Several non-governmental organizations launched at the World Social Forum in Dakar, capital city of Senegal, an international campaign to demand G20 countries to combat financial activities of tax havens that are extremely detrimental to developing countries. The campaign calls citizens around the world to send messages to G20 Presidents to bring the issue of financial secrecy in tax havens to the November Summit of developed and emerging countries, according to AFP news agency. The campaign calls the people to write especially to Nicolas Sarkozy, since France is chairing the G20 this year. Christian Aid, CCDF-Terre Solidaire, Latindadd, Oxfam and Tax Justice Network Afrique are among the promoters of the initiative. These social groups estimate tax losses in developing countries at 170,000 million dollars per year, due for instance to companies receiving their profits in bank accounts in tax havens.
Tens of thousands of people from different movements and social organizations from the five continents are participating in the World Social Forum in Dakar, with anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal features. They are working on issues such as: economic solidarity, fair trade, foreign debt, financial system reforms, food sovereignty, climate justice, human rights, children and women exploitation, migration, decolonization, among other things. Jubilee South, a network that works against the foreign debt and domination, is present at the Forum where it has been organizing activities about the situation in Haiti, the climate crisis and climate finance, the organization of a Peoples Tribunal on Environmental Debt, among others. “The main challenge at the World Social Forum is to develop and anti-systemic alternative to fight climate change and the consequences new debts will have on Southern countries”, said Sandra Quintela, Jubilee South / Americas coordinator according to newspaper Tiempo Argentino.
Meanwhile, La Via Campesina, a network made up by farmers organizations from all regions is also present at the Forum working on issues such as violence against women, food sovereignty and land grabbing. “The European approach to the current debt crisis repeats the errors that helped turn the sovereign debt crisis of Southern countries in the 1980s into what was later called “a lost decade for development,” says Oygunn Brynildsen Policy Officer at Eurodad. “Rather than holding investors responsible for the risks of their investments, public funds are being used at the expense of tax payers to bail-out the private sector,” she added. However, “there are alternatives to handle such protracted crises in ways which do not put the burden on the poor,” says Nuria Molina, Eurodad Director. “Rather than condemning debtor countries to protracted adjustments, while securing profits from risky investments, governments must put in place fair and transparent debt workout mechanisms based on well-tested insolvency principles, ,” Molina said.
EMANCIPATION FROM NORTH’S ‘DIKTATS’
“It would be sufficient to bring home 30% of the illegal funds deposited by some African presidents in bank accounts located in Western countries to reimburse the continent’s entire foreign debt”: said, speaking at the World Social Forum, by Eric Toussaint. The activist Eric Toussaint, president of the Belgian Committee to Cancel Foreign Debt in the Third World (CADTM), which highlights Africa’s potential to help itself financially. However, banks in the donor countries propose easier terms loans that are nothing more than “the illegitimate recycling of the same all African funds, fruit of illicit appropriation or kickbacks, deposited by some corrupt leaders or regimes,” said Toussaint, a historian and political scientist. Toussaint said that these sums “are three times greater than the total sum of Africa’s foreign debt”, which the World Bank has estimated to be some USD 134 billion. In accordance with international legal instruments and following Nigeria’s example, which has managed to recover the funds deposited by former president Sani Abacha, “many African countries could follow this road to resolve so many budget problems,” said Toussaint, who also asked countries of the South to adopt “a more dignified behavior” toward international financial institutions of the Bretton Woods system, which often demand what are actually “illegitimate” funds, which do not conform to national and international financial law. A similar appeal was advocated by the Senegalese activist and philosophy teacher Aminata Diaw Cissé, the head of the Council for the Development of Social Sciences Research in Africa (CODESRIA) “democracy as a technical solution to our problems is in crisis”. Ms. Cissé added, “every important political decision comes from such institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF while our economic and political policies guided by donor countries will not be able to lead to a true development”. At the end of the “Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast (…): Africa, is Democracy in Crisis?” roundtable, held in Dakar yesterday, Ms. Cissé insisted that “to make us less vulnerable if would be necessary to affirm a true Pan–African vision, which is to lead African states out of the condition of Nation-States”. Many participants at the Forum believe that Africa’s development future will only succeed if adequate resources are mobilized to ensure that young people receive “universal scholarization”. The participants at the reflection group “Financing of Public Education and Efficiency” organized by the ‘Coalition of Organizations in Synergy for the Defense of Public Education’ (COSYDEP), believe that education should become inclusive and be based on national languages because “none of the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved if Africa does not first resolve young people’s and women’s illiteracy; strong political will and public funds are needed”.