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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Confronting 'apartheid in the world'
By Faiza RadyLast week at the South Summit in Havana, leaders of developing nations collectively condemned the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as agents of the North's neo-liberal economic policy-makers. Billed as historic for being the first meeting of the Group of 77 (G77) at the level of heads of state, the summit took a clear position against globalisation on Northern terms.
Leaders of the G77 -- a UN-affiliated body representing 133 Third World nations and 80 per cent of the world's population -- held the WB, the IMF and the WTO responsible for creating conditions of abject poverty in the South and dramatically increasing the disparity between rich and poor.
In this context, the final declaration of the South Summit expressed a unified position. Building on the victory of last December's Ministerial World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle -- which collapsed when delegates from the South categorically rejected the rich countries' dictates -- the Havana Summit reflected a consensus on major issues facing the South. In effect, the summit's final declaration condemns trade inequities imposed on the South by the current terms of globalisation.
While neo-liberalism promotes "free" trade, claiming that it ultimately promotes wealth and prosperity for all, 20 hard years of worldwide structural adjustment policies -- privatisation of public sectors, elimination of tariff and trade barriers, roll-back of health and welfare benefits -- have only contrived to increase the chasm that separates the rich from the poor and generated an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the international power elite.
The figures speak for themselves. The combined revenues of General Motors and Ford -- the two largest automobile corporations in the world -- together exceed the total gross domestic product (GDP) for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The combined sales of Japan's top six trading companies -- Mitsubishi, Mitsui, ITOCHU, Sumitomo, Marubeni and Nissho Iwai -- are nearly equivalent to the GDP of all of Central America.
Transnationals hold 90 per cent of all technology and product patents worldwide and control 70 per cent of existing global trade. This is not simply a stranglehold over the world's technologies and existing profit streams, but actually chokes the potential for development in the South.
Accordingly, the summit's final declaration defined development as a basic human right. "We will promote respect for universally recognised human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development," stressed the declaration.
Accusing rich countries of propagating poverty in the South -- along with its attendant ills of widespread illiteracy, disease and death -- Cuban leader Fidel Castro denounced the North in the strongest terms at the summit's closing meeting.
Fidel Castro
"While before we spoke of apartheid in Africa, today we can speak of apartheid in a world where four billion people are deprived of the most elemental human rights: to life, health care, education, safe drinking water, housing, employment and hope for their own and their children's future," Castro said.
Participants at the summit blasted the US in particular for imposing neo-liberal policies on the South and contributing to the high debts that have stifled economic development over the last two decades. This is especially true in Central America, whose foreign debt after World War II was negligible. However, after two decades of following IMF and WB prescriptions and faithfully implementing SAPs, the continent's debt soared to $3 trillion -- the highest per capita debt in the world. And the region's income disparity between rich and poor is also the highest worldwide.
African countries fare even worse. A case poignantly illustrated by the famine in the Horn of Africa. While the IMF and the WB blame the famine exclusively on the region's drought, it is the international loan agencies' policies that have forced countries as poor as Ethiopia to dismantle its drought safeguards. As a consequence of the IMF's notorious austerity requirements in the Horn of Africa and following fiscal austerity measures retrenching state subsidies -- which included cut backs in the distribution of granaries and elimination of vital water preservation projects -- an estimated eight million people are facing starvation.
At a press conference in Havana, Arthur Mbanefo, Nigeria's permanent representative to the UN and the current G77 chair in New York, was quick to condemn the IMF's policies. Mbanefo declared that the debt burden was causing a "reversal of development growth", since costs of servicing the debts of many African countries greatly exceed their social service budgets.
In an age generating unprecedented and mind-boggling profits, absolute poverty has never been as stark. While a whopping
$3 trillion are daily exchanged on stock markets around the world, the three top billionaires' assets are worth more than the GNP of the 48 least developed nations -- a population of 600 million. In the South, 1.3 billion people lack access to potable water, and 2.6 billion have no access to basic sanitation.
As a result of increasing interest rates on the US dollar and declining basic commodity prices, accrued interest payments on debts over the last two decades have become crippling. Cuban leader Fidel Castro urged rich countries to cancel the debt. "The debt continues to feed on itself in a vicious circle where money is borrowed to pay its interests," said Castro, adding that "the debt is not an economic, but a political issue."
The Cuban leader also dismissed the Clinton administration's much-touted debt reduction initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries as mere tokenism. Launched by the US four years ago, ostensibly to alleviate the debt of the world's 33 most impoverished countries, the initiative is so complex and difficult to implement that it has so far only reduced the debt of four countries, said the Cuban leader.
Leaders from the South called for the establishment of a new and equitable world order. In the words of Belize Prime Minister Said Musa: "They told us these measures would stabilise our economy, instead they have stabilised poverty."
