Why You Should Oppose The G8
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Once a year, leaders from eight of the wealthiest countries on the planet meet to discuss the growing poverty and insecurity of the world. With millions spent on security, you can rest assured that these heads of state will sleep soundly. But are their policies really leaving the rest of us more secure? Join concerned citizens from around the world in demanding that the G8 live up to their rhetoric and promote real economic security based on respect for human rights and the urgent needs of the world’s poor.
1. Democracy for the Wealthy
The Group of Eight bill their summit as a democratic forum, as it represents a meeting of elected heads of state from the U.S., Britaian, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia. But there is nothing democratic about leaders from eight of the most powerful countries in the world drafting policies without representatives of the world’s other 183 nations. Leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America are largely excluded from the meetings despite the fact that they together represent the majority of the world’s population and nearly all the world’s poor. Civil society groups are locked outside the gates of these closed-door, country club policy meetings.
2. Failing the Developing World
The G8 are the ultimate arbiters of life and debt. Together they exercise a decisive influence over many of the world’s major financial institutions, with direct control over 46% of the votes in the World Bank and 48% of the votes in the International Monetary Fund. While the G8 have gone to some lengths to project the appearance of concern for the developing world, their repeated promises of debt cancellation have gone unfulfilled. Following massive protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999, the Group of Eight committed to a combined $110 billion in debt relief for the world’s poorest countries. Five years and four summits later, barely half has been paid out.
3. Starving the Poor to Feed the Rich
While the G8 have made some important strides towards debt relief, they are actively resisting full debt cancellation. G8 member countries and the multilateral lending institutions they control emphasize “debt sustainability†rather than “debt cancellation.†By this logic, the amount forgiven is determined more by the willingness of rich country creditors to pay than the urgent needs of the world’s poor. The World Bank and the IMF claim that they don’t have the resources for 100% debt cancellation, but a new report from Jubillee Ireland shows these institutions could forgive all of the debt using existing reserves and actually earn money in the process. Clearly the resources are there, what’s lacking is the political will.
4. Using Debt to Dominate Developing Countries
Furthermore, what programs the G8 have agreed to rely in large part on loan conditionalities which force developing countries to open up their markets to multinational corporations and limit their sovereignty by barring policy tools which industrialized countries have used for decades to promote economic development. These policies, known as structural adjustment, have had the effect of driving developing countries further into poverty. World Bank and IMF policies that demand the privatization of public services have resulted in increaing rates and reduced access for those who need them most.
5. Undermining Access to Affordable Medicines
This year almost 3 million Africans will die of AIDS. A half million African children will die of malaria. While the G8 countries mouth concern for people suffering from these and other treatable illnesses, their policies ultimately serve only to protect the patent monopolies of multinational business, while undermining people’s access to safe, affordable medicines. The pharmaceutical industry, concentrated in the U.S. and other G8 countries, is actively campaigning through the G8 leadership to block access to low-cost, generic drugs - a key component of the World Health Organization’s plan to treat 3 million people suffering from HIV by 2005.
6. Underfunding the Global Fight Against Aids
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, founded with the blessing of the G8, has gone underfunded by those very same rich countries. The Bush Administration has further destabilized the Fund by launching its own bilateral funding mechanism, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEFAR). The G8 countries must fully fund the Global Fund and make it the principle vehicle for financing the war on AIDS. HIV/AIDS, the greatest global threat to human security, should be at the top of the G8 agenda.
7. Underdeveloping the Global South
While the G8 pushes an “Agenda for Growth†for rich nations, they are under-mining growth in the rest of the world. The G8 claims that trade liberalization is critical for improving the world economy. Yet the last 25 years of so-called, “Washington Concensus†economic reforms of opening up global South economies to trade and investment while privatizing many government services has not succeeded.
8. Fueling Resentment in the Middle East
Now the G8 want to introduce this failed model to the volatile Middle East. The proposed Greater Middle East Initiative would introduce the policies of structural adjustment to countries throughout the region and facilitate the establishment of “export processing zones†where workers toil for low wages in substandard conditions and without the right to organize. Beyond the devastating of these policies for workers, the plan is already fueling resentment as yet another front in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and a symbol of U.S. imperial ambitions throughout the region. If the G8 truly want to bring democracy and security to the Middle East, unilaterally introducing plans that undermines sovereignty and exploits impoverished workers is not the way to do it.
9. Practicing a Double Standard on Debt
One of the primary goals of the U.S. government right now is to secure full debt cancellation for the people of Iraq. According to U.S. officials, it will be impossible for the country to achieve a stable democracy and a prosperous economy in the absence of total debt cancellation. Clearly the people of Iraq should not be responsible for footing the bill of their own repression. But the Bush Administration reveals a double standard by pressing for cancellation of Iraq’s odious debts while refusing to apply the same standard to other countries that have suffered under similarly repressive regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia. This principle should be applied across the board.
Demand Human Security!
G8 members must instruct the IMF and World Bank to cancel 100% of the debts of all impoverished countries using the institutions existing reserves and resources. G8 leaders have failed to meet their own commitments on debt cancellation for poor countries. The Bush Administration reveals a double standard by claiming that Iraq’s debt must be forgiven, while refusing to apply the same criteria to odious debts of African, Asian and Latin American countries that suffered under similarly repressive regimes.
HIV/AIDS, the greatest threat to human security, should appear at the top of the G8 agenda. The G8 must commit to fully funding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and must make it the principle vehicle for financing the war on AIDS. The G8 must also ensure adequate resources are available to implement the World Health Organization’s plan with generic drugs.
The contested “Washington Consensus†on privatization and “free trade†must be abandonded by the G8. By simply lowering trade barriers, countries in the developing world have not experienced the economic growth necessarry to allieviate poverty.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund must be radically trans-formed. Evidence to support the termination of the structural adjustment program has already been internally documented, yet the institutions continue to resist doing their fair share for debt cancellation. The only reasonable option left is to radically transform these institutions by ending their practice of pushing loans and grants heavy with conditions that hinder pro-poor growth, and providing 100% debt cancellation from these institutions own resources.
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Reprinted with permission from Global Exchange.
@ June 12, 2004