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Press Release: Creation of South Bank

Movements And Social Organizations From Latin American And The World Release Open Letter On The Creation Of The South Bank

Coinciding with the signing on December 9, in Buenos Aires, of the South Bank’s Founding Act, hundreds of social movements, networks, organizations and personalities from throughout Latin America and the world are presenting to the Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela, an Open Letter |1| expressing their expectation with regard to the creation of the new financial institution together with proposals intended to insure that the Bank can indeed contribute to the integration of the region’s peoples and the full enjoyment of human and environmental rights and the right to development.

The text manifests the movements’ conviction that this South-South entity must break with the experience of existing multilateral organisms such as the World Bank, the IMF, the IDB, and the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), "which are widely recognized today for their non-democratic, non-transparent, regressive, and disaccredited operations". The South Bank must also contribute to overcoming "the negative experience of economic liberalization suffered by the region, with its consequences of ever more indebtedness and the constant draining of capital, deregulation, and the privatization of public patrimony and basic services.

Among other key points, which build on the proposals presented in June of this year, this Second Open Letter highlights the importance of the South Bank forming an integral part of a new regional financial architecture, which would also include the creation of a South Fund - with the functions of a regional Central Bank, and a common monetary instrument. It also underscores the need for transparency and participation of the social movements in both the negotiating phase as well as the eventual operation of the institution and calls on the Presidents to inform and consult with society and incorporate clear mechanisms of citizen control in the Bank´s establishment.

This Second Open Letter on the South Bank is signed, among others, by representative networks, movements, and personalities in Latin America such as the Hemispheric Social Alliance, the Andean Coordination of Indigenous Orgnizations, Jubilee South/Americas, Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), Latindadd, the Network of Women Transforming the Economy Remte, Oid-LA, the Latin American Association of Political Economists Sepla, the Lutheran World Federation’s Advocacy Program on Illegitimate Debt, the Peace and Justice Service in Latin America, Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, and Nora Cortiñas and Mirta Baravalle of the Mothers of May Square-Founder’s Line. Together with numerous other national, regional, and global organizations, they manifest in this statement the importance they attribute to the South Bank being a public entity; whose direction is exercised on an equal basis among the participating countries; that it be capitalized in a way that is proportionate to the capacity of each economy; that its operations be transparent and austere; and that in essence, it promote the integration in solidarity of the peoples and countries of the region on the basis of concrete objectives such as full employment, food security and sovereignty, the guarantee of healthcare and housing, the universalization of free and public basic education, the redistribution of wealth, environmental protection, and the overcoming of inequities such as those of gender and ethnicity. As in their First Open Letter, endorsing movements and organizations specifically reject the possibility that the South Bank reproduce the model and priorities of the existing international financial institutions by providing financial backing for megaprojects that are destructive of local communities, the environment, and biodiversity or infrastructure schemes such as IIRSA, which responds to a logic of "integration" designed by global capital interests and the huge TNCs.

Titled "For a South Bank Oriented to a Sovereign and Sustainable Development Matrix for the Integration of the Continent in Solidarity", the Open Letter further affirms the need for the new Bank to be an instrument "to safeguard and channel savings within the region, interrupting the recurrent cycles of exaction of national and regional efforts through manoeuvres and deals on the basis of public indebtedness and securities, the subsidization of privileged and/or corrupt local and international private economic and financial groups, and constant backing for speculative transborder capital flows."

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