IN VIEW OF THE ALARMING DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:

REFORM OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Changes on the international scene continue to arouse enormous concern. We believe we reflect the feelings of ever more of the world's people when we declare:

1. Our disappointment in the results of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held recently in Johannesburg. Despite the great hopes resting on this event and the energy invested in it, the Summit did not live up to its expectations:

·         The Summit agreed on an action plan without quantifiable commitments enabling it to be effectively applied, monitored and evaluated

·         It furthered the transfer of responsibilities for sustainable human social, environmental and economic development to market forces and to image driven partnerships led by big corporations

·         It contributed to the marginalization of the United Nations, particularly in this case, in favour of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)

·         It undermined such fundamental principles established at Rio as shared but differentiated responsibilities, as the rich countries shoulder greater responsibility for the principal evils that affect and threaten our world. Similarly, the rich countries are more responsible for the failures of this summit.

2. Our perplexity over the US administration's foreign policy. The use of war as an instrument of international politics ¾particularly "preventive war action"¾ cannot be justified and risks unleashing serious consequences all over the world. Moved clearly by economic interests and ignoring the international community's majority view as expressed at the UN Assembly, the US seeks to declare war without first carrying out a rigorous inspection of any military means and weapons possessed, in this case, by Iraq. Such action can only generate more violence, misery, hate and insecurity.

In view of all this, we call once more for:

1. Radical change in international politics, reversing the present damaging tendency. Only by eradicating poverty, sweeping away conditions in which the seeds of war can flourish, can we improve human freedom and security. Only when the market becomes an environmentally sustainable instrument at the service of human social development, and not an end in itself, will we be able to reach, at least, the objectives set at the Millennium Summit.

2. Profound reform of international institutions, strengthening the United Nations system and democratising the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organisation. Only through a multilateral system with democratic representation, based on universal ethical principles (as enshrined in declarations of human, social and economic rights), one capable of responding to the great challenges that currently face humanity, can we recover our confidence in ourselves, in our identity as “We, the peoples”.

4 October 2002

Gerardo Bravo; Cristóbal Cervantes; Franz Eberhard; Carsten Lunding.

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