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share the responsibility for Third World foreign debts, and they
should thus pay the developing countries adequate compensation for the
pains and embarrassments that they have in one way or the other caused
them.
The African youth mus call for the people in the West to continue to develop in the current process of globalization forms of cooperation which are not merely economic but social and cultural as well -- rethinking international cooperation in terms of a newculture of solidarity and justice.
Technology-advanced and richer nations should promote and implement globalization in solidarity, of the values of equity, freedom and justice, based on the firm conviction that the global marketplace needs to be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state, so as to
guarantee that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied. Globalization, when not carried out in the right spirit of humane solidarity, could very easily become a mega bombshell of exploitation of the already economically, technologically and socially disadvantaged Third World countries. And this, history sadly shows that the lending policies of the IMF and the World bank as well as the modus operandi of many multinationals have often plunged the Third World Countries into deeper economic crises than ever before.
It could be more appreciable to mobilize for global justice and not
for corporate greed: there is an ever increasing need to globalize
liberation from oppressive structural Adjustment Programmes and also
to ensure that both the World Bank and the IMF desist from giving any
conditionality in their lending schemes which could result in
environmental destruction and dislocation of poor peoples in the
southern hemisphere of the globe.
In this regard, strong voices have been raised in recent times,
calling for debt relief or even the total cancellation of the debts of
the poorest of the developing countries. Such clarion calls have
incidentally not fallen on deaf ears, as the IMF and the world bank have
jointly agreed to write off some debts, circa $ USD 27 billion owed
them by the poorest countries of the Third world. However, even after
the cancellation of the debts owned the IMF and World bank, some Third
world Countries (like Mali and some others in the sub-Saharan region)
would still have to grapple with some other enormous bilateral debts
from low- interest loans that have been given them as foreign aid by
Japan, France and the like.
Hence, the cancellation of foreign debts alone would not be the
panacea to counteract the financial maladies of the Third World. It
would take something more, especially in the delicate area of evolving
truly and just economic policies on the part of the IMF and the World bank, such that the poor nations would not end up being systematically
crushed and exploited anymore, but would be realistically helped to
build and consolidate vibrant economies for the common good.
Concluding, Globalization may well have the potential of making Third
World Countries, inter alia, grow economically, technologically,
educationally, politically and otherwise stronger. However, it is no
secret that there are several risks engrained in it which at one point
or the other, tend to turn one or the other Third World country into
the Third of the Third world if due care is not taken!
Granted that democracy (which has now come to stay in many Third World
countries) ensures the recognition of human rights and the
administration of justice, there are oftentimes certain dictates due
to globalization of world economy which descend on Third World
countries like unjust economic plagues. Indeed many a conditionality
of the IMF or the World bank's lending schemes would hardly be seen as
promoting the dignity and fundamental rights of the inhabitants of the
southern hemisphere who are constrained, due to harsh economic
policies, adverse exchange rates and other aberrations in the world
market place to seek loans from these international monetary
organizations, who instead of ameliorating the economic woes of the
borrowers, end up adding insult to injury by the way borrowers are made
to cough out the ever amassing interests on the loans!
It is indeed an open secret that most often the structural reforms that the lending organizations (IMF and the World Bank) ask the borrowing nations to embark upon do actually aggravate their poverty!
Finally, and in summary, globalization put in balance, is a welcomed development for the contemporary world (a world which due to improved information and communications technology facilities is often described as a planetary village), but a lot still has to be done, especially in the sphere of the IMF and the World Bank’s lending policies to help rather than hamper economic prosperity particularly to Third World nations.
As Agus Durnomo will say, “Globalization… has widened the gap between the haves and the
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Henry Ekwuruke
Henry Ekwuruke is Executive Director of the Development Generation Africa International.
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Comments
Also about globalization Vladimir | Oct 15th, 2005
I do agree with most poems of your "speach", but i have several questions to discuss.. First of all, we should bear in mind the fact that all the process of globalization is mostly directed to the governmental policy in economy, wich is not always the same with the interests of it's people.. Secondly, we can raise a fact, that having the process of globalization we are loosing the monocultural development of the State, even in terms of economical growth. And at last, having globalization, we have a new form of between-State trade registration process. Of course, with all the neccessary rules and laws from the International Community, World Trade Organization and terms of international laws...
student of Russian University
faculty of economy and laws
Vladimir Luschinsky...
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