Luis Almagro, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Uruguay, addresses the opening of the 16th session of the Human Rights Council, in Geneva, Switzerland. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

By Luis Almagro
MONTEVIDEO, Jan 18 2015 (IPS)

Two decades after the first Summit of the Americas, a lot has changed in the continent and it has been for the good. Today, a renewed hemispheric dialogue without exclusions is possible.

Back in the mid-1990s, at the time of the Miami summit, it was the time of imported consensus, models of economic and social development exclusively based on the market and its supposed perfect allocation of resources through the invisible hand.Today, all voices count, and if they do not, they will have to. The powerful club of the G8 turned into the G20; still, this is not enough to embrace the new reality of our hemisphere.

Hidden under a development rationale, the greatest wave of privatisation and deregulation took over the continent. The role of the state was reduced to be a facilitator of a process based on the principle of survival of the fittest. Solidarity, equity and justice were all values from the past and poverty a necessary collateral damage.

However, these values were in the top of the minds of the people of the hemisphere, who turned their backs to these policies and instead during the past 15 years, have forcefully supported the alternatives that combine economic growth with social inclusion, broadening opportunities for all citizens.

Economic growth went hand in hand with social inclusion, adding millions to the middle class – which today accounts for 34 percent of Latin Americans – surpassing the number of poor for the first time in the history.

If this was possible it was because governments added to the invisible hand of the market, the very visible hand of the state.

And this took place within the context of the worst post war global financial crisis that led to an unprecedented recession in the United States and Europe, which the latter still strives to leave behind.

Growth with social equity turned out to be the new regional consensus.

Today, this binds the region together.

Today, conditions are present to set up a more realistic cooperation in the Americas, where all members could partner in equal conditions, from the most powerful to the smallest islands in the Caribbean.

Today, nobody holds the monopoly over what works or does not; neither can anybody impose models because the established truths have crashed against reality. While in the 1990s social exclusion in domestic policies and voice exclusion at the international level were two sides of the same token, this in not any longer acceptable.

Today, all voices count, and if they do not, they will have to. The powerful club of the G8 turned into the G20; still, this is not enough to embrace the new reality of our hemisphere.

To the existing bodies, the region has added in this past decade the dynamic UNASUR in South America and CELAC in the Americas, thus leaving the OAS as the only place for dialogue among all countries of the Americas, whether large, medium, small, powerful or vulnerable.

But, governmental or inter-governmental actors by themselves are not the only answer to the problems of today´s world. Non-state actors of the non-governmental world, the private sector, trade unions and social organisations must be part of the process.

Leaders need to interpret the time in order to generate an agenda for progress, but progress that is tangible for people, for citizens, to whom we are accountable to.

Therefore, in a more uncertain international economic environment, we should focus on maintaining and expanding our social achievements and a new spirit of cooperation in the Americas can be instrumental for that.

The Summit of the Americas in Panama, in April 2015, may be the beginning of this new process of confidence building, where all countries can feel they can benefit from a cooperative agenda. This will be a historical moment because this time there will be no exclusions.

The recent good news on the diplomatic front related to the normalisation of diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Cuba and the participation of Cuba in the Summit represent an additional positive signal. Panama deserves the support of the entire region before and during the Summit.

This will be a great opportunity to strengthen democratic values, the defence of human rights, institutional transparency and individual freedoms together with a practical agenda for cooperation for shared prosperity in the Americas.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

The five BRICS leaders pose for the cameras at the sixth annual summit in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza. Credit: Agência Brasil/EBC

By Mario Osava
FORTALEZA, Brazil, Jul 16 2014 (IPS)

The BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) launched the New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) during its sixth summit, institutionalising a new financial architecture for the emerging powers.

Two other agreements, one for Cooperation among Export Credit and Guarantees Agencies and another on Cooperation for Innovation among national development banks, complete the structure established Tuesday Jul. 15 by the five heads of state in the northeastern Brazilian city of Fortaleza.

The BRICS Summit concludes Wednesday with a meeting between the five leaders and the presidents of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) held in Brasilia, as well as several bilateral meetings.

The NDB and CRA are not being created “against anyone,” but as a “response to our needs,” said the summit host, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, at a press conference after the meeting with Vladimir Putin (Russia), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Jacob Zuma (South Africa).

BRICS leaders reject interpretations that the mechanisms have been created in opposition to or as alternatives to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), part of the Bretton Woods global financial system established in the 1940s.

The NDB will complement existing multilateral and regional financial institutions, whose lack of resources constrain financing of infrastructure projects in developing countries, according to the summit’s final declaration, signed by the participating heads of state.

The CRA, a mechanism through which the five countries make available a total of 100 billion dollars from their reserves, is a currency pool that provides financial security for its members, without departing from the IMF, summit speakers said.

If one of the BRICS countries wishes to borrow more than 30 percent of the sum it is entitled to, in order to overcome threats to its balance of payments, it will have to face questions from the IMF about conditions of payment, said the Brazilian finance minister, Guido Mántega.

Brazil, Russia and India can withdraw up to the value of their contributions of 18 billion dollars each. South Africa may take out twice the five billion dollars it will contribute to the mechanism, and China up to half its 41 billion dollar commitment.

The new institutions “consolidate” the BRICS alliance, Mántega said. Before they become operational, they must be ratified by the countries’ parliaments, he said.

The bank and the reserve fund are so constituted as to prevent aspirations of dominance, Rousseff said. The countries will have equal shares in the NDB, of 10 billion dollars each, and equal voting rights. The capital may later be doubled.

Bank presidents and its governing councils will be appointed on a rotating basis.

China will contribute 41 percent of CRA funds but decisions will be taken by a broader majority, reaching consensus for the negotiation of larger loans, Mántega said.

But the NBD headquarters will be located in the Chinese city of Shanghai, and it will be difficult to avoid the economic and monetary weight of the Asian power from translating into greater decision-making power for Beijing.

The NDB’s composition avoids inequalities at the outset, but equal participation is only a formality as “in practice the future trend will be towards greater Chinese influence,” according to Carlos Langoni, former president of the Brazilian Central Bank.

To be effective, the bank will have to increase its initial capital of 50 billion dollars, recruiting new financing resources, and in this as well as in crises the “dominant role” of the country offering most capital and guarantees is an influential factor, added Langoni, who is the present director of the World Economics Centre at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

China is interested in diversifying its investments, in multilateral and regional institutions as well as bilaterally. In recent years it has become the largest investor in Latin America.

It already participates in several regional financial mechanisms, such as the Chiang Mai Initiative, similar to the CRA and involving countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and it is seeking to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, as an alternative to the Asian Development Bank in which Japan has decisive influence.

Langoni believes that the BRICS, with the CRA resting on “mega-economies” with their enormous currency reserves, will in the long term be able to “grow faster and have more weight than the IMF, which is already facing difficulties raising funds because of its rules.”

However, the IMF will remain the most powerful multilateral financial body over the next decade, he said.

The rise of the BRICS reflects a multipolar world, as the alliance includes military powers like Russia and China, nuclear powers like both these countries and India, and “moderators” without military ambitions like Brazil and South Africa.

Progress in strengthening and institutionalising the group at its Fortaleza summit could help reduce border tensions existing between China and India, or between Russia and the West, Langoni said.

In his view, what cements the group is its “frustration over the action of multilateral bodies, particularly the IMF,” in the face of the financial crises. These institutions are very complex and made up of a large number of countries.

The BRICS countries can operate with greater ease with their own financial instruments, which can also supply their urgent needs for investment in infrastructure, especially in Brazil and India, he argued.

The BRICS “found their identity” by working with the Group of Twenty (G20) industrial and emerging countries to defend the stimulation of growth, rather than recession-inducing austerity, after the 2008 global financial crisis, Mántega pointed out. Later they came to demand reform of the IMF, which spearheaded response to the crisis.

Some reforms to grant emerging countries greater participation in IMF decision-making were approved by the G20, but then stalled because they were rejected in the U.S. Congress.

The IMF is regarded as extremely undemocratic, because the United States has power of veto and some countries of the industrial North have a majority of votes, in contradiction with the present correlation of economic forces and the weight of emerging powers.

The absence of reforms “negatively impacts on the IMF’s legitimacy, credibility and effectiveness.” The reforms must lead to the “modernisation of its governance structure so as to better reflect the increasing weight of emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs),” says the Fortaleza Declaration, signed by the five BRICS leaders.

Pending legislation calling for U.S. President Barack Obama to impose sanctions against key Venezuelan officials is unlikely to defuse the ongoing crisis there and could prove counter-productive, according to both the administration and independent experts here.

A bill approved overwhelmingly Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would authorise Obama to freeze any financial assets in U.S. institutions and cancel U.S. visas for Venezuelan officials deemed responsible for “directing significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses against persons associated with the anti-government protests in Venezuela.”

The bill, a similar version of which was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this month, would also authorise sanctions against anyone who has provided assistance to government security forces and commit 15 million dollars in support for “pro-democracy” groups and independent media in the South American nation.

“Today we took an important step forward to punish human rights abusers in (President) Nicolas Maduro’s regime,” declared Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who co-sponsored the bill with the Committee chair, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising [...] that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests [...]." -- John Walsh, Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)
“(N)ow that thousands of innocent Venezuelans have protested courageously and peacefully against the failure that is this chavista government, we can’t allow the government’s repression, violence and murders to go unpunished,” he said in a statement after the 13-2 vote.

On a visit to Mexico Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry noted Congressional support for sanctions and hinted that the administration may feel compelled to impose them.

“Our hope is that the leaders, that President Maduro and others, will make decisions that will make it unnecessary for them to be implemented. But all options remain on the table at this time, with the hopes that we can move the (dialogue) process forward,” he said.

A number of experts, as well as senior administration officials, however, warned that the legislation, however well-intended, could make matters worse in the deeply polarised oil-rich country.

“I think people are really frustrated about what’s happening in Venezuela,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based hemispheric think tank here.

“But the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of leverage, and, while sanctions make people feel good, I can’t imagine them accomplishing much except to give Maduro another reason to attack the United States.

“It also risks alienating Latin American governments,” which, with the Vatican and under the auspices of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), have taken the lead in trying to mediate Venezuela’s divisions through dialogue between Maduro and moderate opposition forces.

“I just can’t imagine any Latin American governments seeing this as a good idea or helpful under present circumstances,” he told IPS.

“The U.S. has tried hard not to become the centre of the debate, realising – correctly, in my opinion – that it would only help the Maduro government point to Washington as the source of the protests and distract attention from the genuine and legitimate grievances that have given rise to the protests,” added John Walsh, a Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“One of the tacks that has been available to (Maduro) to get out of the dialogue and major compromises that it might force him to take is the ability to reframe the protest movement and the opposition as people in thrall to or actually taking orders from the ‘Empire’ as part of an international conspiracy to de-stabilise the government and push Chavismo out of power.”

Indeed, this has been the position taken by the Obama administration throughout the most recent crisis, which began in late February with student demonstrators demanding that Maduro step down.

In hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson stressed Washington’s support for the UNASUR-led initiative.

“This is not a U.S.-Venezuela issue; it is an internal Venezuelan issue,” she told the senators. “…We have strongly resisted attempts to be used as a distraction from Venezuela’s real problems.”

The Senate bill, which is considered almost certain to pass if Majority Leader Harry Reid permits it to go to the floor, comes after the government-opposition dialogue – in which the foreign ministers of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador have acted as UNASUR’s representatives – broke down last week over, among other issues, opposition demands that all political prisoners be freed.

In a report entitled ‘Venezuela: Tipping Point’ and released Wednesday, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that failure to resolve the stand-off could plunge the country into yet more violence, “leaving it unable to address soaring criminality and economic decline and exposing the inability of regional inter-governmental bodies to manage the continent’s conflicts.”

Since February, at least 42 people have died in confrontations between security forces and pro-government gangs known as “colectivos” and opposition forces.

While some opposition sectors have reportedly used violence, independent human rights groups have blamed most of the casualties on the government and its allies. In a harsh report issued earlier this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused security forces of severely beating and, in some cases, shooting at point-blank range, peaceful protesters, subjecting detainees to severe abuse sometimes amounting to torture, and, in some cases collaborating with the colectivos in their attacks on protestors and bystanders.

The increased repression, as well as the impasse in the dialogue, has intensified concern here about the likelihood of further polarisation that will strengthen hard-liners on both sides.

In its report, the ICG called for all sides to consider the appointment of an international facilitator, possibly from the U.N. system, to join the UNASUR-Vatican effort, as well as the deployment of a U.N. technical mission to support it.

While the administration opposes sanctions at this point, one senior State Department official said it hoped to intensify discussions with regional governments, beginning with Kerry’s visit to Mexico, about what more can be done to get the dialogue back on track.

“The real question is for them to sort of compare notes on what they’re hearing out of Venezuela, whether we think the efforts that UNASUR and the Vatican are making are working, and what more can we do from outside that process to either help it along or to be ready to do something more,” the official said.

“(T)he last thing we want to do is torpedo any dialogue that might lead to action, but we’re just as frustrated as the Senate is that nothing has happened yet.”

Kerry reflected that frustration Wednesday, accusing the government of a “total failure …to demonstrate good-faith actions to implement those things that they agreed to do approximately a month ago.”

“I think more high-level consultations with other governments about how they see the situation and to work with them could be helpful,” said IAD’s Shifter.

“But the critical country is Brazil, and, unfortunately, (U.S.) relations with Brazil aren’t good because of the Snowden affair that led to the postponement of (President Dilma) Rousseff’s state visit that was supposed to take place late last year.”

(END)