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MOVEMENTS AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS FROM LATIN AMERICA AND THE WORLD RELEASE OPEN LETTER ON THE CREATION OF THE BANK OF THE SOUTH
Press release, 8 December 2007
Coinciding with the signing on December 9, in Buenos Aires, of the South Bank's Founding Act, hundreds of social movements, networks, organizations and personalities from throughout Latin America and the world are presenting to the Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela, an Open Letter |1| expressing their expectation with regard to the creation of the new financial institution together with proposals intended to insure that the Bank can indeed contribute to the integration of the region's peoples and the full enjoyment of human and environmental rights and the right to development.
The text manifests the movements' conviction that this South-South
entity must break with the experience of existing multilateral
organisms such as the World Bank, the IMF, the IDB, and the Andean
Development Corporation (CAF), "which are widely recognized today for
their non-democratic, non-transparent, regressive, and disaccredited
operations". The South Bank must also contribute to overcoming "the
negative experience of economic liberalization suffered by the region,
with its consequences of ever more indebtedness and the constant
draining of capital, deregulation, and the privatization of public
patrimony and basic services.
Among other key points, which build on the proposals presented in June
of this year, this Second Open Letter highlights the importance of the
South Bank forming an integral part of a new regional financial
architecture, which would also include the creation of a South Fund -
with the functions of a regional Central Bank, and a common monetary
instrument. It also underscores the need for transparency and
participation of the social movements in both the negotiating phase as
well as the eventual operation of the institution and calls on the
Presidents to inform and consult with society and incorporate clear
mechanisms of citizen control in the Bank´s establishment.
This Second Open Letter on the South Bank is signed, among others, by
representative networks, movements, and personalities in Latin America
such as the Hemispheric Social Alliance, the Andean Coordination of
Indigenous Orgnizations, Jubilee South/Americas, Committee for the
Abolition of the Third Wordl Bedb (CADTM), Latindadd, the Network of
Women Transforming the Economy Remte, Oid-LA, the Latin American
Association of Political Economists Sepla, the Lutheran World
Federation's Advocacy Program on Illegitimate Debt, the Peace and
Justice Service in Latin America, Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez
Esquivel, and Nora Cortiñas and Mirta Baravalle of the Mothers of May
Square-Founder's Line. Together with numerous other national, regional,
and global organizations, they manifest in this statement the
importance they attribute to the South Bank being a public entity;
whose direction is exercised on an equal basis among the participating
countries; that it be capitalized in a way that is proportionate to the
capacity of each economy; that its operations be transparent and
austere; and that in essence, it promote the integration in solidarity
of the peoples and countries of the region on the basis of concrete
objectives such as full employment, food security and sovereignty, the
guarantee of healthcare and housing, the universalization of free and
public basic education, the redistribution of wealth, environmental
protection, and the overcoming of inequities such as those of gender
and ethnicity. As in their First Open Letter, endorsing movements and
organizations specifically reject the possibility that the South Bank
reproduce the model and priorities of the existing international
financial institutions by providing financial backing for megaprojects
that are destructive of local communities, the environment, and
biodiversity or infrastructure schemes such as IIRSA, which responds to
a logic of "integration" designed by global capital interests and the
huge TNCs.
Titled "For a South Bank Oriented to a Sovereign and Sustainable
Development Matrix for the Integration of the Continent in Solidarity",
the Open Letter further affirms the need for the new Bank to be an
instrument "to safeguard and channel savings within the region,
interrupting the recurrent cycles of exaction of national and regional
efforts through manoeuvres and deals on the basis of public
indebtedness and securities, the subsidization of privileged and/or
corrupt local and international private economic and financial groups,
and constant backing for speculative transborder capital flows."
notes articles:
|1| http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article2974
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