Edith M. Lederer
UN: impact of economic crisis could last years
UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned at a U.N. financial summit Wednesday that the impact of the global economic crisis could last for years with millions more families pushed into poverty, and he urged rich nations to mobilize the money to help hard-hit developing countries.
At the opening of the three-day conference, the U.N. chief said the global economic meltdown cannot be an excuse for leaders of the major economies to abandon pledges to help the poor.
“Surely, if the world can mobilize more than US$18 trillion to keep the financial sector afloat, it can find more than US$18 billion to keep commitments to Africa,” Ban said.
He said the world is still struggling to overcome the worst financial and economic crisis since the U.N. was founded over 60 years ago.
“Some see financial stabilization and growth in some countries. But I want to say this loud and clear: These are merely signs,” Ban said. “For a large number of countries there are no ‘green shoots’ of recovery. There are only fallow fields. The real impact of the crisis could stretch for years.”
General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a leftist Nicaraguan priest and former foreign minister, said the 192-member world body was the best place to seek an inclusive global solution to the crisis, which he blamed on the “egoistical” exploitation of “material capitalism.”
“It is neither humane nor responsible to build a Noah’s Ark only to save the existing economic system, leaving the vast majority of humanity to their fate and to suffer the negative effects of a system imposed by an irresponsible but powerful minority,” D’Escoto said. “We must take decisions that affect us all collectively to the greatest extent possible.”
D’Escoto announced Tuesday that rich and poor nations had reached tentative agreement on a blueprint for a global response to the economic crisis that would make the United Nations a player in promoting recovery, especially in poor countries.
The 142 U.N. member states participating in the summit — including a number of world leaders and several dozen ministers — must approve the text and it could still be changed.
While the document would not be legally binding if it is approved, it would put on record the view that a solution to the crisis cannot be left just to the Group of Eight major industrialized nations or the Group of 20 key countries that account for over 80 percent of the global economy. It must include the views of all 192 U.N. member states, especially developing countries which have been impacted more severely than the richer developed countries that are mainly to blame for the crisis.
Ban said at the summit that before the G20 meeting in London in April he called for a US$1 trillion global stimulus to help all nations but especially the most vulnerable. The G20 agreed on a substantial package of financial support totaling US$1.1 trillion, but Ban said this was “only a beginning.”
The draft notes that only US$50 billion of the US$1.1 trillion is targeted for low income countries, and it calls on the G20 “to further consider addressing the financial needs” of the poorest nations.
Ban said he had just sent a letter to G8 leaders who will meet in Italy next month “urging concrete commitments and specific action.”
The draft document calls the conference “a milestone” in engaging all U.N. member states to address the economic crisis.
The document paints a depressing picture of the current state of the world economy: millions of people losing jobs, savings and their homes; more than 50 million additional people driven into extreme poverty, according to the World Bank; and the prospect of over 1 billion hungry and undernourished people, a historic high, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
It calls for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other lending institutions to be flexible in imposing conditions on developing countries so that they can take action to deal with the economic crisis, including adopting stimulus packages. The draft also calls for measures to avoid a new debt crisis and new approaches to restructuring debt.
It calls on the General Assembly to establish a working group to follow-up on the issues in the document and report to its next session, which starts in September.
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