WE ARE NO DEBTORS! WE ARE CREDITORS OF A HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DEBT!
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JUBILEE SOUTH at the Norway Conference on Conditionality, Nov. 2006 |
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Saturday, 03 February 2007 |
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JUBILEE SOUTH POSITION ON CONDITIONALITY
(first circulated at the Norway Conference on Conditionality, 28-29
November 2006)
THE ONLY CONDITION IS NO CONDITIONS
1. Jubilee South welcomes the Conference on Conditionality organized by
the Government of Norway. We appreciate the intent of the meeting and
its CSO supporters, as we also appreciate the context in which it takes
place. It is a welcome opportunity for the different parties to
discuss an inherently wrong, unjust and highly resented political tool
used by the “donors” and particularly the Bank on governments and
peoples of the South.
2. We regret, however, that the chosen focus on the undesirability of
“economic conditionality” leaves the impression that non-economic
conditionalities may be desirable or legitimate. Drawing a distinction
between a purported good or political conditionality on the one side,
and negative or economic conditionality on the other is analytically
unsound, politically superficial and risks placing even more power in
the hands of the World Bank and external lenders.
3. Jubilee South stands against all forms of Conditionality. The
imposition of conditionalities is an externally-driven process that
contradicts the principles of sovereignty, democratic
self-determination, autonomous decision-making and popular empowerment.
As such, any and all conditionalities are unacceptable to Jubilee
South.
4. Conditionality, in any of its manifestations, undermines the
autonomy of national processes and encourages the reduction of public
spaces for citizen’s participation in the discussion and definition of
government policies. Practice has shown that political conditionality
geared toward achieving “good governance” has failed. Enhanced
democracy is the product of citizen engagement and not just the result
of getting the right recipe of policy and institutional change.
Changes imposed through external pressure tend to be unsustainable
because they are not deeply rooted.
5. Political and economic conditionalities are two sides of the same
coinboth are impositions wrapped in the latest discourse designed by
the rich to “assist” the poor, and make a profit doing so. The World
Bank and the “donor” countries, instead of facing up to the failure of
the neoliberal economic development and growth model, pretend once
again to place the blame on the victim. Now it is claimed that the
skewed development and mounting poverty are the result of “bad”
“corrupt” governmentsthe same governments that have blindly followed
the Washington Consensus recipe book.
6. Having succeeded in many countries in imposing, with elite
complicity, privatization and liberalization measures, corporate
capital is deepening its penetration. This is facilitated by the
public sector governance norms pushed by the IFIs, the bilateral
lenders, Free Trade Agreements and the World Trade Organization. As
the Bank admits, most of its conditions are now in that area,
particularly financial “management” to reinforce its ongoing pressure
for governments to sustain privatization, trade liberalization and
macro-economic orthodoxy in general so as to facilitate and protect the
operations of finance capital and corporations.
7. Conditions to impose privatization and liberalization are neither
more nor less objectionable than those allegedly leading to good
governance. As the Norwegian CSO Networkers stated, “Conditionalities
are the “sticks” that the Bank and its donor partners use to enforce
their will on the receiver, and constitute an important set of tools in
current development policies. Loans and grants “buy” powerful
influence, and conditionality is the ticket to that power. The tools of
conditionality therefore greatly extends the arsenal of tools that the
Bank can activate, and gives it a formidable leverage over receiving
countries”.
8. We hold that “donor” conditionality needs to be analyzed in the
context of the chronic poverty, impoverishment and social exclusion
that plagues the South. Power is at the heart of the unfair social and
international relations that must be changed and not reinforced. In
Jubilee South we speak not of aid and conditions, but of the need for
reparations and restoration of the historical, economic, ecological,
political and social debt that the North owes to the South. The real --
and immediate -- issue is to secure the unconditional stop to the net
flow of resources from South to North in the form of debt repayment and
profit remittances that impoverish so many of our countries.
9. From the standpoint of principle, Jubilee South insists that the
devolution of what has been taken from our countries over history and
in documented matter is a principle not subject to negotiation. This is
a question of human rights for both North and South, a matter of
justice for the South and should not be viewed merely as a question of
choice for the North.
10. We acknowledge that the impulses of charity and sympathy are
infinitely different from those of imperial greed and domination
through force and structural adjustment. Nonetheless as long as what
is offered is social alleviation rather than core restructuring of the
unjust global exploitation system, the same impulses are insufficient
and, if not redirected, could lean closer to the positions of
“creditors”, leaving the unjust debt order untouched.
11. Democratic social movements and organizations in the South believe
that it is the poor themselves that can and must act as their own
liberators. When bilateral funders and others in the North demand
specific social policies and so-called poverty alleviation measures,
they may be undermining the very democratic processes that are key to
the empowerment of the poor.
12. “External co-operation” has done much harm to the South,
particularly where accompanied, as usual, by high-sounding discourses
of democracy. With conditionality as one of its tools, the
relationship perpetuated is still one of domination. We call on
everyone to closely scrutinize and reject the prescriptions being
handed down by the World Bank, as it avidly seeks to become the
standard bearer on issues of governance and anti-corruption process.
Bilateral cooperation agencies should not continue to accept Bank
leadership.
13.Jubilee South calls on Governments in the South not to be deceived
or to fall into the trap of accepting the policy parameters dictated by
the so-called creditors, lest conditionality deepen the economic,
political and ideological occupation. Policy on conditionalities should
be addressed not as a matter of “good” v. “bad” conditionality, but as
a political question. We must not allow the World Bank to dictate the
terms of the debate on governance, development and conditionality.
14. We call on CSOs in the North to
o Support the process of social movement building and the demands
articulated by those movements for broader and deeper debate on the
nature of poverty and debt.
o Be in solidarity with –not preempt or substitutepeoples’ movements
in their democratic and sovereign process of creating new instruments
of governance, modes of interaction with or resistance to governments.
o Be respectful of the decision-making process at the level of CSOs in
the South.
15. We also call on CSOs in the North and forward-looking development
agencies to support the creation of spaces, in the North and in the
South, so that people themselves can freely determine their future and
create societies free from poverty, debt and war. All attempts to
undermine countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela that are taking
important steps to democratize and practice alternative development
must also be rejected.
16. We enjoin you to broaden the debates within all our countries and
tackle the links between economic power, multinational corporations,
war and militarism, and address the issues of exploitation and
colonialism (old and new).
17. The struggle against debt and conditionality should serve and be
part of the struggles of the poor for the redistribution of economic
and political power. Our struggle is not to ‘humanize’ an inherently
cruel international power structure, but to change it.
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