PHM-Exch> A statement by former staff members of UNCTAD

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: South Centre <south at southcentre.org>

Please find attached a letter signed by former senior UNCTAD staff members
including Secretary General Rubens Ricupero, Deputy Secretary-Generals and
Directors, regarding the pressure placed on UNCTAD and the G-77 by major
developed countries in the preparations for UNCTAD XIII. The statement has
been released in a press conference held today and presented to Ambassador
Maruping.

Martin Khor etc.








*Statement by former staff members of UNCTAD*
Geneva, 11 April 2012
Silencing the message or the messenger …. or both?

Since its establishment almost 50 years ago at the instigation of
developing countries UNCTAD has always been a thorn in the flesh of
economic orthodoxy. Its analyses of global macro-economic issues from a
development perspective have regularly provided an alternative view to that
offered by the World Bank and the IMF controlled by the west.
Now efforts are afoot to silence that voice. It might be understandable if
this analysis was being eliminated because it duplicated the work and views
of other international organizations, but the opposite is the case - a few
countries want to suppress any dissent with the prevailing orthodoxy.
No multilateral institution is perfect, but UNCTAD’s track-record of
analysis and warnings on global trends and problems certainly stands up to
those of other organisations. As otherwise unfavourable commentators have
occasionally admitted, UNCTAD was ahead of the curve in its warnings of how
global finance was trumping the real economy, both nationally and
internationally. It forecast the Mexican tequila crisis of 1994/5. It
warned of the East Asian crisis of 1997 and the Argentinian crisis of 2001.
It has consistently sounded the alarm of the dangers of excessive
deregulation of financial markets. It has stressed the perils of rapid,
non-reciprocal trade liberalization by developing countries. UNCTAD
economists have not had to suffer the psychology of denial so prevalent in
other organisations.
So why is the UNCTAD message so unwelcome? The fact that UNCTAD has no
formal responsibility for the global management of the international
economy and none of its own funds to dispense means that its analysis is
free of vested interests. No organisation correctly foresaw the current
crisis, and no organisation has a magic wand to deal with present
difficulties. But it is unquestionable that the crisis originated in and is
widespread among the countries that now wish to stifle debate about global
economic policies, despite their own manifest failings in this area.
Because of the crisis, we do now have a better explanation of the
inter-relationships between the real economy and the world of finance.
Those explanations are now a good deal closer to what UNCTAD has been
saying for nigh on three decades about the dangers of finance-driven
globalization. And it is precisely in its analysis of interdependence that
UNCTAD brings added value to an understanding of how the functioning of the
global economy impacts on the majority of the world’s population who live
in developing countries. Given the current pressure on the organisation and
its secretariat, that contribution could now be gone for good.
Why now? UNCTAD is about to have its next quadrennial conference (Doha,
21-26 April). UNCTAD conferences are a shadow of their past, being now
simply a time to agree on
secretariat work programme priorities for the next four years. But that is
precisely what is at stake.
Developing countries in Geneva, again, are struggling to resist the strong
pressure piled on them by OECD countries and to defend the organisation to
which they had been “umbilically” tied. They are not fully succeeding, in
spite of the BRICS pledge of support manifested at its recent summit. So
the developed countries in Geneva have seized the occasion to stifle
UNCTAD’s capacity to think outside the box. This is neither a cost-saving
measure nor an attempt to “eliminate duplication” as some would claim. The
budget for UNCTAD’s research work is peanuts and disparate views on
economic policy are needed today more than ever as the world clamours for
new economic thinking as a sustainable way out of the current crisis. No,
it is rather – if you cannot kill the message, at least kill the messenger.
All of the undersigned have worked as senior officials for UNCTAD at one
time or another. Individually, we may not necessarily have agreed with what
UNCTAD was saying on specific issues. We have no vested interest in this
matter except that we all fervently believe in the value of maintaining an
independent research capability that serves to focus inter-governmental
debates on how the workings of the global economy affect developing
countries.
At time when pluralism is finally being meaningfully discussed in the
election of the President of the World Bank, it is ironic that OECD
countries are endeavouring to stifle freedom of speech within another
multilateral organization.
If those who were proud to work for UNCTAD do not speak out now, who will?

List of signatories* 48 signatories omitted here

Contact: John Burley, Divonne-les-Bains, France, +33 (0)4 50 20 20 91
john.burley at wanadoo.fr
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