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Freedom
from Debt
International People's Tribunal
Verdict
on the Debt
As part of the World Social Forum the
International People's Tribunal on Debt convened between February
1 and 2 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande del Sul, Brazil. Jubilee South,
the Jubilee South Brazil Campaign joined with the American Association
of Jurists, the Committee for Third World Debt Cancellation, the
Ecological Debt Creditor's Alliance, Ustawi and the World March
of women, among many others, joined together to organize this
international tribunal.
Social movements, churches, unions, professional
organizations, NGOs, political parties and renown personalities
are brought together in the Jubilee South network extending to
45 countries of the South and enjoying the support of diverse
entities in the North. The International People's Tribunal convened
in order to determine and rule upon the responsibility of Banks
and Transnational Corporations, Governments in the North, the
IMF, the World Bank and other international financial institutions
for the crime of illegitimately indebting the countries and peoples
of the South. This has generated a high cost in human lives, the
destruction of our productive capacity, the quality of life of
our peoples, with increases in poverty, infant mortality, social
exclusion and grave economic and environmental damages. This Tribunal
in addition to ruling on evidence as regards the illegitimacy
of the debt, identifying the principal responsible culprits and
their respective roles, also assumed the task of proposing alternative
paths to secure debt repudiation and cancellation.
Ours is an opinion Tribunal, not a legislative
court. Nonetheless, it upholds the principles of rigorous argumentation
and documentation based upon the diversity of judicial and ethical
traditions. Based upon broad documentary evidence and testimonies
presented by men and women from Asia, Africa and Latin America
and the Pacific expressed over the course of three sessions, the
Popular Jury, integrated by social representatives of societies
of different countries, have come to the following VERDICT:
CONSIDERING
- THAT according to studies and dates
the debt of the poorest countries has been paid several times
over so that, in addition to resulting unpayable, is also illegitimate,
unjust and immoral.
- THAT the external debt, in addition
to constituting an economic problem, is also an ethical, political,
social, historical and environmental problem, generating responsibilities
at various levels and demanding immediate action.
- THAT external debt payments entail
a net transfer of resources from South to North. In 1998, the
41 poorest and most indebted countries transferred some $US1.68
billion more than they received. In that same year, Third
World Countries contributed some 114.6 billion dollars to the
private and public coffers of the North.
- THAT, since 1981, the people of the
South have transferred to the North 3.7trillion dollars, an
amount that is six times what was owed that year (560 billion)
and that today more that 200 billion is still owed.
- THAT neoliberal polices lead to an
explosive growth in the external debt affecting the capacity
to carry out social policies and compromising seriously the
political sovereignty of the countries of the South.
- THAT the unilateral decision of the
United States at the end of the 1970s to increase interests
rates over their historical level from 4-6 percent to more than
20 percent over a period of a few months spelled a betrayal
of good faith assumed in the original contracts in addition
to forcing the debtor countries to take out more debt in order
to pay interests rates, occasioning additional payments that
in the case of Latin America represented a loss of 106 billion
dollars.
- THAT there is a link between external
debt and excessive public internal debt and the search for short
term external capital, all provoking very high interest rates
in the South
- THAT governments in the South, conceiving
the financial system as an end in itself, sacrificed large parts
of the budgets dedicated to social benefit. In the process they
sacrificed the possibility of stimulating their internal economies
in order to keep up payments abandoning thereby health, education,
employment, popular housing, land demarcation for indigenous
peoples and their conditions of survivals of people. Also sacrificed
was the opportunity to value the elderly and children, to carry
out agrarian reform, to conserve and recover the environment.
- THAT the IMF's adjustment and other
economic policies proved disastrous for the countries subjected
to them were forced to increase their debt even more as well
as external obligations, forcing a moratorium in the payment
of social and environmental debts that were owed to children,
indigenous peoples, women and men rural and urban laborers,
black men and women, and nature.
- THAT the indebtedness of these countries
was carried out by dictatorial governments, also illegitimate
and anti-popular, and that creditors were accomplices but also
were quite aware of the risks that these loans entailed.
- THAT the growth of the debt is also
linked to the elites in countries in the South, that now as
throughout history, have indulge external financial institutions,
private and official as well as with the multilateral ones.
- THAT the countries of the North have
an ecological debt with the South on account of the historical
pillaging of its resources, the intellectual appropriation of
their ancestral knowledge, for the use and degradation of its
best land, water and land for export projects that threaten
the food sovereignty of the people, the product of toxic waste
that threatens the survival of peoples.
- THAT the external debt constitutes
a permanent violation of human, economic, social and cultural
rights established by the United Nations on December 16, 1988.
Here the UN demands the recognition of the right of national
self-determination, to economic development as well as to freely
dispose its wealth and natural resources, and that in no case
can a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.
The Members of the International Tribunal on Debt unanimously
decide:
- The External Debt of the countries
of the South, having been materialized outside of national and
international legal frameworks, without consulting the society,
having favored elites almost exclusively to detriment of a majority
of the people, and having wounded national sovereignty, is illegitimate,
unjust and unsustainably ethically, juridical and politically.
- The accused, Banks and transnational
corporations, governments of the North, the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank and other financial institutions and its
collaborators in the South are South, coauthors, accomplices
and collaborators of the following crimes:
- Draining the natural patrimony
and other resources of the South in order to meet external
debt payments, abetting this political, ecological and economic
instrument of exploitation of our peoples.
- Upholding and favoring the unequal
exchange regime that also contributed to the increase in
the external debt, adding to the extraction and production
of a raw materials to be sold at very low prices yet at
once importing industrial products bought at highly elevated
prices, as rich countries subsidies further reinforced the
unequal exchange regime.
- Charging usurious interest rates
that made the external debt sharply increase instead of
diminishing notwithstanding the regular flow of repayments
from the South
- Carrying out fraudulent operations
between international banks and businesses in the South,
inventing inexistent debt, or through exploitative mechanisms
that instead of favoring production allowed the enrichment
of a few because these simulated debts were later made state
debts.
- Applying structural adjustment
and other economic policies that obligate our states to
undertake privatization processes affecting the ownership
of natural resources and public utilities, and paying the
debt with the money that should have been invested in social
works and for economic reactivation.
- Supporting dictatorial or criminal
regimes though loans that sustained and illicitly enriched
the dictators, this notwithstanding the rejection of oppressed
peoples and sanctions imposed by the United Nations and
human rights organizations.
- Channeling in perverse form the
resources from contracted debt towards the enrichment of
officials, for outlandish expenditures and depositing in
foreign banks instead of using these toward social benefits
- Imposing economic integration programs
that only favor the interests of transnational companies
and the industrial countries of the North, all in based
violation of the fundamental individual and collective human
rights of peoples.
- Imposing political and economic
conditions of recession in debtor countries in order to
secure debt renegotiations.
- Continuing to collect a debt that
has already been paid several fold to the point of making
the people the victims of fraud.
- Breaking international law, its
norms and legal instruments, such as the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, Covenant 169 of the International Labor
Organization, the right of people to self-determination,
among many others, as well as national legislation.
- Plotting among the accused to loot
and exploit Third World peoples as the result of the aforementioned
crimes committed systematically
- Committing crimes of genocide and
crimes against humanity.
The Jury thereby requests the Tribunal
to dictate a sentence condemning those accused for the commissioning
of all or some of the crimes committed and indicated in this verdict.
It also requests the External Debt be declared as fraudulent,
illegitimate and the cause of the loss of national sovereignty
and the quality of life of the majority of the population of the
South
Finally the Jury exhorts the Tribunal
to accept the following recommendations
- To call for unity among the citizens
present in this forum and to the people of the Third World as
well as citizens of countries in the North who stand in solidarity
with the peoples' cause, and jointly realize a campaign external
debt cancellation
- Initiate processes of the sovereign
and independent audits of the external debts of our countries
in order to verify actual existing legal and, if indeed there
is still a debt that should be repaid, establish participative
and democratic procedures for social control over indebtedness.
- Urge Parliaments of indebted countries
to investigate the use of the debt by those responsible of generating
it in order to take them before the justice system, if so warranted.
- Develop Dignity and Sovereignty Campaigns
that will block bilateral and multilateral economic agreements
contrary to peoples interests, and against agreements with the
IMF or International Financial Institutions
- Propose to governments that the unite
around this common cause and do whatever is necessary so as
to insure the International Court of Justice in the Hague renders
a Consultative Opinion as regards the illegitimacy of the external
debt and about the suspension of all interest payments on the
debt
- Propose tog governments that these
interests payments instead be used exclusively for sustainable
development projects for the lives of all of our citizens.
- Accompany local and national processes
that seed to create sustainable societies as seen from an economic,
food, energy and environmental perspective
- Support the campaign for the payment
of the Ecological Debt, an obligation and responsibility of
the countries of the South, transnational corporations, multilateral
banks and other private financial institutions for carrying
out environmental destruction in the South
- To deliver this Tribunal's conclusions
to the identified principal accused parties and ask that they
respond in a given amount of time
- Accompany the legal processes that
will follow this verdict on the part of the identified accused
parties, declared guilty by this Tribunal, so as to avoid that
the crimes committed remain in impunity, denouncing also the
corrupt governments that have allowed the pillaging of their
peoples.
The Jury submits the present Verdict to
the Tribunal seeking justice for the peoples of the South and
for all of humanity. This is the symbolic road of a long march.
This is our decision.
Publish and disseminate.
JUBILEE
2000 SOUTH: No to Debt, Yes to Life!
Latin
American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Platform
The foreign debt of the so-called Third
World--due to its exorbitant amount and rate of growth, and because
of worsening conditions--now excludes four-fifths of the world's
population from economic and social development. The debt is a
direct reflection of the unjust international economic order,
the result of the long history of slavery and exploitation to
which our peoples have been subjected.
In the mid-1970s, Latin America's foreign debt totaled $60 billion.
By 1980, it was $204 billion, and by 1990, $443 billion. It is
estimated that it will reach nearly $706 billion in 1999, requiring
an annual debt service payment of $123 billion. Just to service
foreign debt, between 1982 and 1996 Latin America paid $739 billion
- more than the entire accumulated debt.
Under these circumstances, the foreign
debt has been and continues to be unpayable, illegitimate and
immoral.
It is impossible to pay. There is no mathematical
formula that can achieve it. Two full decades of unattainable
financing plans drawn up for developing countries have demonstrated
this with complete certainty.
The debt is illegitimate because, in large measure, it was contracted
by dictatorships, governments not elected by the people, as well
as by governments which were formally democratic, but corrupt.
Most of the money was not used to benefit the people who are now
being required to pay it back.
The debt is also illegitimate because it swelled as a result of
interest rates and negotiating conditions imposed by creditor
governments and banks, who persistently and outrageously denied
debtor countries the right of association, while the creditor
groups joined together in veritable creditor syndicates (Club
of Paris, Management Committee), backed by the economic coercion
of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Their strategy
was clear: you negotiate on your own; we negotiate as a bloc.
In addition, it is immoral to pay the debt because in order to
do so, the governments of our countries would have to allocate
an extremely high percentage of public spending, which affects
the delivery of social programs and the wages of working men and
women, generates unemployment and seriously hurts the economy.
There is already a huge social deficit in terms of people's health,
education and nutrition in the debtor countries.
Governments today spend 60 percent less per capita than they did
in 1970. Furthermore, attempting to increase exports will only
lead to the super-exploitation of our natural resources, which
will increasingly damage the environmental balance of our countries
and threaten the very survival of future generations.
The debt is also used as a justification
to maintain neoliberal policies, including structural adjustment
programs, as institutional mechanisms to perpetuate dependence.
Bail-out programs by creditors, with the
support of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
including the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative, have
only served to insure the continuity of mechanisms to keep countries
deep in debt.
From the legal perspective, we stress the fact that international
and national laws on debt generally fail to meet the objective
of ensuring peaceful coexistence. These are legal measures which
threaten the paramount objective of the law, work against the
public interest, and jeopardize social peace: therefore, they
have no legitimate raison d'etre.
Usury and the charging of interest on top of interest should be
forbidden. The monopolistic practices of banks, international
institutions and First World governments are illegal, as is the
denial of the right of free association for debtor nations. Systematic
and quasi-legal corruption, the flight of capital and "tax-havens"
are an integral part of the legal problems involved in foreign
debt.
In the Bible, Jubilee (Leviticus 25)
calls for justice between creditors and debtors, as well as peace
and harmony within human society, nature, and the universe, and
the elimination of enslavement resulting from the debt.
On the threshold of the new millennium,
considering the unbearable situation in which our peoples live,
and inspired by the Biblical teaching of Jubilee, we are launching
the Latin American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Campaign, joining
the international movement calling for the cancellation (annulment)
of the debt of impoverished nations of the world by the year 2000.
Demands of the Latin American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Campaign:
1. Cancel (annul), by the year 2000, the immoral and illegitimate
debt of the countries of the Third World in accordance with the
following principles:
* Transparency in the process, and inclusion of all stakeholders.
* For future negotiations: limit the service on the foreign debt
to a percentage not to exceed 3 percent of a country's budget,
in consideration of the precedent of Peru in 1946 and Germany
in 1953.
* Comprehensiveness and coordination with all the stakeholders
involved, in consideration of the Insolvency Law in countries
such as the United States which regulates insolvency proceedings
for municipalities.
* The right to appeal by any debtor nation. Creditors and debtors
will appoint an equal number of judges to an Arbitration Panel
or Tribunal. Debtor nations will make such appointments on the
basis of broad consultation with all sectors of society.
* In certain cases, when the Arbitration Tribunal deems appropriate,
a mechanism may be created to study the possible partial cancellation
of debt, taking into account the range of indebtedness, origin
of the debt, and the level of poverty of the population.
2. In the process of canceling (annulling) the debt, consider
the urgent need to ensure the right of Latin America, the Caribbean,
Africa and Asia to development, with respect for all human rights
of individuals and peoples and an end to the current impunity.
3. Conduct a broad audit of the process of indebtedness of each
nation, using local tribunals, with the participation of civil
society organizations in order to ensure transparency and access
to information for all citizens.
4. Ensure that resources freed up from the payment of the foreign
debt be used to repay the social and environmental debt to our
peoples through plans and programs for human development, particularly
the creation of decent jobs; strengthening of social policies
on education, health and social security, as well as environmental
protection; consideration of the impact of all policies on the
most vulnerable groups, especially boys and girls, older women
and men, women in general, and indigenous persons; and ensure
the active participation of civil society in the design, implementation,
follow-up and evaluation of the entire process.
5. Transform the current international economic and financial
system to place it at the service of human beings, based on international
relationships between nations and peoples predicated on justice,
equity, and solidarity. It is therefore necessary to strengthen
the political agencies of the United Nations, restoring their
function of policy development, a role which has been usurped
by administrative agencies.
6. Reject completely the Multilateral Agreement on Investment
because of its absolute subordination of men and women, peoples
and nations to markets and capital.
We call on Jubilee 2000 campaigns in creditor nations to embrace
the demands expressed in this proposal. We appeal especially to
campaigns in the North not to put forward resolutions or make
any laws which would include specific figures, nor any which would
provide less than what we are currently proposing.
We call on the peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean and the
world to develop new power relations at all levels of society,
to ensure the ongoing struggle against all forms of injustice,
violence and discrimination.
We are strongly on the side of Peace with Dignity and Justice.
No to Debt, Yes to Life.
Tegucigalpa, January 27, 1999
Latin American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Coalition Members: Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Venezuela
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