Version imprimableThat’s why we’re organizing a counter-summit in Marrakech from 12 to 15 October, the International Day of Indigenous Resistance and the commemoration of the assassination of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary, pan-Africanist president who was executed shortly after calling for a united front against debt. Let’s make his legacy a reality, denounce the criminal policies of the IMF and the World Bank, denounce their practices and unite against their debtocracy!
These two undemocratic institutions have been marginalizing and even excluding the states of the global South since they were founded in 1944. They continue to contribute to the neo-colonialism of the richest countries and the richest in general, and they exacerbate climate change, to the detriment of the peoples of the South and the periphery of the North.
We, the social and climate movements, trade unions, women’s, small farmers’ and indigenous peoples’ organizations, non-governmental organizations and citizens of the world, are calling for and participating in the organization in Marrakech of a summit of social movements against the summit of the established order.
Our counter-summit will be an opportunity to show alternative paths to those of the World Bank and the IMF; to forge links and thus strengthen our movements, particularly with a view to COP28; to discuss, from the people’s point of view, the difficulties we are currently facing – economic, ecological, cost of living, repressive, gender-related, racial – and for which the World Bank, the IMF and their allies have a historic responsibility.
It’s time to shout loud and clear that 80 years of a financial dictatorship that has maintained and reinforced the oppression of the peoples of the South by the rulers of the North is enough. That more than 500 years of plundering nature and the peoples of the South in the name of Western interests is enough. That the people come first, not the profits of multinationals, governments and the rich.
It’s time to rise up and weave a network of struggles and alternatives to sow the seeds of a society in which the common good, respect for planetary limits, food sovereignty and climate and social justice take precedence. We will be the ones who decide our future, and we reject the one that the World Bank, the IMF and their allies want to impose on us. The time has come to put an end to their ideological colonialism!
So it’s time to say that if they don’t cancel our debt, we will repudiate it. Because the real debt is that of governments and multinationals, their historic, climatic, ecological and social debt to the people, and to the people of the South in particular!
It’s time to learn from and forge links with popular, ecofeminist, anti-racist, peasant and indigenous struggles. Those who have nothing, but who are not resigned to being the employees of a climate-destroying capitalism.
We dare to think that our mobilization will ensure that the World Bank and the IMF will not be celebrating their 80th anniversary next year, but will already be calculating and honoring their old debt to the people. That we will thus be sending them, as the pillars of capital, into the dustbin of history.
Let’s get together in Marrakech from 12 to 15 October, on the occasion of the forthcoming annual meetings of the WB and IMF, to talk, share and organize the struggle and build our society, our way of life. Join us there! We look forward to seeing you in Marrakech.
To join us in Marrakech or support our initiative, please check our linktree (we will get in touch with you as soon as possible)!
Source CADTM.
