CIVIL SOCIETY GLOBAL FORUM:
FINANCING THE RIGHT TO
SUSTAINABLE AND EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT;
PRECEDING THE FFD CONFERENCE
MARCH 14-16, 2002
"We are here to report to you and the world
that we are profoundly displeased with the outcome of the so-called Monterrey
Consensus," Paul Nehru Tennassee, representative of the World Confederation
of Labor before the United Nations and member of the International Support
Committee. [ Read
his full address at the Global Forum, March 14 ]
More than 1,500 representatives from civil society and NGOs gathered
from March 14 - 16, 2002 in Monterrey, Mexico to discuss concepts and
strategies to solve the ongoing social and economic crisis in which many
southern countries are caught. The Global Forum.
The Global
Forum held the week before the Financing for Development Conference,
was intended to "... create an international Forum for civil, social
and non-governmental organizations, to push for global civil society's
proposals regarding on issues such as environment and gender, labor, economic,
social and cultural rights, alternative financing measures and most important
the inclusion of a social agenda for the design of the new financing architecture."
The NGO community, stressing their role not as anti-globalists but as
part of the Global Justice movement, criticised neo-liberal tendencies
and the uncontrolled economic globalisation. Topics discussed at the Global
Forum were the need to increase the official development assistance (ODA),
the mobilisation of domestic resources, or the social and ecological remodeling
of international financial sources; the regulation of international free
trade, debt relief, and the international finance and trade systems. The
central concern of many of the NGOs was the global economic structure
that institutionalises unequal power relations.
The Monterrey NGO statement, released at the closing ceremony of the
forum was presented at a side event during the official UN Conference
on Financing for Development [ rtf;
5 pages ]. The statement makes several demands such as
more transparency within the international financial system with the goal
of greater stability of global markets,· the inclusion of the private
sector under binding social and ecological rules or the· implementation
of alternative models of financing such as currency transaction taxes
to stabilize the international financial system. In addition, NGOs called
for a debt cancellation for Southern countries and binding timetables
for the ODA increase by the developed countries to 0.7% of GDP. The statement
further heavily criticises that the Monterrey Consensus, the draft outcome
of the UN FfD conference, does not include any concrete commitments or
new ideas and proposals to solve the crisis many countries of the South
are finding themselves in.
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