NIGD Press release UNCTAD XI

There is an urgent quest to address the problem of growing inequalities and the negative consequences of current economic policies, which undermine the rights and livelihood of working people in the South in particular and tend to transfer assets and power from the poor to the rich. The growth of the world economy has come to a halt. There has been no genuine per capita economic growth in the world economy for 15-20 years. Since the mid- or late-1980s, growth in one part of the world has meant economic decline somewhere else. One third of the countries of the world face a consistent long- term economic decline or have experienced a rapid collapse, precipitating also humanitarian catastrophes, genocides and wars. The constantly occurring crises in the global south have stimulated calls for military interventions. The world economic order has been securitised by the US and increasingly also by the EU. Under the titles of "humanitarian" and "just" wars, the late 19th century geopolitics and imperialism have returned. To counter tendencies towards world economic crises, increasing inequalities and new wars, world economic governance needs to be democratised, heterodoxised, pluralised and made socially responsible. The available resources need to be distributed much more equally:

• 1. It is essential to not only react on the neoliberal agenda, civil society must be supported to develop own strategies and concrete proposals and together work for these. We must ensure space and time for these ideas to develop. For this purpose we support the further development of the World Social Forum and other similar processes.
  

• 2. Financial reforms should be the first priority among reform proposals, given the role of global finance in disciplining states and causing widespread economic and social problems. The financial system should firstly be reformed by implementing a tax on currency transactions. The second reform is to resolve the debt problem by means of a comprehensive systemic resolution including audit of the legitimacy of the existing debt, cancellation of debts when illegitimate, and by way of creating a new process for the fair resolution of the debt crises.
  

• 3. The multilateral governance of trade should be subsumed under democratic and social considerations. The scope of the WTO should be limited and redefined, and its procedures and processes democratised.
  

• 4. After first reforms of finance and trade, the worldwide relations of production should be re-regulated and transformed.