While tens of thousands of activists gather to call for a renewed vision of economic justice at the United States Social Forum in Detroit this week, the Group of 20 (G20) world leaders are meeting in Toronto to address the continuing economic crisis.
As half our team arrives at the USSF today, the rest of us are spreading the word about our newest report: “Making the Grade: The G20’s Commitments to the World’s Poorest Countries.”
Our new analysis shows shockingly slow progress on the G20’s already meager goals to help the most impoverished. Even more troubling is that progress has basically stopped; since their last meeting in September, only $1.2 billion in new resources for the poorest countries has been delivered - the same amount the government of Canada spent on security for the three-day G8/G20 summits.
Our scorecard also shows that almost all new G20 money comes as loans, not grants. The economic crisis - and new lending to supposedly stop the crisis - has placed many countries dangerously close to the brink of a new debt crisis.
While the G20 works to create a new financial system and mobilize around Europe’s debt crisis, they cannot ignore the debt crisis that continues to silently kill in the Global South. The G-20 calls themselves the “premier forum for international economic cooperation,” yet impoverished countries who have been the most affected by this crisis not of their making have no part of the decisions made by the G20.
Want to learn more? Read the report and then help spread the word by sending a letter to the editor today.
ia has five district groups working on debt, trade and aid issues. Monze is a small regional town center of thirty thousand residents, three hours south of Lusaka. Phoebe Moono is the lively facilitator of the group. They have 25 active members with four work groups on APRM (Africa Peer Review Mechanism), debt, economic and social rights and just wages as part of national projects on Trade, Aid and Debt.