The Dakar Declaration for the Total and Unconditional Cancellation of African and Third World Debt

Dakar 2000: From Resistance to Alternatives

Dakar, Senegal | 11-17 December 2000
 
We, participants at the "Dakar 2000 meeting for the cancellation of Third World debt", representing African people's civil societies, supported by civil societies from Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, from the analysis of the debt issue, of structural adjustment plans (SAPs) and development.

Realize that:

1. Third World debt to the North is at once fraudulent, odious, illegal, immoral, illegitimate, obscene and genocidal;

The Dakar Manifesto
Africa: From Resistance to Alternatives

Dakar 2000: From Resistance to Alternatives

Dakar, Senegal, 11-17 December 2000 

The Dakar 2000 conference brought together leaders of NGOs and social movements from all over Africa to analyze the debt crisis and the impacts of IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes on African populations. Conference participants also considered strategies for resistance to the neoliberal model and highlighted alternative approaches.

The Köln Debt Initiative: An Initial Response

In many ways, it can be seen as the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end.-Roy Culpeper, President the North-South Institute

The Köln Initiative, measured by its rhetoric, is two steps forward, one step backwards. In reality we may not have moved much at all.- Derek MacCuish, Programme Coordinator, Social Justice Committee of Montréal

The Halifax Initiative, a broad-based coalition of Canadian non-governmental organizations, welcomed the desire to improve the HIPC Initiative by the G7 governments expressed in the Köln Debt Initiative. Unfortunately, this welcome is qualified by the concern that two major issues remain unresolved, so that the effort to lift the debt burden of the poorest countries remains insufficient. The welcome is also qualified due to a wariness of the gap between what the G7 may wish and what the IFIs may do.

The Halifax Initiative Coalition members include development, human rights, environment and church organizations. In Canada, it is the main voice for reform of the international financial institutions so that they better serve the poor.

Like many others, the Halifax Initiative Coalition initially extended a tentative welcome to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process, hoping that the language of "country ownership" and "civil society participation" would, in time, result in some level of empowerment of people affected by IFI policies and programs.

One Year Later- Where's the Leadership? Groups Urge Minister Martin to "Walk the Talk" on Parliamentary Motion on the Tobin Tax  
 
March 23, 2000 - Today non-governmental organizations join Parliamentarians in calling for Finance Minister Martin to "walk the talk" on a motion to tax financial speculators.
 

This submission analyses the report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) entitled "Exporting in the Canadian Interest: Reviewing the Export Development Act". Our recommendations are primarily concerned with Chapter 9 of the Report on the Review of the Export Development Act (hereinafter the Gowlings report).

In 1999, Amnesty International raised alarms about the killing of four indigenous peopl

Halifax Initiative coalition submission to the 1999 Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Debt Initiative Review and C

House of Commons Debate on the Tobin Tax on Feb 3, 1999   
PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS