By Randy Alonso Falcón on September 22, 2023
graphic: Al Mayadeen
They offered us a prosperous and equitable world and gave us an atrocious neoliberalism and rampant inequality. They announced the end of History and filled us with nuclear weapons in case it was necessary. They promised us development goals for 2030 and have taken us back to the levels of 10 years ago in the number of hungry and malnourished people.
They spoke of solidarity to face pandemics and challenges and have given us a world of an increasingly rich minority and a vast majority increasingly poor. They pledged to reduce emissions and halt the advance of temperatures and have bequeathed us a year full of record heat and catastrophic events. They announced the Era of Knowledge and hundreds of millions of illiterate people still live on the planet.
This is how “upside down” the world we live in today is. Never before have there been such deep and multiple crises as the ones we are facing today: economic, energetic, environmental, social, geopolitical. Humanity seems to be castrated of rationality and full of nonsense.
The hegemonism of the United States and its allies, the financial architecture erected at Bretton Woods 80 years ago and the Washington Consensus have led us down this path.
The majorities cannot stand it any longer, although they have not been able to impose the force of their needs.
Havana has just brought together, on September 15 and 16, presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, ministers and other dignitaries from more than 100 nations of the world, those of us who live in the Global South, at a Summit of the Group of 77 and China which, under the banner of science and innovation for development, served to denounce the disparities in the world’s development, served to denounce the disparities, exclusions, sanctions and to cry out for a new global financial architecture, for an end to the impositions of world power, for an end to the ordeal of the asphyxiating foreign debt and its infinite interests.
Many courageous, profound and sincere speeches were heard. The harshness of the circumstances makes politics more realistic and less hypocritical.
It was a historic Summit. It was the first time since 2005 that representatives of an organization representing 80 percent of the world’s population had met at the highest level. We are the majority and we are more diverse, but this must translate into a stronger and more respected voice in the international arena. Enough of a few powerful countries deciding the destinies of humanity as a whole. These are times for multilateralism and not for hegemonisms.
Cuba, with its ethical and symbolic leadership among the peoples of the South, has made an important contribution in its pro tempore presidency to that purpose of unity and strength of those who “no longer have anything to lose”, as the poet would say.
This has been seen in these days in New York, in the plenary of the United Nations General Assembly, where leaders from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia have carried the same spirit of denunciation and search for solutions that was heard at the Havana Summit.
“The absence of progress should not be attributed to the absence of solutions. The actions are there. What is urgently needed is the political will to truly “leave no one behind” and overcome one of the most complex crises humanity has ever experienced in modern history. That would be our best contribution to the common future we need to build together!” said Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel when speaking on behalf of the G77 and China in one of the several spaces for debate that have taken place during this critical week at the UN headquarters.
The times we live in do not admit any more delays. The dangers for the planet and humanity do not differentiate between citizens of the North and the South, nor between ideologies and beliefs. Either we seek global, lasting and equitable solutions or we are heading straight for disaster. The new world needs to be born now, before the one that is perishing (and has done so much damage) drags us all to the worst scenario. May the eyes of the South, cleaner and less selfish, help to open paths of justice and solidarity among all peoples and nations!
As Fidel would energetically say at the Earth Summit (1992) “tomorrow will be too late”.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English