The World March of Women at the Global Forum on Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development
What kind of financing for what kind of development?
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- Introduction
- 1) Brief Overview of the World March of Women
- 2) Current Development Model Conceived Exclusively in Economic and Military Terms
- 3) Indispensable Elements in Sustainable and Equitable Development
- 4) Alternative Proposals for the Financing of Sustainable and Equitable Development
- 5) Urgent, Short-term Measures that the World's Political and Economic Leaders Must Take to Finance Equitable Development and to Address the Structural Causes of Poverty and Violence against Women
- 6) In Conclusion
This document was written for the NGO Global Forum called Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development, which took place a few days prior to the United Nations' official Conference on Financing for Development.
The World March of Women considers the Global Forum represents an important arena for:
1. popular education and strengthening and consolidating alliances between NGOs and networks participating in the Global Forum;2. denouncing the world in which we live, built on a purely economic and military model of development;
3. pressuring participants at the official conference to influence decisions regarding the financing of economic policies;
4. proposing alternatives to the development model from our perspective as feminists in solidarity who promote ecological practices-in other words, proposals about the world we want to live in, as expressed in the March demands.
1) Brief Overview of the World March of Women
The World March of Women was the initiative of the Fédération des femmes du Québec (Québec Federation of Women) and was quickly joined by some 6000 women's groups in 161 countries across the planet.
In the year 2000, we staged many national actions and world demonstrations. The crowning point came on October 17, 2000, with big marches held in different countries, a march outside the international financial institutions in Washington and a march in New York at the United Nations.
March representatives met with the president of the World Bank, J. Wolfensohn, and the managing director of the IMF, H. Köhler. At those meetings, the spokeswomen clearly and forcefully denounced the capitalist, neoliberal and patriarchal tenets of those institutions' policies; the effects of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and foreign debt servicing imposed on countries of the South and East; and the resulting catastrophic increase in poverty and violence against women. They also presented the World March of Women demands and called for radical shifts in the development model dictated by the current reality of economic globalization.
Representatives of the March national coordinating bodies met with UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette (at the last minute she filled in for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was delayed in the Middle East) and a number of other UN officials.
The March representatives delivered 5,084,568 signatures collected all over the world in support of concrete measures to "eliminate poverty and ensure the fair distribution of the planet's wealth among rich and poor, and men and women; and to eliminate violence against women and ensure gender equality." As they did in the previous meetings, the delegates denounced the worldwide increase in poverty and violence against women, and they presented the World March of Women's political demands.
A wealth of materials on the World March of Women, including the 17 world demands, can be found on the March Web site at: www.marchemondiale.org/en/cahier/liste.html
Considering
the almost total lack of response to the March demands on the part of
our governments, the United Nations and the international financial
institutions, and considering the unprecedented increase in levels of
poverty and violence against women, on October 6, 2001, at the 3rd International Meeting held in Montreal, we reaffirmed the need to continue the World March of Women.
2) Current Development Model Conceived Exclusively in Economic and Military Terms
In the official preparatory documents for the International Conference on Financing for Development there is never any critical analysis of the present development model. Quite the contrary, it is clear the Conference has no intention of changing the basic model but rather of continuing on in the same direction. The aim of the UN International Conference is to focus exclusively on the financial aspects of development, because they are pivotal to the model: development is conceived in economic terms alone (and after the attacks on September 11, 2001, the military factor in the development model has increased alarmingly).
Let us remember for a moment that, at the Bretton Woods International Conference (July 1 to 22, 1944), the victors of World War II founded the multilateral institutions-the World Bank, the IMF, the GATT (now the WTO)-which had a crucial international role: they imposed on the world a global financial system, the basis of which was economic development as synonymous with peace and prosperity.
Now, almost 60 years later, the same model is still being applied.
The implementation of this model of economic development has led to the following global result: 80% of the world's population possesses less than 20% of the resources on the planet, and 70% of the people living in poverty are women.
We can also safely assert that the essentials of this model have been applied for the past 500 years, with the well-known disastrous consequences for the world's Native populations and for the ecological balance.
Meeting at the UN from September 6 to 8, 2000 for the Millennium Assembly, 191 heads of State of all member countries adopted a document of capital importance. They decided, among other things:
Today we note, with great sorrow, that without radical changes to the worldwide social, cultural, political and economic architecture, this declaration will be confined to good intentions alone. European non-governmental organizations have stated that it will be impossible to eradicate poverty among half of the people living on less than one dollar a day (about 650 million) between now and the year 2015, because not a single measure has been taken in that direction. (1) The World March of Women denounces the current model of development, built around a single system of economic domination imposed on the entire planet, that of neoliberal capitalism. It also denounces the perpetuation of a system of cultural, social and political domination of women. Patriarchy, which has been exercised for thousands of years, conditions relations between men and women, enshrines male power and causes violence and exclusion. (2)
The two systems subscribe to different rules and a different rationale, but they feed and reinforce one another.
3) Indispensable Elements in Sustainable and Equitable Development We the women of the World March are mobilizing because we want to be able to live in a world where: 4) Alternative Proposals for the Financing of Sustainable and Equitable Development Clearly no prefabricated model to reconfigure the world exists, nor is there a finished development model. We know that at present thousands of popular organizations, particularly women's groups, all over the world are working to develop feasible alternatives; for example: We do not deny the need to have capital and investments, but they should be used to finance equitable human development. We have a different conception of wealth, production, consumption and work. We believe the economy must be based on solidarity. Why are so many investments and so much capital concentrated in so few hands of individuals and multinational corporations? Why can't capital flow freely in all directions? Why is so much of it invested in speculative ventures?
Many
economists, both men and women, assert that productive, non-speculative
investments are possible-investments that are aimed at local, national
and regional development; that focus on the needs of populations; that
fully conform to ILO labour standards and various conventions and
protocols designed to protect human rights and the environment. It is
possible moreover for citizens to democratically discuss the guidelines
of such investments and thus decide on what kind of development they
wish to have that will be more respectful environmentally. 5) Urgent, Short-term Measures that the World's Political and Economic Leaders Must Take to Finance Equitable Development and to Address the Structural Causes of Poverty and Violence against Women Below are some of the urgent, short-term measures recommended by the World March of Women. These measures are contained in the March's political platform, made up of the 17 world demands we are carrying forward and for which we are willing to march until they are fulfilled: Debt cancellation is necessary to free up development and stop the hemorrhage of wealth to the North. With the resulting money, the South could have sources to finance sustainable and equitable development. Other measures must be added to this one in order to eliminate ALL criminal financial practices such as tax havens, banking secrecy and money laundering. These old, so-called "aid" measures-which have never been implemented in the proportions decided by the rich countries themselves- cannot represent a long-term alternative either, but they can provide extra resources for urgent, short-term financing. They could be seen more as reparations than as aid. This is why, in the most recent world meetings, women have demonstrated and demanded that a gender-based perspective be included in all agreements and all trade policies; that the unpaid work women do-within the home, for example-be recognized as wealth and be computed as part of the GNP; that women's fundamental economic, social and cultural role in development be recognized; that legislative measures and national and world programs be implemented to eliminate all forms of violence committed against women and girls; that measures be introduced to facilitate women's priority access to education, day care services, technical training, credit and land; and that other measures be implemented to ensure access by individual women and women's groups to the structures of political and economic power. Innumerable feasible and successful alternatives are contained in each one of these themes. All that is needed is the political will to implement them systematically. We believe it is essential for the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization to be linked and subordinated to a radically changed United Nations Organization. International economic, trade and financial institutions should be under the political control of the transformed UN to ensure that these institutions respect human rights, which, in the hierarchy of international norms, are above economic and trade interests. (4)
We
will continue to fight to have women's voices heard for they have been
kept silent for too long, and we will continue to fight for women to
gain equal representation in all international decision-making bodies. 6) In Conclusion We consider that the Global Forum has given us an important and even invaluable opportunity to continue building bridges between the peoples of the world; to draw on the pluralism of our diverse cultures; to move ahead with different yet complementary strategies of exerting pressure, mobilizing, educating and lobbying; to strengthen one another in the exercise of representative and participatory democracy; and to experience equality between men and women.
(1) ) "Impossible to Eradicate Poverty by 2015: European NGOs." January 31, 2002, www.cimacnoticias.com (2) Advocacy Guide to Women's World Demands. July 1999, p.9 for the elimination of poverty. (4) Visit the portal of the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre II to read about the proposed alternatives: www.forumsocialmundial.org.br |
Last modified 2006-04-06 08:14 PM
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