A United Nations High Level Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development – An Assessment from the South
From June 22 - 27, 2009, the UN High Level Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development took place in New York.
Beverly Keene, the international coordinator for Jubilee South, writes that it is no doubt positive that the Conference was able to produce by consensus an Outcome Document (OD) which, furthermore, introduces some notable advances at the diagnostic level. It helped to increase attention to the crisis’ impact on the countries and peoples of the periphery, as well as to deepen discussion around some initiatives that could make a relatively greater contribution to mitigating those impacts and preventing their recurrence. Key aspects of the neoliberal agenda undergirding both the Monterrey Consensus and the FFD Doha Follow-up document from as recently as December, 2008, are called into question, most importantly a blind faith in economic growth and the neutrality of the market.
Conference conclusions do not, however, offer anything concrete or new for the people and the environment already or soon to be affected by the crisis. Nor do they offer any inkling of hope that the responsibilities of major actors and institutions in the generation of the crisis will be sanctioned or compensation provided for their victims.