Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The seminar comes a few days after the end of the 11^th Ministerial Summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO WTO
World Trade Organisation The WTO, founded on 1^st January 1995, replaced the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). The main innovation is that the WTO enjoys the status of an international organization. Its role is to ensure that no member States adopt any kind of protectionism whatsoever, in order to accelerate the liberalization global trading and to facilitate the strategies of the multinationals. It has an international court (the Dispute Settlement Body) which judges any alleged violations of its founding text drawn up in Marrakesh.

), which hasn’t reached any official agreement. This failure reflects the difficulties of imperialist powers such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) in making progress in multilateral agreements, pushing them instead to promote bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements, which maintains a suffocating control over dependent and semi-autonomous colonial states. These trade agreements have deepened the control of multinational companies on agriculture and maritime fishing, exacerbated food speculation, and destroyed subsistence agricultural and fishing systems. Moreover, they accelerated the unlimited quest for the promotion of genetically modified seeds and the generalisation of the export-oriented agriculture and fishing industry. In the global south, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are pursuing neoliberal policies that further deregulate, open borders to the invasion of foreign capital and subsidised products and ensure the transfer of profits and wealth. These neoliberal dictates are leading to an increase in public debt at the expense of the popular classes who shoulder the burden of austerity policies.

We have come together in this 3-day conference to affirm our support for people’s food sovereignty and their right to determine their own food system, a system that ensures the production of healthy food in sufficient quantity while protecting nature and remaining in harmony with it. This system must give priority to the development of local staple foods, shall protect natural seeds and their supply and must implement a popular agrarian reform. The necessary resources for this purpose must be provided through the suspension of debt service Debt service The sum of the interests and the amortization of the capital borrowed. payments and through the cancellation of illegitimate public debts.
We stand against the plunder of peoples’ agricultural and fishing resources by multinationals and financial capital and we are equally opposed to all forms of discrimination and racism. We strive to achieve food sovereignty, climate and environmental justice and we will fight for the establishment of a new society where all kinds of exploitation and oppression have been brought to an end, a truly humane society that satisfies people’s needs in a participatory and democratic framework while staying in harmony with nature.

This seminar allowed us to continue our analysis and discussion for an action-oriented understanding: we are planning on organising campaigns of denunciation, raising awareness and initiatives in order to encourage common struggles and establish forms of coordination and solidarity with movements sharing the same objectives.

We, participants, activists from militant organizations in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, affirm:

• That the so called ‘free trade’ agreements, signed by the governments of our countries are new colonial agreements that serve the interests of multinationals, favouring the pillage of lands, indigenous peoples’ communal areas, their water resources, their fish and their food. This results in the destruction of environments and cultures, all in the name of accumulating more profits for foreign and domestic capitalists. Together with the debt system, these agreements constitute the two faces of the imperialist domination of people.

• Our support to the struggles of peasants and small fishermen in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and other countries against the expropriation of agricultural land and their transfer to the corporate and real estate speculators, which threaten the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and agricultural workers.

• Our absolute rejection of all capitalist ‘alternatives’ in the fields of agriculture and fisheries, which are technology intensive and hence, deplete resources and energy, destroy biodiversity, pollute the environment and negatively impact our health.

We are convinced that the peoples’ food sovereignty is closely linked to their right to self-determination at the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental level. It is equally linked to a rupture with the imperialist centres and international financial and commercial institutions, and also to the struggle against regimes and governments that implement these policies in favour of global and domestic capital.

Food sovereignty is the antithesis of the productivist capitalist food system, which is responsible for the destruction of natural resources and a climate chaos that threatens the lives of millions of people. It is peasant agriculture and subsistence fishing that feed humanity and preserve the environment, rather than the intensive, industrial, commercial and chemical agriculture promoted by capitalism.

This is why we call for:

• The collective struggle against free trade agreements, fisheries agreements and the World Trade Organization, as well as against the International Monetary Fund 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 and 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.
  
  , which enslave people through the debt system.

• The criminalisation of all multinational corporations and local capitalist companies that aim to commodify people’s food and destroy the environment in order to accumulate more profits.

• The initiation and promotion of experiments in popular farming systems that aim at breaking free from food dependence.

• Strengthening the cooperation and struggle at the national, regional, continental, southern and international levels between organisations and networks fighting for food sovereignty in order to develop their activities and mobilisations.

• Broadening international solidarity in order to stop the growing repression against popular mobilizations (peasants, fishermen, indigenous, and agricultural workers, etc.) and to organize and protect their lives, their lands, their environment and their food traditions.
• Strengthening support for the resistance of the Palestinian people against the US imperialist decision to deprive them of their historic rights.

• Join the international solidarity movement with hundreds of families expelled from their territories in the province of Maraba, Brazil, and with the movement of landless peasants who resist these forced evictions.

Agadir, December, 17, 2017.