Transcript Initiatives that bring justice in the financial meltdown

Initiatives that bring justice in
the financial meltdown
Magda Lanuza, Nicaragua
Readings outside the US and Europe
• Pictures of men in black suits at the Wall Street.
• Latin America experiencing long term crisis: centuries of
plundering, dictatorships, corruption, negative impacts of
the SAPs, and bad negotiations of free trade agreements
• In LA 44% of the population live in poverty, this 51 million
of the population.
• According to the FAO in 2009, 6 million of them will be
experiencing chronic hunger.
Initiatives: Good news at last
• Governments moving towards a broader concept of human
development. Ecuador’s new Constitution states the right to food
sovereignty.
• Other signs of hope include regional proposals as ALBA that is
supporting social programs that embrace gender perspectives in
sustainable development. Hunger Cero in Nicaragua.
• The recognition that this is not just a financial and economic crisis,
but social and ecological crisis.
Exclusionary process or inclusive
alternatives
• G- 20 cannot speak for all the countries. Southern
governments are called to move beyond rhetoric.
• An opportunity to revise the past and current relations
between the North and the South.
• The claim of the ecological debt: Ecuador has called for.
• This implies the recognition of the Northern countries of
the responsibility they have of centuries of natural
resources plundering in the South: all the side effects of
this pattern up to now.
• The Northern countries are debtors and have to
recognize it, pay for it and stop getting in more debts.
The call is for:
• To continue the audits of the external debts and cancel the
illegitimate debts until now paid. Ecuador exercise. Nicaragua is
waiting for a big debt to be paid.
• Different rules for foreign investments in the South: Bolivia and
Venezuela examples.
• Fair trade with fair prices, protecting the environment and people’s
rights, opposed to Free trade Agreements.
• Support people’s centered programs and policies.
• No more impositions and conditionalities on loans, international aid
and trade negotiations – MCA, T- LAND from USAID
• Compensation for climate change disasters: Bolivia 2006 and the
Caribbean in 2008. No to carbon cap-and-trade systems
Expectations: How to work together?
• The upcoming UN Conference on the world financial and
economic crisis and its impact on development.
• Opportunity for:
• carrying new commitments on gender equality,
• bringing the lessons of some Latin America and the Caribbean
initiatives,
• recognizing the different responsibilities that has brought us to this
point – ecological debt and cancelling external debts.
• a new beginning of a process that will define revolutionary changes
for a new and better society that we can shape together.
• enhancing the UN role with the UNCTAD and other UN international
bodies working