Acciones de Documento
Reports on UNCTAD Meetings - Day 2
The liberalization of economic policies along with globalization and how swiftly this phenomenon took over in the world resulted in the disappearance of the national state. Today, however, in the light of the fire sparked by the several crises that converge in the crisis of the economic model of unbounded accumulation, international organizations cannot put out the fire and some of them do not even have the juridical frameworks, legitimacy, institutionalism and structure that national states do have to manage the solutions agreed with the aim to redirect the role of the economy in the life of our societies.
This was the core message of Peter Walh, World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED) in the Symposium "The global economic crisis and development -the way forward".
This is one of the main issues in the role that each institution has to play in the post-crisis path we are already walking.
Yesterday three simultaneous panels were held. One of them addressed the crisis’ impact on women. Diana Aguiar, International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) and member of the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWW on FfD) highlighted that the packages announced by the G-20 do not take into account the dynamization of economic sectors that work with female workforce. Furthermore, all sectors that are losing their income level are reported to be in the families where women are the most affected. Women have to be considered as subject and not as object of policies and solutions.
The morning discussion focused almost exclusively on who will set in motion the elements stemming from these civil society’s proposals and it is to be expected that these proposals will be considered in the Heads of State meeting on the economic crisis to be held in June in New York.
Today further arguments on the systemic nature of the crisis were discussed.
A representative of the world federation of trade unions, as member of the World Social Forum, addressed the table on the need to maintain transparency and openness to civil society in the United Nations spaces. She saluted the call for civil society to present their proposals and be heard and recalled that in the past years civil society’s multiple warnings and proposals for a model that had caused exclusion and social disparities were not heard. She demanded the increasing promotion of civil society’s participation.
The external debt deserved an important chapter, and arguments were put forth on the reason and need for its cancellation. Trade should be necessarily guided by the logic and philosophy of Fair Trade.
The majority agreed that the United Nations should have the leading role in the management of the crisis: a reformed United Nations supported by the national states and using the global package for the countries with lowest economic resources. Within a context in which rich countries have made large disbursements to inject in their banks, a proposal to cancel the external debt was brought forward. A significant political will to reform the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and WB) was demanded.
Summing up, a “new green pact” is needed, where governments play a new role and disparities are taken into account, among them, gender inequality. If serious thought is not given to all the analyses, social explosion will be uncontrollable, as shown by social movements’ rallies in different countries of the world (Madrid, Berlin, London, etc.).
For all the above reasons it is very important that the New York meeting has the attendance of all Heads of State and that the Stiglitz Commission’s document shall be given due consideration, as an obligation and not as a suggestion.
Luisa Cruz Hefti, GCAP Feminist Task Force
