Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

We encourage widespread circulation of this Call and invite all interested organizations to add their support and to share Share A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. information about their solidarity actions by sending a messages to haiti at jubileesouth.org or the Jubilee South/Americas secretariat at jubileosur at wamani.apc.org.

Additional information from JS colleagues PAPDA, SOF and others in Haiti will be available shortly, together with suggestions for channeling both financial and material support.

 Solidarity and respect for Popular Sovereignty: Haiti is Calling

We stand with the people of Haiti at this time of infinite suffering and tragedy, taking on their cry and calling on the whole world to respond with urgent and persistent solidarity. We call on peoples and governments everywhere to be shaken with the same force with which the earth shook the very foundations of that worthy and brave people’s life, affecting directly one third of the population - three million people - and adding a destruction of unimaginable proportions to what was for the vast majority, already a situation of tremendous precariousness and the routine violation of its most basic human rights.

This tragedy exceeds the borders of Haiti. It is the responsibility of the international community to provide immediate relief to the victims as well as the resources and policies which will be needed, over the near and medium term, in order to support the Haitian people’s own efforts to reconstruct their country and future, free of the domination and dependency that have so marked their life. Without a doubt, the people of Haiti have the strength and the creativity they need, and together, we cannot permit this tragedy to be used by those who have always sought to stifle this popular will, in order to impose a model and brand of reconstruction in accordance with their own stingy interests.

Together with many Haitian organizations, over recent years we have denounced the military occupation of the country by United Nations (UN) troops and the impacts of the domination imposed via the mechanisms of debt, free trade, the looting of its natural habitat and the invasion of transnational interests. The vulnerability of the country to natural tragedies – provoked to a large extent by the environmental devastation, the non-existence of basic infrastructure, and the systematic weakening of the state’s capacity to act - should not be seen as something disconnected from these policies, which have historically undermined the sovereignty of the people.

Now is the time for the governments that form part of the MINUSTAH, the UN and in particular France and the United States, the governments of Latin America, to revise this action that is contrary to the basic needs of the Haitian people. We demand of those governments and international organizations that they substitute the military occupation with a true mission of solidarity, and that they take action to ensure the urgent cancellation of the debt that is still being collected of Haiti. We further demand that the resources to be provided for relief and reconstruction not give rise to new indebtedness nor be used to impose conditionalities or any another form of external imposition that detracts from their stated aim, as is the common practice of the International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

, the Interamerican Development Bank and the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org , the so called “donor countries”, and the corporations that they benefit.

Now is the time for the international community, and in particular the countries and interests that have enriched themselves as a result, to recognize and fulfill their obligation to make reparations for the ecological, social, historic, and climate debts that they have accumulated with the Haitian people. And now is also the time to recall not only that it is women who generally bear a disproportionate share of the costs of such tragedies, but also that women are able and should be leading artifices of the reconstruction process.

We also urge social movements, organizations and people the world over, in particular those linked to issues of health and popular habitat, culture and communications, to mobilize, creating and engaging in aid campaigns and organizing local committees and volunteer brigades to help Haiti at this difficult moment. We share with the heroic and resistant Haitian people our mourning and our solidarity, in the conviction that the country will once again overcome such tragedy, reemerging free and sovereign.

 Initial signators:

Jubilee South / Americas

Jubilee South

CADTM International Network

CADTM Belgium