Appendix A: Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (Algiers, 4 July 1976)
Preamble
We live at a time of great hopes and deep despair; a time of conflicts and contradictions; a time when liberation struggles have succeeded in arousing the peoples of the world against the domestic and international structures of imperialism and in overturning colonial systems; a time of struggle and victory in which new ideals of justice among and within nations have been adopted; a time when the General Assembly of the United Nations has given increasing expression, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Charter on the Economic Rights and Duties of States, to the quest for a new international, political and economic order.
But this is also a time of frustration and defeat, as new forms of imperialism evolve to oppress and exploit the peoples of the world. Imperialism, using vicious methods, with the complicity of governments that it has itself often installed, continues to dominate a part of the world. Through direct or indirect intervention, through multinational enterprises, through manipulation of corrupt local politicians, with the assistance of military regimes based on police repression, torture and physical extermination of opponents, through a set of practices that has become known as neo-colonialism, imperialism extends its stranglehold over many peoples.
Aware of expressing the aspirations of our era, we met in Algiers to proclaim that all the peoples of the world have an equal right to liberty, the right to free themselves from any foreign interference and to choose their own government, the right if they are under subjection, to fight for their liberation and the right to benefit from other peoples' assistance in their struggle.
Convinced that the effective respect for human rights necessarily implies respect for the rights of peoples, we have adopted the Universal Declaration for the Rights of Peoples.
May all those who, throughout the world, are fighting the great battle, at times through armed struggle, for the freedom of all peoples, find in this Declaration the assurance of the legitimacy of their struggle.
Section I. Right to Existence
Article 1
Every people has the right to existence.
Article 2
Every people has the right to the respect of its national and cultural identity.
Article 3
Every people has the right to retain peaceful possession of its territory and to return to it if it is expelled.
Article 4
None shall be subjected, because of his national or cultural identity, to massacre, torture, persecution, deportation, expulsion or living conditions such as may compromise the identity or integrity of the people to which he belongs.
Section II. Right to Political Self-determination
Article 5
Every people has an imprescriptible and unalienable right to self-determination. It shall determine its political status freely and without any foreign interference.
Article 6
Every people has the right to break free from any colonial or foreign domination, whether direct or indirect, and from any racist regime.
Article 7
Every people has the right to have democratic government representing all the citizens without distinction as to race, sex, belief or colour, and capable of ensuring effective respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.
Section III. Economic Rights of Peoples
Article 8
Every people has an exclusive right over its natural wealth and resources. It has the right to recover them if they have been despoiled, as well as any unjustly paid indemnities.
Article 9
Scientific and technical progress being part of the common heritage of mankind, every people has the right to participate in it.
Article 10
Every people has the right to a fair evaluation of its labour and to equal and just terms in international trade.
Article 11
Every people has the right to choose its own economic and social system and pursue its own path to economic development freely and without any foreign interference.
Article 12
The economic rights set forth shall be exercised in a spirit of solidarity amongst the peoples of the world and with due regard for their respective interests.
Section IV. Right to Culture
Article 13
Every people has the right to speak its own language and preserve and develop its own culture, thereby contributing to the enrichment of the culture of mankind.
Article 14
Every people has the right to its artistic, historical and cultural wealth.
Article 15
Every people has the right not to have an alien culture imposed upon it.
Section V. Right to Environment and Common Resources
Article 16
Every people has the right to the conservation, protection and improvement of its environment.
Article 17
Every people has the right to make use of the common heritage of mankind, such as the high seas, the seabed, and outer space.
Article 18
In the exercise of the preceding rights every people shall take account of the necessity for coordinating the requirements of its economic development with solidarity amongst all the peoples of the world.
Section VI. Rights of Minorities
Article 19
When a people constitutes a minority within a State it has the right to respect for its identity, traditions, language and cultural heritage.
Article 20
The members of a minority shall enjoy without discrimination the same rights as the other citizens of the State and shall participate on an equal footing with them in public life.
Article 21
These rights shall be exercised with due respect for the legitimate interests of the community as a whole and cannot authorise impairing the territorial integrity and political unity of the State, provided the State acts in accordance with all the principles set forth in this Declaration.
Section VII. Guarantees and Sanctions
Article 22
Any disregard for the provisions of this Declaration constitutes a breach of obligations towards the international community as a whole.
Article 23
Any prejudice resulting from disregard for this Declaration must he totally compensated by whoever caused it.
Article 24
Any enrichment to the detriment of the people in violation of the provisions of this Declaration shall give rise to the restitution of profits thus obtained. The same shall be applied to all excessive profits on investments of foreign origin.
Article 25
Any unequal treaties, agreements or contracts concluded in disregard of the fundamental rights or peoples shall have no effect.
Article 26
External financial charges which become excessive and unbearable for the people shall cease to be due.
Article 27
The gravest violations of the fundamental rights of peoples, especially of their right to existence, constitute international crimes for which their perpetrators shall carry personal penal liability.
Article 28
Any people whose fundamental rights are seriously disregarded has the right to enforce them, specially by political or trade union struggle and even, in the last resort by the use of force.
Article 29
Liberation movements shall have access to international organisations and their combatants are entitled to the protection of the humanitarian law of war.
Article 30
The re-establishment of the fundamental rights of peoples, when they are seriously disregarded, is a duty incumbent upon all members of the international community.
Appendix B: International Peoples' Tribunal on Debt, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, February 1–2, 2002
VERDICT
Convened by the international network of Jubilee South, together with the Jubilee South Brazil Campaign, the American Association of Jurists, the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt, Kairos-Canada, Jubilee USA Network, the Southern Peoples' Ecological Debt Creditors' Alliance, Ustawi, and the Worldwide Women's March, among many others, the International Peoples' Tribunal on Debt was held between February 1 and 2 in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, as part of the II World Social Forum. The Tribunal was promoted by the social movements, churches, unions, professional organizations, NGOs, feminist organizations, political parties and renowned personalities that constitute Jubilee South in 45 countries of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, together with the support of diverse entities in the North.
It was convened in order to determine and rule upon the responsibility of banks and transnational corporations, governments in the North, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions, for the crime of illegitimately indebting the countries and peoples of the South. A crime that has generated a high cost in human lives, the destruction of our productive capacity and of the quality of life of our peoples, with increases in poverty, infant mortality, social exclusion and grave economic and environmental damages. In addition to ruling on evidence as regards the illegitimacy of the debt and identifying the principal culprits and their respective roles, the International Peoples' Tribunal also assumed the task of proposing alternatives in order to secure debt repudiation and annulment. This Tribunal is a court of opinion rather than a court of justice. Nonetheless, it upholds the principles of rigorous argumentation and documentation supported by a diversity of judicial and ethical traditions. On the basis of an accusation complemented by a broad range of documentary evidence and testimonies presented by men and women illustrative of peoples throughout the South, expressed over the course of three sessions, the Popular Jury, integrated by persons representative of the societies of different countries, has come to the following
VERDICT:
CONSIDERING
THAT according to studies and data the debt of the countries of the South has been paid several times over so that, in addition to being unpayable, it is also illegitimate, unjust and immoral.
THAT the external debt, in addition to constituting an economic problem, is also an ethical, political, social, historical, and environmental problem, generating responsibilities at various levels and demanding immediate action.
THAT external debt payments entail a net transfer of resources from the South to the North. In 1998, the 41 poorest and most indebted countries transferred some 1.68 billion US$ more than they received. In that same year, the countries of the Third World contributed some 114.6 billion dollars to the private and public coffers of the most industrialized countries of the North.
THAT, between 1981 and 2000, the people of the South have transferred to the North 3.7 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to six times what was owed that year (560 billion) even though today more that 2 trillion is still owed.
THAT neo-liberal polices lead to an exponential growth in external debt, impeding the carrying out of social policies and seriously compromising the political sovereignty of the countries of the South.
THAT the unilateral decision of the United States, at the end of the 1970s, to increase interest rates from their historical level of 4-6 percent to more than 20 percent over a period of a few months, spelled a betrayal of good faith assumed in the original contracts. In addition to forcing debtor countries to take out more debt in order to make interest payments, this decision occasioned additional payments that in the case of Latin America represented a loss of 106 billion dollars.
THAT there is a link between external debt, excessive public domestic debt, and the search for short term external capital, all provoking very high interest rates in the South.
THAT governments in the South, conceiving the financial system as an end in itself, sacrificed the parts of their budgets dedicated to social benefits and the stimulus of the domestic economy in order to keep up payments on their financial debts, thereby abandoning healthcare, education, employment creation, popular housing, the demarcation and guaranteeing of land for indigenous peoples together with the conditions necessary for their survival as peoples. Also sacrificed was the opportunity to dignify the elderly and children, to carry out agrarian reform, to conserve and recover the environment.
THAT the IMF's adjustment and other economic policies proved disastrous for the countries subjected to them, serving to increase their debt even more as well as other external obligations, forcing a moratorium in the repayment of social and environmental debts that are owed to children, indigenous peoples, both male and female rural and urban labourers, black men and women, and nature.
THAT the indebtment of these countries was carried out by dictatorial governments, by their very nature illegitimate and antipopular, and that the creditors not only were accomplices but also quite aware of the risks that these loans entailed.
THAT the growth of the debt is also linked to the elites in countries of the South, that now as throughout history, have been complacent with external financial institutions, both private and public as well as with the multilateral ones.
THAT the countries of the North have an ecological debt with the South on account of the historical pillaging of its resources, the intellectual appropriation of their ancestral knowledge, for the use and degradation of its best land, water and air for export projects that affect food sovereignty, increase the production of toxic wastes, and threaten the survival of peoples.
THAT the external debt constitutes a permanent violation of economic, social, and cultural human rights established by the United Nations in 1966, rights which demand the recognition of the right of all peoples to their own self-determination, to economic development as well as to dispose freely of their wealth and natural resources, and that in no case can a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.
THE MEMBER OS THE JURY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL ON DEBT UNANIMOUSLY DECIDE:
The External Debt of the countries of the South, for having been accumulated outside of national and international legal frameworks and without consultation with society, for having favoured elites almost exclusively to the detriment of the majority of the people, and for having hurt national sovereignty, is illegitimate, unjust and ethically, legally, and politically unsustainable.
The accused banks and transnational corporations, governments of the North, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions and their collaborators in the South, are authors, co-authors, accomplices, and concealers of the following crimes:
a. Draining in a parasitic manner the natural patrimony and other resources of the South in order to meet external debt payments, abetting this political, ecological, and economic instrument of exploitation of our peoples.
b. Upholding and favouring unequal terms of trade that also contributed to the increase in the external debt, adding to the extraction and production of raw materials sold at very low prices and the importing of industrial products bought at highly elevated prices, as rich countries' subsidies further reinforced the unequal exchange regime.
c. Charging usurious interest rates that made the external debt increase exponentially, rather than diminish, notwithstanding the regular flow of repayments from the South.
d. Carrying out fraudulent operations between large transnational banks and business people in the South, inventing non-existent debts through the use of speculative mechanisms that instead of favouring production, allowed the enrichment of a few as these simulated debts were later made public debts.
e. Applying structural adjustment and other economic policies that oblige our states to undertake privatization processes affecting the ownership of natural resources and public utilities, and paying the debt with the money that should have been invested in social works and for economic reactivation.
f. Supporting dictatorial or criminal regimes through loans that sustained and illicitly enriched the dictators, notwithstanding their rejection by oppressed peoples and sanctions imposed by the United Nations and human rights organizations.
g. Channelling in perverse form the resources accrued through the contracting of debts, towards the enrichment of government officials, sumptuous expenditures, and their deposit in foreign banks, instead of using them toward social benefits.
h. Imposing economic integration programs that only favour the interests of transnational companies and the industrial countries of the North, in violation of the fundamental individual and collective human rights of peoples.
i. Imposing political and economic conditions of recession in debtor countries in order to secure debt renegotiations.
j. Continuing to collect a debt that has already been paid several fold to the point of making the people the victims of fraud.
k. Breaking international law, its norms and legal instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Covenant 169 of the International Labour Organization on indigenous peoples, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, the right of peoples to their self-determination, among many others, as well as national legislation.
l. Plotting among the accused to loot and exploit Third World peoples as the result of the aforementioned crimes committed systematically.
m. Committing crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Jury thereby requests the Tribunal to dictate a sentence condemning those accused for the commissioning of all or some of the crimes committed and indicated in this verdict. It also requests that the External Debt be declared non-existent, and thereby extinct, for being odious, infamous, illegal, usurious, unjust, fraudulent, and illegitimate, and for provoking the loss of national sovereignty and the quality of life of the majority of the population of the South. Finally the Jury exhorts the Tribunal to accept the following recommendations:
· To call for unity among citizens present in this forum, all the peoples of the South, as well as citizens of countries in the North who stand in solidarity with the peoples' cause, in order to campaign together to achieve the repudiation and cancellation of the external debt.
· Initiate sovereign processes of independent audits of the external debts of our countries, in order to verify actual existing legal debt if indeed there is still a debt that should be repaid, and establish participative and democratic procedures for social control over indebtedness.
· Urge Parliaments of indebted countries to investigate the handling of the debt by those responsible for generating it, in order to hold them legally accountable as warranted.
· Demand the restitution of the riches extracted from the South, as well as the payment of reparations for the damages wrought.
· Demand the return to our peoples of the wealth illegitimately accumulated by the dictatorships, corrupt governments, and transnational corporations that have been accomplices.
· Develop Dignity and Sovereignty Campaigns that will block bilateral and multilateral economic agreements contrary to peoples' interests, including agreements with the IMF or other international financial institutions.
· Propose to governments that they unite around this common cause and do whatever is necessary, to solicit from the International Court of Justice in the Hague a Consultative Opinion as regards the illegitimacy of the external debt and to suspend all payments on the debt.
· Propose to governments that these resources instead be used exclusively for programs of sustainable development for the life of all of our peoples.
· Accompany local and national processes that seek to create sustainable societies as seen from an economic, food, energy, environmental, equality, and equitability perspective.
· Support the campaign to demand payment of the Ecological Debt, an obligation and responsibility of the states of the North, transnational corporations, multilateral banks and other private financial institutions for carrying out environmental destruction in the South.
· Deliver the conclusions of this Tribunal to the principal accused parties thus far identified, and ask that they respond in a given amount of time.
· Accompany the legal claims which, following on this verdict, co- plaintiffs may pursue against those accused parties, fully identified and declared guilty by this Tribunal, so as to avoid that the crimes committed remain in impunity. Denounce also the corrupt governments that have allowed the pillaging of their peoples.
· Constitute a global commission on debt with a mandate to investigate and identify all those who are responsible for perpetrating illegitimate debt and to support initiatives to bring them to justice.
· Notify the United Nations and other regional and international bodies, demanding consideration of the elaboration of instruments to insure that full compliance with universal human rights takes priority over any debt-service claims.
The Jury submits the present Verdict to the Tribunal seeking justice for the peoples of the South and for all of humanity. This is the symbolic road of a long march. This is our decision.
Publish and disseminate. Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, February 2, 2002
Members of the Jury:
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Laureate, ARGENTINA),
Dennis Brutus (Poet, SOUTH AFRICA),
Pedro Ross (Workers' Central, CUBA),
Yvonn Yanez (Southern Peoples' Alliance of Ecological Debt Creditors, ECUADOR),
Rosemary Nyerere (Member of Parliament, TANZANIA),
Marie Frantz Joachim (Worldwide Women's March, HAITI),
Samba Tembile (International Youth Camp, MALI), Rogate Mshana (World Council of Churches, TANZANIA),
Sekou Diarra (Jubilee 2000, MALI),
Shelly Emalyn Rao (Economic and Social Research Council, FIJI).