Voices on the upcoming G20 summit IV: UBUNTU

The “network of the networks”, UBUNTU which is presently running the World Campaign for In-depth Reform of the System of International Institutions has published the following statement regarding the G20 summit in Washington DC:

While emphasising that, of course, all people have the right to meet whomever and wherever they choose, we the undersigned, in the tradition of the statements issued by the UBUNTU Forum, wish to declare the following:

1. Our deep concern about the serious impact the implosion of neo‐liberal capitalism will have on humanity, an implosion which will surely be the last – although it unfortunately is still going on – of an economic model that we have denounced many, many times as extremely unjust and damaging to society.

2. Our perplexity, because the main protagonists who have worked to impose this model over the last 25 years, the G7 and the Bretton Woods Institutions (the
IMF and the WB) are now taking on the role of saviours in this disaster, when they should rather be seen as the guilty parties to a large degree, and should consequently accept the responsibilities that pertain to them.

3. Our indignation regarding the meeting called for 14 November in Washington for, among others, the following reasons:
a) That precisely Washington, home of the Government and Organisations most responsible politically for what is now happening, is the one calling the meeting.
b) That invitations to the meeting have been issued in a totally arbitrary and discriminatory form. As if, for example, the poorest countries, those who have suffered most from this model and will probably suffer most from the consequences of the current debacle, had nothing to say about what to do now and in the future.
c) That it not only fails to take advantage of but even overshadows the Doha
Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, scheduled for 29 November to 2 December, especially when this Consensus includes a section on systemic ‐ structural issues, which have been worked on for months in the United Nations’ most pluralistic and transparent framework, and which, appropriately reviewed and extended in the current context, could contribute to opening the way to a new world economic and financial model.
4. Our conviction that the time has come for an in‐depth Reform of the System of International Institutions, so long demanded by many world forums, to begin to lay the foundation for a world democratic governance which, among many other things, would prevent the world having to experience another situation like this one. In any case, the ongoing world regionalisation processes should be considered amongst the new principles upon which the system must be refounded.
5. Our urge that in the headquarters of the United Nations, in the context of the imminent Doha Conference, the process towards a Multiactor World
Conference on a New International Monetary and Financial System and its New
Democratic Institutions of Governance immediately begins, with the active participation of all the relevant actors of the present world situation, and thus and most fundamentally with the participation of civil society and of social movements.