Acciones de Documento
Reports on UNCTAD Meetings - Conclusion
18 and 19 May 2009 will become a landmark, the inauguration dates of a great step taken by the United Nations: the creation of a space for the expression of civil society’s analyses and proposals on the financial crisis, which as from this analysis is known to be a systemic crisis.
The conclusion of the meeting arrived to this important recognition by the representatives of organizations and platforms that attended the meeting as well as by the organizers themselves. Both parts have committed to give continuity to this process.
The former Minister of Economic Coordination of Ecuador, Pedro Paéz, responding to the complexity of the analysis and the avalanche of questions and proposals, asked “who’s going to do all this?” and replied “Fuente ovejuna, todos a una”. (T.N.: Fuente Ovejuna is a play by the Spanish playwright, Lope de Vega, 1619), meaning that the recession is on its way and that all of us must contribute to the solution.
United Nations must shake off the dust of the humiliation of having been left aside. Reformulation must come from the analysis of affected people and societies and not from those who are the explicit symbol of the eruption of the crisis (accumulation, speculation). The crisis gives us an opportunity to rethink the development paradigm, association, the relationship with the environment, rules and regulations, the role of State and the role of market and commerce, the place of the financial system, gender equity, recognition of care economy, debt cancellation for poorest countries, debt moratorium for middle-income countries, supplementary efforts for Latin America and Asia, the role of the private sector regulated by state public bodies, the role of national strategic planning without the shadow of the highly demonized protectionism appearing as a spectre…These issues have been analyzed by civil society since the inception of the World Social Forum and are now taken into account by an instance of United Nations, as consultation.
Now we have to define how civil society will manage and monitor the transparency and efficacy of this process. This is a complex issue which can be faced. Civil society has experience in analysing, projecting and proposing plausible scenarios.
From now on to the June summit in New York there is a short but feasible time to follow up civil society’s proposals.
