Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Our discussions show that the crisis in health and social protection is in fact the consequence of the global neoliberal politics:

• Financialisation of the economy, supported by monetary policies, as well as international debt engulf all nations, big and small, forcing austerity on the people and promoting interests of banks and multinational companies to the detriment of social and health policies.
• Unequal power relations translate into trade treaties that place profits of banks and multinational companies over those of people, with the complicity of several governments.
• A globalised marked for health care and social protection has catastrophic impact on access to services, employment, retirement, working conditions, the quality of care and migration of health workers from the global South to the North and from the public to the private sector.
• Increased militarisation and occupation cause death, loss of land, work and food, while also promoting a reaction in the form of rising intolerance between communities, terrorism and sectarian conflicts.
• The major burden of the crisis is faced by those already marginalised – women, children, migrants, the poor, people living with disabilities, workers and peasants.

Health is life in all its dimensions: physical, mental, social, environmental. It is a fundamental and inalienable human right and a common social good for all humanity; it requires that people can live in peace all over in the world and free from occupation.

Alternatives are urgent and necessary!

• The rights of people to clean environment, good employment and working conditions, access to water, education, food, culture, housing and well being must be realised, granted, defended and expanded.
• A universal and comprehensive social protection designed to promote social justice and dignity needs to be put in place.
• Priority must be given to an approach based on the principles of comprehensive primary health care, including prevention and the respectful use of natural resources.
• A unified health and social protection system must be entirely public, financed by progressive taxation – including of capital – and/or social contributions.
• This system must be owned by the public and accountable to the public through participatory systems of governance at all levels.
• It must reject all forms of marketisation and be free at the point of care.
• The right to access to essential medicines, of good quality and not protected by patent monopolies must be granted.
• International institutions must be transparent and totally independent from interests of multinationals and private financing.

Inspired by our experiences, we believe that the time is now for collective action!

• Let us work through our networks, sharing and circulating knowledge and analysis, expanding our movements, strengthening one another in our mobilisations and creating new international solidarities that can help us change the power balance Balance End of year statement of a company’s assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. .
• Starting from the concrete local, sectoral and conjunctural experiences, let us popularise our analysis and make the pedagogic tools accessible, strengthening our convergences and increasing our capacity of action. Let us participate in the development of the capacity of political analysis on the choices before society.
• Let us act on the political level:
  - laws must guarantee a real right to health and social protection;
  - let us create strong popular movements that can control and put pressure on political sytems so that they respect and enact these rights.
• As health professionals, users, citizens... Let us become, through training and sensitisation, true agents of change.
• Let us create alliances between professionals and users, trade unions and citizen movements, and let us promote local alliances among diverse actors in defence of health and social protection.
• Let us strengthen the actions for a convergence with movements acting on social determinants of health, such as climate, trade, austerity, debt, working conditions, and gender equality.

Signatories
Action Aid India, Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), Association de Défense du Secteur Public de la Santé, du Droit des Professionnels et des Usagers (Tunisie), Association Tunisienne pour le Droit à la Santé, ATTAC Maroc, Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde (CADTM), Centrale Nationale des Employés (CNE, Belgique), Collectif pour le Droit à la Santé au Maroc, CUT Brésil, Fédération Nationale de la Santé (UGTT), Forum Algérien pour la Citoyenneté et la Modernité, Forum Régional pour le Droit à l’Eau de la Région Arabe, Forum Social Mondial de la Santé et la Securité Sociale (FSMSS), Global Social Justice, International Association of Health Policy (IAHP), Médecins du Monde Belgique en Tunisie, Mouvement Populaire pour la Santé (PHM), Network for Transformative Social Protection, Observatoire Tunisien de l’économie, Réseau Européen contre la Privatisation et la Commercialisation de la Santé et de la Protection Sociale, Réseau National Dette et Développement (RNDD, Niger), Sud Santé Sociaux (France), Syndicat National des Médecins, Pharmaciens et Dentistes (UGTT), Syndicat National de la Sécurité Sociale (UGTT), Syndicat Générale des Eaux (UGTT), Théâtre du Copion (Belgique), Union des Diplômés Chômeurs (UDC, Tunisie), Union Générale des Etudiants de Tunisie (UGET), Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT).