General Principles
Background
No country can nor should remain isolated from the global economy. This does not mean, however, that the current free market approach to globalization is the only, much less the best, form of economic integration. The dynamics of the world economy are a reality that must be taken into account in any effort to develop a national development plan if the programs proposed are to be viable and sustainable. We refuse, however, to permit the world economy to define, with our governments' consent, the future of our countries and our peoples. We must democratically construct sustainable national development plans in our countries and, starting from that point, insert ourselves into the world economy.
This dominant free market approach (embodied in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization, and the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment) argues that the global market on its own will allocate and develop the best possibilities for each country. According to this view, it is unnecessary for us to envision the kind of nation we want to be or could be. We only need to eliminate all obstacles to global trade, and the market itself will take on the task of offering us the best of all possible worlds.
The difference between this dominant approach and the alternative vision presented in this document lies not in whether we accept the opening of our economies to trade. The two fundamental differences are the following: 1) whether to have a national plan we can fight for or let the market determine the plan, and 2) whether capital, especially speculative capital, should be subject to international regulation. The recent trend has been to allow all capital, even speculative capital, free rein, and let the world follow capital's interests. History has demonstrated that the market on its own does not generate development, let alone social justice. In contrast, we propose a world economy regulated at the national and supra-national levels in the interest of peace, democracy, sustainable development and economic stability at the national as well as international levels.
Our position in this regard is very clear: we cannot remain on the sidelines but must claim our role as valid stakeholders in the globalization dialogue. We must refuse to accept the current neo-liberal form of globalization as irreversible. We must not only reduce its negative consequences, but put forward a positive alternative.
As citizens of the Americas, we refuse to be ruled by the law of supply and demand and claim our role as individuals rather than simple commodities governed by the laws of the market.
Free trade has produced only social and economic exclusion. This has resulted in the creation of a social stratum of citizens devalued by the current economic system and the society that supports it. Exclusion renders people unable to enter or re-enter the economic circuit. The inability to reintegrate leads to a process of social "disqualification" and the loss of active citizenship. Anyone who has felt the negative effects of the transition to free trade has become chronically unemployed or whose job is precarious, lives and knows this exclusion.
We are not opposed to the establishment of rules for regional or international trade and investment. Nor does our criticism of the dominant, externally imposed form of globalization imply a wish to return to the past, to close our economies and establish protectionist barriers, or to press for isolationist trade policies. But the current rules have not helped our countries overcome, nor even reduce, our economic problems. We propose alternative rules to regulate the global and hemispheric economies that are based on a different economic logic: that trade and investment should not be ends in themselves, but rather tools for achieving just and sustainable development. Our proposal also promotes a social logic that includes areas such as labor, human rights, the environment, and minorities--that is, previously excluded issues and people.
While our critique and proposal have a technical basis, they also spring from an ethical imperative. We refuse to accept the market as a god that controls our lives. We do not accept the inevitability of a model of globalization that excludes more than half of the world's population from the benefits of development. We do not accept that environmental degradation is the inevitable and necessary evil accompanying growth. Behind the neoliberal economic measures lies not just a political and economic strategy but an unacceptable underlying conception of the human being and a culture that must be eliminated.
A profound ethical imperative pushes us to propose our own model of society, one supported by the many men and women united in hope for a more just and humane society for themselves and future generations.
Guiding Principles
- Democracy and ParticipationDebates, decision making, and framework building in matters of economic integration have mostly been dominated by financial, corporate, and political elites. Greater democratization in decision making on trade and investment must be introduced. International agreements should be ratified by citizens through direct consultations, for example, through plebiscites or national referendum.
The democratization of debates and decision making is a necessary precondition, but is not sufficient in itself for the development of new just and sustainable rules on investment, environment, and labor that takes citizens' interests into account. Democracy by itself does not ensure social welfare; clear and viable economic and social proposals must be developed based on consensus and public support. In addition, democracy must not be reduced to an electoral issue. The democratisation of decision making on fundamental economic and social issues is imperative. Citizens must not only approve economic and social policies, but also participate in their formulation, implementation, and evaluation. They must be able to change or modify these policies when appropriate. In order to achieve this objective it may be necessary to implement special initiatives to ensure that marginalized or oppressed groups, among them women, have access to these debates.
Global corporations have grown so large that they can no longer be effectively controlled by our governments. We need new instruments to reassert public control and citizen sovereignty over these firms.
The political stability needed for sustainable development requires that agreements on economic integration include mechanisms to ensure democratic security. Stability should be based on democratic participation and not on coercion. Any agreement should promote democracy in the Americas, without being interventionist in internal affairs. Democratic and non-coercive security entails civilian monitoring (accountable to citizens) of the forces of law and order. Civilian control is required, for example, to halt the arms race and the militarization of broad areas of the Americas that is currently being conducted under the pretext of fighting arms and drug trafficking and drug production.
International democratization requires reform of United Nations institutions, including the Security Council, as well as international banking and trade institutions. The reforms must be based on consultations in every country and should be oriented to serving humankind's objectives: sustainable development and democracy and peace based on justice and respect for human dignity. Such institutions should not continue to be the tools of large multinational corporations and nuclear powers. The democratization of the world and inter-American system must also stop the exclusion of countries for ideological or political reasons, as is currently the case with Cuba.
All integration agreements must ensure that the defense and promotion of human rights, taken in the broadest sense, is also globalized. That is, not only civil and political rights and individual protections should be included, but also the collective rights of peoples and their communities: economic, social, cultural, and environmental. Special attention should be given to the rights of indigenous communities and peoples, and mechanisms put in place to eliminate all forms of discrimination and the oppression of women.
- Sovereignty and social welfare
The rules flowing from agreements should preserve the power of individual countries to set high standards of living, valuing dignified work, the creation of enough good jobs, healthy communities, and a clean environment within their borders. There should be no limitations on the sovereignty of states, provinces or localities.
In today's world, economic sovereignty, stability and social welfare require making productive economic activities a priority, while discouraging speculative investment and regulating the free flow of footloose capital. Corporate interests should not undermine our countries' economic sovereignty.
Economic integration should represent a commitment to improve the quality of life for all. Our countries should not be promoted on the basis of low wages, systematic discrimination against women or other groups, lack of social protections or lax enforcement. National competitiveness cannot be rooted in the deterioration of standard of living and/or the environment. Equalization of standards should be achieved through upward harmonization. Trade and integration accords, as wells as domestic economic policies, should include social objectives, time tables, indicators of social impact and corrective remedies.
National governments must protect local efforts aimed at achieving viable, economically sustainable and food self-sufficient communities, both urban and rural.
Giving priority to social welfare in international agreements means reducing military budgets and allocating resources to people's education and health. Money saved through military reductions in powerful nations should be channelled toward an international war on poverty.
Combating drug production, trafficking and consumption should be an element of integration accords. Rather than taking a purely military approach, however, this should be achieved through mass educational campaigns, the elimination of the poverty driving this lucrative business, fighting against corruption and the involvement in the drug trade of high-level authorities, and other measures aimed at the root causes of the problem. International agreements must preserve the sovereignty of nation states over domestic matters and in the application of their own laws. They should not allow for the presence of armed troops or foreign police forces within the borders of a sovereign nation.
- Reduce Inequalities
A main objective of any agreement should be the reduction of inequalities within and among nations, between women and men, and among races.
a) Among nations: The rush toward the integration of highly unequal economies without social protections is creating a climate in which large corporations can reduce the standard of living and wages in all regions of the world. The new rules should include mechanisms to reduce imbalances among nations through raising living standards in the poorest countries. This would not only be a step toward meeting the demands for justice and equity in these countries. It would also reduce the power of corporations to take advantage of such inequalities to weaken standards and wages everywhere by threatening to move production to areas where labor costs and environmental protections are lower.
b) Within nations: Inequalities and extreme poverty have been increasing for more than a decade in the Americas. The new rules should reduce these inequalities, encouraging redistribution of income, land and natural resources.
c) Between women and men and among races: Women, people of color and indigenous peoples have had to shoulder a disproportionate share of the economic and social decline caused by neo-liberal policy. Cuts in public-sector services and jobs, together with the reduction in stable jobs and democratic structures, have hit women harder than men and girls harder than boys. In times of scarcity, the decisions made by families and society tend to favor men, whether consciously or not. Moreover, women's responsibilities increase, since they are traditionally responsible for care of the family, when family members lose access to jobs or programs funded by the state. This is one more burden added to the other forms of discrimination women confront on the economic, legal, social and political spheres in the hemisphere. Discrimination must be ended by implementing new strategies and economic models to reverse the impacts of current policies. Countries must respect international agreements designed to achieve equity. At the same time there should be social programs and the intensification of international cooperation toward this end.
- Sustainability
a) The decision to work for sustainable and democratic regional integration requires the incorporation of those principles and objectives into all of the issues that comprise an agreement on integration: trade; investment; services, etc. Those issues must be negotiated with the specific objective of resolving, with the support of national policies, our region's serious social problems: inequality; unemployment; environmental degradation; poverty and many other issues.
b) Any integration agreement should commit the member countries to comply with international treaties and conventions designed to protect the environment, minorities, workers' rights and other social conquests. It should also provide practical means for the implementation of measures at the regional level. Consequently, nothing in such agreements should contradict those global treaties or conventions.
c) The contents of these agreements, especially on matters related to trade, investment and financial and technological assistance, should include mechanisms that prioritize domestic production of goods and services necessary for the population's basic needs. Instead of stimulating the production of superfluous consumer goods produced by large transnational corporations or of monocrop exports, they should protect production oriented primarily to the domestic market, whether industrial, craft, or from family-farms. In this regard, the preservation of cultural patterns of local consumption should be the object of special attention and protection.
d) In order to achieve sustainability, there must be progressive reductions in exports of goods intensive in natural resources and energy, whose production degrades the environment in the Americas, especially among its poorest populations.