Cancel the Debt
Jubilee 2000's success in bringing Birmingham to a standstill during the G8 Summit of World Leaders is just the beginning of a world wide campaign to cancel the Third World Debt. Between 50,000 and 70,000 people formed a 7 miles Human Chain around the buildings where the Summit took place, armed with placards and chains whistles and bells. "You shall not determine our destinies or the destinies of men and women in the developing countries," said Anne Pettifor, Director of the Jubilee 200 Coalition.
People's Summit Calls for End to Third World Debt
The present global economic system is out of date and needs a complete overhaul. It is part of the problem and can never be the solution. It is basically unsustainable. That was the message of the People's Summit, the largest gathering of non-party political civil society ever held in Britain, organised to coincide with the G8 Summit of world leaders. People came because they cared. They came from all around the world to share their experience of their local economic initiatives, to exchange their ideas for building a just and sustainable economy and to call for an end to Third World Debt.
Helena Norberg Hodge, the Director of the International Institute of Ecology and Culture and a Co-founder of the Forum on Globalisation said "What we need to look at now is the fact that the current global economic system is creating the poverty here as well as in the South and it is the same system that is the cause of worldwide environmental degradation. when we realise that we have the most powerful organising tool for building alliances in own countries as well as internationally to demand that governments cease supporting the corporate agenda".
Vandana Shiva, the tireless physicist and environmentalist from India said: "From the fringes we will build a society before the destruction of globalisation is complete."
Contact: South African New Economics Network, P O Box 53057, Kenilworth 7745, South Africa. Tel: 00 27 21 47 5362
Source:The Newspaper, Positive News, available at: http://www.oneworld.org/positive_news
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