People’s Tribunal declares external debt illegitimate, calls for the decommissioning of IMF-World Bank
Posted on April 18 2002 |
The International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Debt, in its fourth and concluding session April 18 in Washington DC, declared all external debt to be illegitimate and, thus, should be immediately repudiated and cancelled.
Judge Dumisa Ntsebeza, former chief investigator of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who was among four members of the Tribunal Presidium officiating in the session, had the judgement read: “In return for the wealth illegitimately transferred to the North from the South, the countries of the South should be provided reasonable compensation, to determine the magnitude and manner of payment of which a Global Commission on Debt should be constituted.’
The judgement went on to declare that “international institutions which serve as agents to coordinate, oversee and guarantee debt flows, such as the IMF and the World Bank, should be decommissioned and any residual useful role served by them should be handed
over to more democratically-managed international institutions.”
The Tribunal called for “pro-people and pro-poor policies of development” to replace “neoliberal policy regimes that are designed to sustain and worsen debt.”
Besides social mobilization to put pressure on governments in the North and the South to heed its recommendations, the Tribunal enjoined people to use supplementary legal procedures such as petitions in the International Court of Justice at The Hague to bring individual instances of violation of individual social and human rights to trial.
The concluding session, held at the First Congregational Church in Washington DC, was called by the Presidium to give creditors, creditor and debtor governments, and others accused for their culpability in the accumulation and maintenance of the debt of the South the time to present their defense. The defendants, however, chose not to respond to the Tribunal’s notice giving them a deadline to submit a written defense.
The concluding session reviewed the proceedings of the first three sessions held February 1-2, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as part of the second World Social Forum.
Over 5,000 persons from around the world directly participated in the Porto Alegre sessions, the largest international public forum on debt ever convened. The sessions heard an indictment, presented by chief prosecutor Alejandro Teitlebaum, that gave a historical background of the debt crisis and an overview of the arguments on the illegitimacy of debt. The prosecution also demonstrated proof through numbers that services on the external debt results in a net transfer of resources from the South to the North. In 1980, the South owed US$567 billion dollars yet since then US $3,450 billion has been paid or over six times the amount of the actual debt. Moreover the creditors continue to claim that they are still owed over two trillion dollars - three and a half times more than in 1980.
The Tribunal received testimony from 21 victims and expert witnesses from countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The first set of testimonies built the case on the accusation of the illegitimacy of debt based on the impacts of debt service and the consequence of redirecting funds away from state social service obligations. A witness from Africa spoke of the consequences for the region of having to pay between 1990 and 1993, US$13.4 billion annually to its external creditors more than its combined spending on education and health.
On the accusation of the illegitimacy of debt based on the impact of projects and policies financed by debt, witnesses spoke of projects and policies financed by lenders that have resulted in enormous ecological and social damage. This included natural resource extraction that is destroying the means of survival for Southern communities, the contamination of the atmosphere through excessive emissions of greenhouse gases, the erection of mega-projects geared towards profit generation, the appropriation of traditional knowledge and seeds, the dumping of toxic wastes in the South, and the consequences of Northern financial and political support of armed conflict.
On the accusation of the illegitimacy of debt based on the nature of contracting parties, processes, terms and usage, testimonies covered cases of stolen wealth, the public assumption of private debts, usurious interest rates, and odious debt.
On the fourth accusation, the illegitimacy of debt based on the use of the debt to impose conditionalities and the use of debt relief as leverage for more conditionalities, witnesses presented their experiences and evidence of the use of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) as conditionalities and eligibility criteria for different types of loans.
A friend of the court in the person of Eric Toussaint, of the CADTM, endeavored to present the framework, the logic and reasoning, and the perspectives of those accused.
Given the evidence presented, the Jury recognized that, in addition to being unpayable, the debt is also illegitimate, unjust and immoral. Overall, the external debt of Southern countries was recognized as a permanent violation of economic, social, and cultural human rights violations as established by the United Nations.
In spite of a public clamor for the Presidium to render its judgement, the judges directed the Tribunal Secretariat to notify those accused of the tribunal proceedings and to invite them to present their defense. The session in Washington DC was later scheduled.
The Tribunal was convened by the international network of Jubilee South, together with the American Association of Jurists, the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, the World Council of Churches, Kairos-Canada, the Worldwide Women's March, Ustawi, and the Jubilee USA Network.
|
|
|
about us 
