The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, this Sunday defended the reform of the United Nations Security Council (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, to improve the balance of power between the countries.
“In the context of the world economy and finance, there is an unfair and systematic bias in favor of rich countries which has naturally led to enormous frustration in the developing world”denounced Guterres at the summit of the G7 – seven of the world’s largest economies, representing more than half of the world’s net worth – in Hiroshima, Japan.
In his speech, he defended a reform of the UN Security Council and of the two major international institutions that emerged from the 1945 Bretton Woods agreement, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, to give developing countries power, finance and morale. plunged into debt crises.
The United Nations Secretary-General believed that the recovery plans for the Covid-19 pandemic are a clear example of the huge difference that separates these two types of countries.
The G7 countries, with a total population of 772 million people, received USD 280,000 million (approximately EUR 260,000 million) allocated by the International Monetary Fund (FIM), while the entire African continent, home to 1,300 million people, received only USD 34,000 million. received (about EUR 31,000 million).
In Guterres’s perspective, this difference represents a moral failure “as much as they followed the rules in this regard”, which is why he understands that “there is something fundamentally wrong with the rules themselves”.
The UN Secretary-General therefore expressed surprise at the response to an economic crisis that left 52 countries in the world on the brink of bankruptcy and had no access to debt relief policies.
Guterres believed that this whole situation stems from the balance of power that came about mainly after World War II, through the Bretton Woods system and the UN Security Council, the highest executive body of the organization, weighed down by the veto power of the five permanent members can impose on any decision under discussion.
“Many things have changed since 1945. The global financial architecture is outdated, dysfunctional and unfair. The economic fallout from the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that it has failed to fulfill its vital role as a global safety net,” he lamented. Guterres.
Similar, “it is time to reform the Security Council and Bretton Woods institutions to redistribute power in line with the realities of today’s world”defended.
As a short-term solution, Guterres reiterated his proposal for a global sustainable development stimulus package to raise debt financing conditions, which requires cooperation between multilateral development banks.
In this sense, Guterres called on the international community to follow Japan’s example, which committed in April this year to doubling the percentage of monetary reserves for special withdrawal rights of the International Monetary Fund – an international reserve asset which will complement member countries’ reserves – up to 40% of which will be allocated to the poorest countries.
“I think everything is very clear […]. When I say that there is a growing awareness among developed countries that they are not doing enough to reform outdated institutions, let alone alleviate the frustrations of the Global South (the world zone that includes most countries in the Southern Hemisphere, including in Africa and South Asia) with an effective solidarity policy.
Source: DN
