European Civil Society meets to plan the Year Ahead

At the EURODAD Conference

 

EURODAD (European Network on Debt and Development) (of which nef is a member) held its AGM and annual conference in Dublin from 30^th November to 2^nd December 2005. The latter was attended by about 132 people from 32 countries and was on the theme “Global Decision-Making And National Realities: Where Next On Aid And Debt?”. It is the main forum for deciding strategy for the coming year for campaigners from all over Europe. A number of observers from the South ensured that the conference was (?) kept in touch with opinion in that quarter.

 

Steve Mandel, our Senior Researcher, attended both AGM and conference on behalf of nef and Jubilee Research.

 

The AGM discussion focussed on the outline work plan for Eurodad staff for the next three years and the detailed plans for the coming year, as well as the usual stuff of an AGM, such as the election of new board members, the annual accounts and the budget. There were two new members of the Board, namely Sony Kapoor of Christian Aid and Jurgen Kaiser of Erlassjahr (Jubilee Germany). Plans for expansion, particularly to include the new members of the EU and greater representation in southern Europe, were discussed. Three new members were accepted into Eurodad: Both Ends of the Netherlands, Centre National de Coopération au Développement (CNCD) of Belgium and ATTAC (Association pour la Taxation des Transactions pour l’Aide aux Citoyens) of Sweden.

 

Discussion in the first main session of the conference focussed on a review of the value of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) currently favoured by the WB. These are supposed to be national plans which entail much improved consultation and involvement of civil society in the planning of a country’s development (and hence also in WB and other donor’s programmes). The subject has been studied by EURODAD using case studies in four countries and their report concluded that very few civil society organisations had even heard of the process, let alone been consulted and that the PRSPs had examined only minor mitigating variations, not major policy options and so could not be regarded as living up to their name. The second main session looked at campaigning issues and was striking for the agreement that while trade, aid and debt are the immediate themes on which people campaign, the real issues are equity, justice, power and legitimacy and the need for a revised world economic order, which are not often referred to directly.

 

Another prominent theme was the importance of turning the focus of campaigning towards the illegitimacy of many debts, following the landmark acceptance by the Norwegian govt that odious debt should be cancelled.

 

Steve ran a workshop entitled “The Big Picture” and circulated a work-in-progress paper entitled “A Human Development Approach to Debt Relief”. The former was aimed to get people thinking about the interconnections between all the elements of the international economic system, with the aim of substituting the pursuit of sustainable well-being for the chimera of eternal growth in wealth. The latter reworked and extended a study carried out by CAFOD into how the concept of debt sustainability could be given a human face by ensuring that governments were not forced to put debt servicing before the minimal standard of living for their people. For the full text see …..

 

During the conference itself work was carried out on a letter of protest to the UK and other governments about to receive $12.4 billion over the next 6 months from Nigeria to clear its Paris Club debts. This debt consists almost entirely of export credit guarantee debt, contracted under military dictatorships often by dubious firms associated with the regime and for exports from Britain that were guaranteed by the ECGD often without proper scrutiny. For the UK to receive twice as much (£1.7 billion) in 6 months from a country where more than 80 million of its inhabitants live on less than $1 a day and one in five children do not reach their fifth birthday than it is giving to all African countries put together in 2005 is clearly obscene.

 

Delegates left feeling inspired by the enthusiasm, energy and imagination of the participants and with plenty of ideas for the coming year. Once again, despite differences of opinion about the detail, the unanimity about the main goals and the determination to work together, to find the common ground and move forward was striking.