DEBATE: (Fwd) Excellent Debt Tribunal judgement

("Decommission" the IMF/WB and cancel the debt! The six conclusions of the
Jubilee South-sponsored tribunal, presided over by the ex-TRC investigator,
judge Dumisa Ntsebeza, are as follows:)

The International People's Tribunal on Debt makes the following
declarations:

1. All external debt being illegitimate should be immediately repudiated and
cancelled.
2. In return for the wealth illegitimately transferred to the North from the
South, the countries of the South should be provided reasonable
compensation, to determine the magnitude and manner of payment of which a
Global Commission on Debt should be constituted.
3. Since unnatural power is related to unwarranted size and reach, the
banks, financial institutions, industrial corporations, landed interests and
other economic agents who control assets which give them such power should
be broken down and their power curtailed, so that the recurrence of the
process of growth of illegitimate debt is foreclosed.
4. International institutions which serve as agents to coordinate, oversee
and guarantee debt flows, such as the IMF and the World Bank, should be
decommissioned and any residual useful role served by them should be handed
over to more democratically-managed international institutions.
5. Neoliberal policy regimes that are designed to sustain and worsen debt
and obfuscate the resulting process of economic aggrandizement at one pole
and social deprivation at the other should be dismantled, to be replaced by
more pro-people and pro-poor policies of development.
6. Besides social mobilization to pressurize governments in the North and
the South to implement these recommendations, the Tribunal calls on people
to use supplementary legal procedures such as petitions in the International
Court of Justice at the Hague to bring individual instances of violation of
individual social and human rights to trial and force governments to
implement these recommendations.

----- Original Message -----
From:

> Dear friends,
>
> The fourth and concluding session of the International Peoples' Tribunal
on
> Debt was held yesterday, April 18, at 10 AM-12 noon at the First
Congregational
> Church, 945 G Street NW, Washington DC, USA.
>
> Below and attached is a copy of the judgement handed down by members of
the
> Presidium officiating yesterday -- Judge Dumisa Ntsebeza, former chief
> investigator of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Dr.
CP
> Chandrasekhar, chairperson of the Center for Economic Studies and Planing
in
> India, Sra. Nora Cortinas of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Argentina; and Dr
> Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian physician and writer.
>
> The Tribunal reviewed the accusation, bill of indicment, and testimonies
> presented in the first three sessions held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A
> reiteration of the final plea was made by Beverly Keene for the
prosecution.
>
> Jury members present -- Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Ms
> Shelly Emalin Rao -- reiterated the guilty verdict handed down by the
10-member
> jury in Porto Alegre on February 2, 2002.
>
> The fourth session was called by the Presidium to give the International
> Monetary Fund, World Bank, creditor and debtor governments and others
accused
> for their culpability in the accumulation and maintenance of the debt of
the
> South the time to present their defense.
>
>
> HERE IS THE SENTENCE:
>
> Judgement of the International People's Tribunal on Debt
>
> Having heard the case for the prosecution, the evidence presented by the
> witnesses and the verdict of the jury, and taking into account the silence
of
> the accused who were invited to defend themselves, we the judges elected
to
> this International People's Tribunal on Debt, declare that the following
> accused have been found guilty of the crimes detailed below:
>
> 1. Governments of the North which over the years have
>
> (a) used non-economic political and military means to appropriate and
transfer
> to the North, the economic and ecological wealth of the countries of the
South,
> creating in the process the economic, social and political structures that
lead
> to dependence of the South on capital inflows in general and external debt
> flows in particular, that have become new and less-transparent forms of
further
> appropriation and transfer of wealth;
> (b) used their economic and military might to support processes that
create and
> perpetuate agencies like the giant international banks, financial
institutions
> and industrial and trading corporations, which in the name of pursuit of
> profit, have served as agents of transfer of wealth from the South into
the
> hands of the dominant economic interests in the North and ensured the
process
> of debt dependence;
> (c) created multilateral institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, and
more
> recently the WTO, which coordinate and oversee the process of capital
transfer,
> ensure that debt dependence is used as an instrument to put in place
neoliberal
> policies that perpetuate such dependence, and force developing country
> governments to provide an implicit sovereign guarantee on all accumulated
> external debt, public and private;
> (d) used coercion to force governments in the South to adopt policies that
> facilitate the process of illegitimate transfer of wealth.
>
> 2. The international banks, financial institutions, industrial
corporations and
> trading houses that are the immediate beneficiaries of the transfer of
wealth
> that debt sustains and served as mechanisms to ensure such transfer in
favour
> of themselves and their collaborators.
>
> 3. The multilateral institutions that have served as agencies to foster
and
> sustain debt dependence, coordinate debt and other capital flows and
create
> conditions in the South that facilitate at all cost wealth transfer from
the
> South to the North.
>
> 4. Corrupt and dominant social and economic interests and the governments
they
> control in the South that have in their own self-interest collaborated to
> different degrees with the above accused and used State power in the South
to
> legitimize, facilitate and enforce the above-mentioned mechanisms of
wealth
> transfer mediated through debt.
>
>
> The verdict of the jury is: (i) that all the accumulated debt of the South
to
> the North is illegitimate and has in fact been paid back many times over;
(ii)
> that debt dependence, created by the above accused through the means
described,
> leads to economic and political conditions that result in social
deprivation
> that amounts to a creeping process of economic and social genocide; and
that
> (iii) besides being reprehensible on moral and humanitarian grounds, is a
> violation of existing international law as embodied, inter alia, in 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 and the universally recognized right
of
> peoples to self-determination.
>
> Given the above the International People's Tribunal on Debt makes the
following
> declarations:
>
> 1. All external debt being illegitimate should be immediately repudiated
and
> cancelled.
> 2. In return for the wealth illegitimately transferred to the North from
the
> South, the countries of the South should be provided reasonable
compensation,
> to determine the magnitude and manner of payment of which a Global
Commission
> on Debt should be constituted.
> 3. Since unnatural power is related to unwarranted size and reach, the
banks,
> financial institutions, industrial corporations, landed interests and
other
> economic agents who control assets which give them such power should be
broken
> down and their power curtailed, so that the recurrence of the process of
growth
> of illegitimate debt is foreclosed.
> 4. International institutions which serve as agents to coordinate, oversee
and
> guarantee debt flows, such as the IMF and the World Bank, should be
> decommissioned and any residual useful role served by them should be
handed
> over to more democratically-managed international institutions.
> 5. Neoliberal policy regimes that are designed to sustain and worsen debt
and
> obfuscate the resulting process of economic aggrandizement at one pole and
> social deprivation at the other should be dismantled, to be replaced by
more
> pro-people and pro-poor policies of development.
> 6. Besides social mobilization to pressurize governments in the North and
the
> South to implement these recommendations, the Tribunal calls on people to
use
> supplementary legal procedures such as petitions in the International
Court of
> Justice at the Hague to bring individual instances of violation of
individual
> social and human rights to trial and force governments to implement these
> recommendations.

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