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Events

Redefining S-S Cooperation: Africa on the Centre Stage

Workshop on Environmental Change in sub-Saharan Africa

Third IBSA Summit Academic Forum

WTO Public Forum 2008: Trading into the Future

20th Annual Meeting of Senior Officials of the Group of 77

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South Centre calls for Revamping the Global Financial Architecture

South Centre

Statement by Board Members of the South Centre

The financial crisis that originated in the United States a year ago has become a global financial crisis unprecedented since the Great Depression. Since mid-September financial markets have collapsed and the world is entering into possibly the worst recession of the post-Second World War period. The credit freeze has severely hit developing countries through increasing risk premia and a severe cut in financing, even of short-term commercial lending. Capital outflows from developing countries have generated a collapse of stock markets and exchange rates and a loss of reserves. Commodity prices have plunged and export orders are being cut worldwide. Even developing countries that were seen as relatively invulnerable to a recession in the industrial world are now feeling the strain.

Norman Girvan on Barack Obama

Norman Girvan, Former Secretary-General of the Association of Caribbean States and Board Member of the South Centre, Jamaica

If America can elect a Black man as President, why can't Caricom nations agree to pool their sovereignty so that we can speak with one voice in world trade and politics; and our people walk taller in the world by virtue of their Caribbean identity, as did every person of colour on the morning of November 5, 2008?

Group of 77 and the United Nations Reforms

Ambassador Bagher Asadi, Iran

"The aspiration for the “new order” arose from the “dissatisfaction of the developing countries with the liberal economic order instituted at the end of World War II”. The liberal economic order was centered around Bretton Woods Institutions, including GATT (superseded by WTO in 1995) which are nominally part of the UN system. In reality, they were more in tune with the interests and policies of advanced Western economies."

Washington to Beijing via Doha: Time for a New Bretton Woods Conference

Yash Tandon, Executive Director, South Centre

The South has not been immune to the financial meltdown of the developed North, but the South’s partial decoupling from the North has somewhat lessened the impact. Yet, the existing Bretton Woods institutions continue to favour “globalisation” rather than decoupling.

The writing on the wall is becoming evidently clear: the time has come for a new Bretton Woods-kind of conference, this time probably somewhere in the South – Beijing?

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