BY FIDEL CASTRO
Excellencies:

Not everyone here will share my thoughts. Still, I will respectfully say what I think.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plunder and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

The prestige of the international financial institutions rates less than zero.

The world economy is today a huge casino. Recent analyses indicate that for every dollar that goes into trade, over 100 end up in speculative operations completely disconnected from the real economy.

As a result of this economic order, over 75 percent of the world's population lives in underdevelopment, and extreme poverty has already reached 1.2 billion people in the Third World. So, far from narrowing, the gap is widening.

The revenue of the richest nations, which in 1960 was 37 times larger than that of the poorest, is now 74 times larger. The situation has reached such extremes that the assets of the three wealthiest persons in the world amount to the Gross Domestic Product of the 48 poorest countries combined.

The number of people actually suffering from hunger was 826 million in the year 2001. There are at the moment 854 million illiterate adults while 325 million children do not attend school. There are 2 billion people who have no access to low cost medications and 2.4 billion lack basic sanitation conditions. No fewer than 11 million children under the age of five perish every year from preventable causes while half a million go blind for lack of vitamin A.

The lifespan of the population in the developed world is 30 years higher than that of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa. A true genocide!

The poor countries cannot be blamed for this tragedy. They neither conquered nor plundered entire continents for centuries; they did not establish colonialism, or reestablish slavery; and, modern imperialism is not of their making. To the contrary, they have been its victims. Therefore, the main responsibility for financing their development lies with those states that, for obvious historical reasons, enjoy today the benefits of those atrocities.

The rich world must cancel their foreign debt and grant them fresh soft loans to finance development. The traditional offers of assistance, always scant and often ridiculous, are either inadequate or unfulfilled.

For a true and sustainable economic and social development to take place much more is required than is usually admitted. Measures as those suggested by the late James Tobin¹ to curtail the irrepressible flow of currency speculation--although it was not his purpose to foster development--would perhaps be the only ones capable of generating enough funds, which in the hands of the UN agencies and not of baneful institutions like the IMF could supply direct development assistance with a democratic participation of all countries and without the need to sacrifice the independence and sovereignty of the peoples.

The consensus draft, which the masters of the world are imposing on this conference, expects us to accept humiliating alms that subject us to conditions and interferences.

Everything created since Bretton Woods² must be reconsidered. A farsighted vision was missing then, and the privileges and interests of the most powerful prevailed. In face of the present deep crisis, we are offered a still worse future where the economic, social and ecological tragedy of an increasingly ungovernable world would never be resolved and where the number of the poor and the starving people would grow higher, as if a large part of humanity were doomed.

It is high time for statesmen and politicians to calmly reflect on this. The belief that a social and economic order that has proven to be unsustainable can be forcibly imposed is truly senseless.

As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor, and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty, or hunger.

It should be said for once and for all: "Farewell to arms."

Something must be done to save humanity!

A better world is possible! Thank you.
 

1. James Tobin (1918-2002) was an economist and adviser to President John Kennedy. In 1972 he proposed of 0.1-0.5 percent tax on foreign exchange transactions to limit currency speculation.

2. The 1944 Bretton Woods conference, held in New England, adopted a plan presented by Washington for an international monetary system to be built around the U.S. dollar, which was fixed in relation to gold. The conference, at which 44 countries were represented, also established the International Monetary Fund. The decisions registered Washington's predominant economic and military position in the closing years of World War II. The dollar-gold standard lasted as a stable system for little more than a decade, and was officially abandoned in 1971 by the government of President Richard Nixon.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home