Ricardo G. Zaldívar: “The struggle to create a UN Economic Council should be ATTACs new battleground”

By Miguel Otero Iglesias 

The progressive social movements and the poorest countries on earth have been battling for years to regain the debate on how to organise the world economic and financial system; a debate commandeered for many decades by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G8, and now the G20 (all organisations with a huge democratic deficit). The aim has been to bring this discussion back to the open forum of the United Nations, where all the countries are represented and somehow, though not completely, all the citizens. This goal was achieved in part at the end of last year with the conclusion of the UN Doha Conference on finance for development in which it was decided that the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, would have the mandate to call for a consultative process at the highest level and establish an expert’s commission who would analyse in the following months the causes and effects of the current financial crisis that is hitting hard all the corners of the world and back then was at its peak (or so at least we are told by the mainstream economists).  

This commission was led by Nobel price winner, Joseph Stiglitz, and the insightful final report that came out of it established the intellectual base for the UN conference of heads of states and governments that took place in New York from the 24 to 26 of June 2009. However, the summit was preceded by tensions arising between mainly the US and the EU, opposed to discuss these highly sensitive issues on the open floor of the UN, and d’Escoto and the experts of the commission, who represented the interests of the poorer nations. As usual in these cases, the international press did not cover the event, claiming that it was of minor importance. Considering this backdrop, the insights of Zaldívar, representative of ATTAC at the conference, gain even more importance. He tells us from a privileged vantage point what happened before, during and after the conclusion of this important and controversial UN conference so fiercely overlooked by the mass media. Let’s start the interview, then.  

Hi Ricardo, first of all I think it would be useful to get your overall assessment of the conference. Was it worth going to New York? 

RGZ: When the coordinator of ATTAC Spain suggested that it would be important to attend the conference organised by the president of the General Assembly of the United Nations I have to admit that I was a bit sceptical. It is always good to travel to places and participate, but for an organisation with a small budget like ATTAC Spain it is always a risk to send one of its members to an event of this sort. It can go well, but it can also end up in a waste of money. Having said that, having gone, I have to recognise that it was a good idea and that it was worthwhile going. I think it is extremely important that ATTAC participates in these UN discussions for two main reasons. 

First of all, because I think the conference will have great repercussions, despite all the efforts by the G20 countries to boycott the whole process. What came out of the conference is very interesting. I think it has opened a window and that the UN will use this open window to tackle issues that before where vetoed and controlled by the richest countries. I am referring to topics like the management of the current crisis, for example, or the financial tools necessary to reduce poverty around the world. It is true that these topics were discussed in other UN conferences like the one of Monterrey (in 2002), but until now the highest body of the UN, the General Assembly, had never been involved in the process. There were just low profile conferences before.  

The second reason why I think it was a good idea to send someone from ATTAC to the conference relates to the social movements that have been working on this topic. The lobbying pressures of established organisations like the International Trade Union Confederation and NGOs like South Centre haven been enormous and I think it is good for us to get involved with the civil society that has been working for years with the UN, something that ATTAC hasn’t done yet. Even though, I have to say that Bernard Cassen cleverly registered ATTAC as a consultative organisation, of the civil society to the UN after its creation and thanks to this visionary move I was able to be a delegate at the conference.  

Now, I guess it makes sense to divide the interview in two parts. One the one hand we have the conference per se and the final outcomes of it and, on the other hand, there is the future after the conference and the work that ATTAC can do around the process that is starting within the UN. Let me ask, how did you perceive the tensions between the G20 countries and the rest? It seems that the G20 wants to be in charge of the monetary, financial and economic governance of the world without external interference.   

RGZ: Ok, I can only speak on the level of my own feelings because obviously I didn’t have first hand access to the negotiations. I was able, however, to talk to people like François Houtart, the General Assembly’s president special representative to the expert’s commission led by Stiglitz, and he gave me some insights of what happened behind closed doors. Considering this second hand information, it seems that the US, the UK, Brazil somehow, and other countries like Holland and even South Africa, showed their concern about debating these important issues on the open battle field, being the open battle field the General Assembly of the UN.  

For many delegates, the UN is primarily the Security Council, which deals with the most important topics while the minor issues are debated within the General Assembly, where every country has a voice. However, when the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, backed with the resolution of the Doha Conference, calls for a summit at the highest level to assess the causes and effects of the current financial and economic crisis for world development, he already sets food in a door that otherwise was only open to the G20, the IMF and the World Bank. Hence, this is a door that opens d’Escoto, because actually he has the authority to do so. And he does it very well. Right after receiving the mandate, he establishes an expert’s commission to deal with the matter and asks Stiglitz to head it, who takes the task very seriously and with a all his energy and magnetism (because we cannot forget that he is an economic authority, holder of a Nobel price, and a very respected voice in academic circles) he produces a report, which can be criticised in many ways, but which is a very useful document which reflects very clearly the fight between the UN and the G20 and the IMF.  

I mean the report has rung all the alarm bells of the powerful countries to the point that the Dutch facilitator in charge of transferring the Stiglitz report to the final conference declaration accused d’Escoto to put forward a resolution draft that was against the will of the majority of countries. Against this accusation, d’Escoto answered firmly that it was true that the draft did not represent the position of certain countries, but surely the will of the majority of countries. This dispute shows clearly why the alarm bells of the G20 country rung so loudly. To make it clear, the analysis put forward by d’Escoto, on the base of the Sitglitz report, is a perfect analysis of the crisis. Reading the report, one recognises that this crisis was not caused by a lack of supervision, nor by high levels of greed and so forth, no, the message here is clear: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the framework of the last thirty years is what brought us into this mess and this is very serious”.  

This is a general view of what I can say about the disputes before and during the conference. Some leaders, however, are crystal clear about this issue. The 44 minute speech of the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (who was one of the few heads of states that actually responded to the call of d’Escoto, with Evo Morales, who unfortunately had problems with his plane and could not attend the conference in New York), summarises most of the ideas of the Stiglitz report by giving them in addition a political meaning very well, because we cannot forget that the document drafted by Stiglitz and his colleagues is a technical report.   

All this is what I think is very important to highlight and is precisely the kind of information that has been overlooked by the mass media. I was in New York and the New York Times published a little note of no more than 40 words about the conference. Other media have not even touched on the issue. Here one can see the pressure, the power of those who rule the international system. Nevertheless, d’Escoto and the experts did a good job because, as I said, the alarm bells were ringing in the headquarters of the powerful nations and they had put to work all their state machineries to make this conference a failure.  

Notwithstanding these efforts, many NGOs have strongly criticised the final resolution of the conference by saying that it had no teeth and that it included just a list of vague recommendations without any enforcement power. Do you see it also from this rather pessimistic view?      

RGZ: Well, you can always see the glass half full or half empty. It is in the human nature to consider a small step forward as insufficient. Under this understanding, one can see the final resolution as an example of weakness on the part of the social movements. But, one can also see the glass half full. What is clear is that there was a very tough negotiation process. The main aim, and this is something that I got from Houtart, was actually to avoid the withdrawal of the US and the UK. This has been achieved by the way; at the end both countries signed the final resolution. This was already a small victory. The final resolution is somehow weak. I agree. By accepting the criticism of the facilitating commission of the resolution draft, d’Escoto clearly lost one battle. He even lost this battle quite openly, since he had to change the date of the conference and on top of that he had to produce a second draft of the resolution proposal. If we compare the first draft with the second, we can see how d’Escoto conceded many points. This is not all; there are even more concessions between this second draft and the final resolution signed by the heads of states and governments. But, in my opinion, after having been there, I think it was well worth having this discussion under the roof of the UN and at the forum of the General Assembly. I hope, for example, for the consolidation of the proposal for the creation of a world economic council, which has been one of the battlegrounds that this conference has opened for the social movements and the progressive governments.  

Even though, we have to point out here that the proposal for a world economic council was finally dropped from the final resolution, which in my opinion is another defeat.  

RGZ: Yes, this is true, I accept that this is a step back, but I still think that the struggle for the creation of an economic council can be similar to the Tobin Tax, proposed first by ATTAC, and then taken as a common goal by broad movements like the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre. I think the creation of the economic council is a very valid demand and that ATTAC should fight for this cause. The world social movements that fight against neo-liberalism should make this claim their new battleground and try to include the creation of the council in subsequent resolutions before the crisis is over and we all go back to the good old days of massive speculation.  

¿How would this world economic council work actually? 

RGZ: In the same manner that the Security Council decides when a war is just and when it is unjust, the Economic Council could decide when the activities of a firm or a transnational are entering the territory of UN reprisal. As a matter of fact, the economic council could open many new spaces for the UN mandate. This is why I think that the UN will attract renewed attention by the members of ATTAC in the next two or three years. The UN has been left aside within ATTAC. We have focused more on issues around financial markets, rent distribution and global public goods without really touching the UN. I think that the world economic council can attract more interest among ATTAC members than the Millennium goals, for example, that have been a more marginal topic centred on poverty reduction which has attracted other kind of NGOs. The world economic council has more to do with the causes of poverty and not with the reduction or the effects of it and for this reason I think ATTAC should get involved in this struggle and use the momentum provided by the Stiglitz report.  

Stiglitz wants somehow to become the Keynes of the XXI century. He keeps insisting on the final results of the conference. A few weeks ago he wrote an article entitled “The UN takes charge” and there he reiterates the commission’s desire to establish a world economic council and introduce a new global reserve, something, he admits, is not in the interests of the US at all. In essence, I think there are some proposals in the Stiglitz report that are very interesting and should be picked up by the social movements.   

Related to this issue, after what you have seen and commented in New York with other delegates of other organisations, do you think there is a consensus among social movements fighting neo-liberalism around the world economic council proposal? 

I wouldn’t dare to say that there is a consensus; I am just saying that ATTAC can play a role that we didn’t play in the past, even though I don’t know whether we will be able to do so because we don’t have the resources of other organisations like South Centre and the International Trade Union Confederation which are doing a much stronger lobbying work.  

I don’t know whether there is a common bloc or not, but there were several meetings with the representatives of the social movements and there were a few interventions which received great applause that pointed out that in the future the strategy should be twofold: we have to work from the inside and the outside (this reminded me to my years of anti-Franco struggle where the question was whether to join or not the official vertical unions to undermine the regime from inside). We cannot be purists and say that the UN is not what it was and that we all know who rules it. I think we need to participate in the process from inside and make pressure from outside. I guess in this respect there is a great consensus. As always, there are organisations that are more reformists in their nature and others more radical in their struggle against capitalism and the creation of a post-capitalist society. Some agree that capitalism creates wealth, others deny that, but besides this debate, we all agree that capitalism performs very badly when it comes to distribution of wealth. We all know that capitalism is a machine that enhances inequalities and poverty. Here we are all in agreement. But there is no fixed program that tells us what to do next and where to meet. However, my recommendation to ATTAC Spain and ATTAC Europe is that in this moment it is worthwhile to be part of the process started by d’Escoto with the support of Stiglitz. I think we should put our efforts and our energies to this cause in order to play an important role in this new battleground that was not here before the crisis.  

Ok, we leave it here then with these recommendations. Thank you very much Ricardo for your assessments and insights.  

Related Documents: 

Stiglitz Report:

http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/financialcrisis/PreliminaryReport210509.pdf 

Final Resolution of the UN Conference:

http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/63/303&Lang=E 

Conference speech by Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/stt_day25.shtml  

Joseph Stiglitz recent article: “The UN takes charge”

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20090709/un-takes-charge.htm