The conference participants aimed to deepen their understanding of the extent and impact of illegitimate, odious and dictator debts on the poor peoples of Southern countries. We arrived each bringing the experience of our respective movements and organizations in the struggle for the cancellation of these debts, and we leave inspired by the determination and tenacity we have seen in each others’ national and international campaigns. The global struggle against the debt has already achieved so much and we resolve to continue, build up and intensify our resistance to these.

The people of the South have suffered trillions of dollars in debt and debt servicing for decades which has been among the greatest burdens causing their continued and deepening economic backwardness and social underdevelopment. Yet even as hundreds of billions of dollars are paid every year to creditor banks and organizations in the world’s wealthiest countries these debts are not going away and indeed are growing ever larger - reaching US$2.6 trillion as of 2004. There are national governments that spend up to half of their budgets just on debt servicing. This has caused untold hunger, poverty, misery and deprivation for generations of peoples across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The usurious Paris Club governments, organizations and international financial institutions are unmindful of all this and only concerned that repayments continue whatever the social, cultural, ecological and economic devastation wrought. Even the recent supposed initiatives at addressing the debt problem such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiatives (MDRI) have so far unfortunately been merely token or insufficient. At the same time there are so few positive developments such as the creditor Norwegian government’s acknowledging the existence of illegitimate debt.

Debt servicing is happening at the cost of the exploitation of people, the denial of their basic rights to social and public services, the plunder of Southern agricultural, forest and mineral resources, and the destruction of sovereignty. The debt is even being used to impose destructive and one-sided policies of neoliberal globalization. This grotesque situation must be ended or else the greater majority of the world’s people who are poor will be driven ever deeper into debt and poverty. Northern governments are challenged to put so much Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and Financing for Development rhetoric into genuine development practice.

1. So much of Southern debt is patently onerous, imbued with corruption, forced by creditors, used for projects that have been harmful to the people and environment, a result of self-serving Northern economic policies or merely borrowing to repay debt. The people repudiate this illegitimate debt and we call for its absolute and unconditional cancellation.

2. We are particularly appalled at debt willfully given by Northern creditors to the world’s worst dictatorships including Marcos, Suharto, Pinochet, Duvalier, Mobutu, the apartheid regimes, juntas and many others. This debt of some US$451 billion accumulated over the 1950-1996 period not only merely enriched these regimes and their Northern collaborators but directly resulted in the killing, disappearance, torture and abuse of human rights of hundreds of thousands of people. We call for the immediate cancellation of dictator debt which is the most brazen and odious debt endured by Southern peoples.

3. The peoples of the South have long been repaying debt that should not be paid for being illegitimate and odious; this long-standing injustice cannot be forgotten and must be rectified. We call for the return of these payments on illegitimate and dictator debt.

4. Southern debt and debt servicing have grown to such monstrous proportions and taken such different forms that we do not even know the true extent and depths of the problem. Northern creditors have used this to obscure the extent of their culpability and the vastness of the damage. We then also call for immediate public and transparent audits of Southern debt in support of our campaign for the cancellation of illegitimate and dictator debt.

5. We recognize that our historic fight against burdensome and unjust debts lies most of all in the strength of our social movements and civil society organizations even as we link up with progressive parliamentarians and government officials. We are committed to contributing to the on-going campaigns and initiatives happening across the South and the North.

Towards our overall struggle to cancel all illegitimate and dictator debt we resolve to do the following:

 a. Deepen understanding of the burden of debt and its impacts on Southern countries.

• Conduct citizen’s audits quantifying the debt, reviewing the circumstances in which they were contracted, and assessing their impact
• Develop case studies of the most blatant examples of illegitimate and dictator debt to concretize the issue and aid campaigning

 b. Build the capacity of our campaigners on the debt issue.

• Basic information, handbooks and trainings
• Case studies on the successful Nigeria and Argentina initiatives

 c. Conduct widespread and sustained grassroots education campaigns for greater awareness-building and mass mobilizations.

• They shall be popular, concretize the issue on the ground, and use creative forms such as cultural activities
• They shall be conducted in communities and schools

 d. Conduct media campaigns to reach out to the broadest public.

 e. Promote and support Parliamentary initiatives that advance our efforts to cancel the debt.

• These may include parliamentary resolutions and legislation calling for cancellation, official debt audits and changes in burdensome national debt policies

 f. Develop further national cooperation and networking among social movements, civil society, parliamentarians, professionals, civil servants, academics and other anti-debt advocates.

 g. Develop further North-South and South-South cooperation, networking and solidarity among social movements, civil society and parliamentarians.

• Set-up core groups for these linkages
• Conduct coordinated global education and mass actions to further raise the visibility of the debt issue

 h. Conduct advocacy campaigns in Northern countries to the general public and among creditor governments, bilateral aid agencies and multilateral institutions.

The burden of debt is indeed one of the most urgent issues of our time. The campaign to cancel odious and illegitimate debt is just the start of our overall efforts to cancel the debt and end foreign domination of Southern economies. But not only have Southern peoples suffered this burden for so long they are also facing the consequences of neoliberal policies of trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation imposed by the world’s handful of big powers. The struggle to cancel the debt would just be a part of our struggles to be able to realize a more just and humane society for our peoples.