Trade, Development and Environment
Brussels 1999
The path towards sustainable development is a long one. Despite declarations in Rio in 1992 on sustainable development and international agreements on measures to halt the deterioration of the atmosphere, the results are not encouraging. Therefore all countries are responsible for seriously engaging themselves in efforts to stop the destruction of the environment, which includes the damaging effect of overpopulation of our non-expanding globe, that in many cases has led, and will lead, to famine and natural disasters.
Liberal International calls for the strengthening of international institutions to ensure that international agreements are effectively implemented. The organisation also calls upon its own members in government to lead by example.
Liberal International continues to advocate free world trade, which is to the advantage of developing countries, new democracies and consumers worldwide. The organisation recognises that free world trade will not be a reality until the proliferation of corruption in governments and economies is wiped out.
Liberal International recognises, and condemns, the use of the free trade argument to facilitate the arms and illegal drugs trades.
The building of free trade areas such as CEFTA, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and the EEA can be a positive step towards the evolution of a genuinely global system of free trade. Liberal International believes that the WTO should play a leading role in this respect. At the same time we recognise that many countries have not yet ratified the relevant agreements, and also that we are still far from a new global spirit of free trade. We therefore call for the further creation of free and accessible markets and the lifting of trade barriers particularly by the trading blocks.
Liberal International expresses its deep concern at the proliferation of economic crises in Asia, Central and South America and Russia. We believe that without adequate legislation or enforcement in crucial areas of Russian administration the economy will never be able to prosper in that country. Therefore we call upon the international community to pressurise the Russian government to address this problem and facilitate an independent judiciary.
Liberal International believes that the economic crises in Asia illustrates the weakness of the ‘Asian Values’ argument. We therefore call upon the autocratic governments of Asia to reform their constitutional structures and sweep out corruption as the first steps towards economic recovery.
Yet again the Liberal International expresses its deep concern at the significant increase in the number of people living in, or facing, poverty. Liberal International notes the G8 summit in Birmingham in 1998 and calls on those governments to cease their inaction on the subject of Third World debt.
We repeat our call for a new direction in North-South relations, putting at the centre of development policies the promotion of democracy as well as the fight against poverty and impoverishment. For this to succeed the following measures are essential:
the respect of human rights and the encouragement of democratic development and the functioning of an independent and effective judiciary; an increase up to 0.7% of GDP for official development assistance and a redirection of official development assistance towards projects aiming at economic empowerment with special attention to the integration of the informal sectors into the formal sector of the economy, and including projects on nutrition, education and literacy, low-cost housing, basic health, etc. to ensure that the poorest countries, especially in Africa, receive a substantial share of the assistance; the promotion of private initiative and small scale enterprises; the fight against feminisation of poverty calls for special attention to be paid to the position of women in the measures taken, such as sexual information, and education for girls and women to promote economic independence of women. Specific attention should be given to the creation of jobs for women. to end the practice of “tying assistance” to purchases from donor countries as these impose higher costs and distort developmental priorities; massive programmes to assist the developing countries in reducing their debt burden and to build the necessary institutions for a democratic society. Liberal International call upon the governments of G8 to show leadership by encouraging greater transparency of the international financial institutions, whose commitment to good governance should include clear and precise human rights impact assessments as part of development and structural adjustment programmes.
We insist on the continuous evaluation of the development policies of international institutions with special regard to their effects on the involvement of the local population, and the need for diversification of agriculture and industry, especially in the least developed countries.
