G77 Summit Urges Reform of Global Financial Architecture, Access to Science and Technology
Sept. 16, 2023, (EIRNS)—The two-day summit of the G77+China ended today in Havana with the issuance of its final declaration, the “Havana Declaration on ‘Current Development Challenges: the Role of Science, Technology and Innovation,’” which calls for the “comprehensive reform of the international financial architecture” and a “more inclusive and coordinated approach to global financial governance with greater emphasis on cooperation among countries.”
The two-day gathering included 1,300 participants from 116 countries, 31 heads of state and government, and 100 country delegations. As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel appropriately urged member states when he opened the summit yesterday, the priority task is “to fight for the right to development, which is also the right to exist as a species.” It’s time, he said, for the nations of the Global South “to change the rules of the game.”
As the Havana Declaration repeatedly states, changing the rules of the game means that developing countries must act together for global development and “ ‘win-win’ cooperation for scientific and technological development.” They must have access to science, technology and innovation with all the benefits these entail: economic growth, industrial development, solving problems to guarantee clean water, sanitation, energy, combating disease and eradicating poverty. The final declaration makes this point throughout, while fiercely attacking the criminality of imposing unilateral sanctions “with extraterritorial impact and all other forms of coercive economic measures” on developing nations which have devastating results.
Coming as it did, shortly after the Aug. 22-24 Johannesburg BRICS summit and leading into next week’s Sept. 19-26 UN General Assembly Debate, the G77 summit zeroed in on the “tectonic” and “epochal” changes that are taking place, expressed by many speakers. Angolan President João Lourenço warned that developing nations “won’t stand around with our arms crossed to wait for some miraculous solutions to the problems we face.... We will know how to find the solutions and strategies that will lead us to concretize our development agenda.”
South African Minister of International Relations Naledi Pandor added that
“the struggle for the soul of the South and for unilateral global dominance has never been more intense and as the South, we must seize this historic moment to ensure we develop the ability to be free agents of a development agenda that will advance our battle against poverty inequality and unemployment.”
Brazilian President Lula da Silva slammed the U.S. for its “illegal” decades-long economic embargo against Cuba, as did almost every other speaker, noting that Cuba has always been one of the most important defenders of a “more just global governance.” It is urgent, he said, that developing nations remain united given that the “UN, the Bretton Woods system and the World Trade Organization have lost credibility. We cannot allow ourselves to be divided.” Lula will be traveling from Havana directly to New York City to attend the UN General Assembly Debate, where he will continue to emphasize these themes.
