt as a precondition of future commercial negotiations.
In Uruguay they will examine the relationship between that country’s foreign debt and the presence of its troops in Haiti.
They will initiate a necessary debate on the constitution of a Banco Solidario of the Peoples of the South and the importance of ensuring that it will have egalitarian and social participation, with aims that will break away from the interests of concentrated capital and will not reproduce the logic and parameters of neo-liberalism.
To summarise, we shall campaign from Jubileo Sur/Américas during and after the Week of Action, to maintain our condemnation of the disciplinary and extortionate role played in our countries by the system of indebtedness and its profound illegitimacy; [to defend ] our rights as individuals and as peoples not to continue paying what we do not owe; and to re-direct our countries’ policies towards recognition, recovery, sanction and reparation of the historic, social, ecological and cultural debts owed us by those responsible for the crimes of Debt. We shall recommend to and demand from the governments of our countries the courage to stand at the peak of history, recognising that when there is a will to change there is much that can be achieved.
JUBILEO SUR/AMERICAS
See the complete programme of activities at:
http://jubileosuramerica.blogspot.com/2007/06/agenda-de-actividades.html
Campaña Continental contra el ALCA
———————————–
– Repudio y anulación de las deudas multilaterales e ilegítimas,
– Realización de Auditorías integrales de las deudas y las IFIs,
– Transparencia y control ciudadano en los procesos de anulación,
– Fin de los condicionamientos y las políticas neoliberales,
– Alternativas autónomas y soberanas de financiamiento.
Buenos Aires, 12 de octubre de 2007
Promoción de la Campaña Continental contra el ALCA:
http://movimientos.org/noalca/
Entry filed under: Debt.
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