Carta de Apoio à CPI – Jubileu Inglaterra

Jubileu Inglaterra

15 September, 2009

To: The Parliamentary Commission for the Auditing of the Public Debt, Auditoria Cidadã da Dívida, Jubileo Brasil, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra and social movements of Brazil

Dear Friends,

Jubilee Debt Campaign Supports the Brazilian Debt Audit Commission

I write to offer the wholehearted support of Jubilee Debt Campaign in the UK for your historic decision to audit Brazil’s debt. I would like to offer what solidarity I can to help ensure your audit is successful and helps the people of Brazil to reclaim their full sovereignty over their national economy.

Jubilee Debt Campaign fully endorses the international campaign for the implementation of debt audits. Debt audits are a key mechanism through which countries that have experienced the horror of unpayable and illegitimate debts can properly come to terms with the injustices that have been perpetrated against them. Moreover, debt audits allow governments and peoples to put an end to those injustices – to delineate which of their debts are unpayable and which are based on loans which provided no benefit to the country, but rather existed for the enrichment of the creditor.

We believe that democracy involves far more than voting every few years. Real democracy must involve participation in, and control over, your economic life. Unfortunately, many millions of people in developing countries are denied their right to economic participation through a combination of unjust trade rules, powerful donor institutions and, critically, enormous debt burdens, that have removed the economic sovereignty of their countries.

As a result, for decades now governments of many developing countries have been forced to pay more heed to developed country governments, corporations and international institutions than to respond to the needs and aspirations of their people.

Now is surely the time to put an end to this system of economic domination. We have, in the last 12 months, witnessed economic turmoil right across the world. Hundreds of millions of workers are losing their jobs and livelihoods. The tentacles of poverty are extending into ever more communities. The environment is being destroyed before our eyes.

We have witnessed the results of a market place left to its own devices. We are living with the consequences of a global economy ruled by unfettered greed. We now have a small period of time to re-assess the whole nature of the global economy. We must use it to find the enormous will which is required internationally to transform human relations, both with each other and with the environment, to one that is based on respect, justice and equality. We must use it to truly create a global economy that is of the people, by the people, for the people.

The social movements and governments of Latin America have taken a lead and you are inspiring hope across the world. The Brazilian debt audit is one example of the way in which groups in your country and on your continent are taking the opportunity to build a genuine democracy. We hope that we will be able to learn from your experience – that Brazil might offer its model of good governance to the rest of the world.

Debt audits are central to the struggle against one of the greatest injustices of modern times – debt slavery. Debt has held so many countries of the developing world in its chains for so long. Its impact can be measured in the foregone education and healthcare of a generation of people, in the inability of those in poverty to control their own development, in the failure of so many states to break free of their colonial chains.

Righting this wrong is central to creating the brighter future which we desire on behalf of the vast majority of humanity. We welcome your work in this cause and hope that we can stay in close contact as your audit proceeds. We stand ready to help and assist in any way that we can.

Best wishes,

Nick Dearden

Director

______________________________________________

The Grayston Centre

28 Charles Square

London N1 6HT

United Kingdom

www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk

info@jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk

T: +44 (0)20 7324 4722

F: +44 (0)