CALL FOR A JUST AND MORAL ECONOMY
ECUMENICAL TEAM PREPARES FOR GENEVA 2000
______________________________
>World Council of Churches
>Press Release
>For Immediate Use
>5 April 2000
>
>
>cf. WCC Feature of 24 February 2000
>
>
>The goals set by the 1995 World Summit on Social Development cannot be
>achieved without fundamental changes in the operation of the world
>economy, an ecumenical team is telling delegates preparing for a review of
>the summit.
>
>Poverty has increased in the five years since the political leaders of the
>world made their commitments to reduce it in the 1995 World Social Summit
>at Copenhagen, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, team
>members say.
>
>The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation
>(LWF), which have jointly sponsored the presence of church representatives
>at previous meetings preparing for the summit review to be held in Geneva
>26-30 June, have brought an ecumenical, international team of some two
>dozen people to New York for the meeting of the preparatory committee 3-14
>April.
>
>Rogate R. Mshana, WCC executive secretary for economic justice, and Gail
>Lerner, WCC UN representative in New York, are assisting team members as
>they talk with government delegates about the views of the churches and
>gather information to take back to their home constituencies.
>
>Explaining the goals of the effort as team members were gathering on 3
>April, Mshana and Lerner said they were giving primary emphasis to the
>first of ten commitments in the plan of action adopted in Copenhagen:
>creation of an "environment that will enable people to achieve social
>development".
>
>Church representatives are also stressing the basic importance of the
>second commitment: eradication of poverty, they said.
>
>In such areas the team finds extensive "ecumenical overlap" with positions
>advocated by the Roman Catholic Church through both the UN observer
>mission of the Holy See and Catholic non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
>
>Mshana and Lerner said a key factor in creating the needed environment was
>turning away from the "neo-liberal" approach to development, and replacing
>it with a commitment to build a "people-centered economy".
>
>The "neo-liberal" view holds that a free market economy and an absence of
>government intervention will bring growth and an end to poverty through
>"trickle-down" effects. But Mshana and Lerner said it was an "illusion"
>to think the markets were "free", when actually there was always control
>at some points, and that the experience of the poor countries since
>Copenhagen proved that neo-liberalism does not work.
>
>In regard to overcoming poverty, the ecumenical team insists on going
>beyond conventional ideas such as a call by the Organization for Economic
>Cooperation and Development (OECD) for a 50 per cent reduction in poverty
>by 2015.
>
>Mshana and Lerner said the world should not talk about reducing poverty,
>but should adopt a strategy to eradicate it.
>
>They are calling for increased development assistance to poor
>countries. And they suggest that a "currency transaction tax", sometimes
>called the Tobin Tax (after the economist James Tobin who proposed the
>idea in 1978), could both help weak economies by limiting currency
>speculation and raise substantial sums for development.
>
>In accord with the WCC Harare Assembly of 1998, the ecumenical team is
>also stressing the debt issue. But Mshana and Lerner said there would be
>a prior call of "reparations", returning funds that the wealthier
>countries had drawn from the poor. And the church representatives will
>call for outright cancellation of debts owed by poor countries, rather
>than negotiation of extended periods of repayment.
>
>They also argued that the debts should be cancelled without demands by the
>International Monetary Fund (IMF) or other bodies for "structural
>adjustments", which usually means reducing social expenditures and turning
>many government services over to private interests.
>
>The ecumenical team will seek consideration of some fundamental moral and
>ethical issues, and the needs of Africa and of Indigenous peoples. But
>team members do not pretend to deal with every topic coming up at the
>summit review, called Geneva 2000, or to go deeply into some of the
>technical aspects.
>
>Fundamentally, the representatives of the churches see their primary task
>as calling for a change of heart among those now dominating the world
>economy so that it can become "a just and moral economy . . . where
>resources are equitably shared, and where public and private institutions
>are held accountable for the social and ecological consequences of their
>operations".
>
>For further information, please contact Karin Achtelstetter, Media
>Relations Officer
>Tel: (+41.22) 791.61.53, Mobile: (+41) 79.284.52.12
>
>**********
>The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches, now 337,
>in more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
>traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works
>cooperatively with the WCC. The highest governing body is the assembly,
>which meets approximately every seven years. The WCC was formally
>inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by
>general secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.
>
>
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