Havana.— The Second International Congress on world imbalances, the urgency of peace and development and the need for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) was inaugurated this Monday, in this capital, in the presence of Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, member of the Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Before political leaders, academics and representatives of governments and social movements from 25 countries, gathered in the South Chamber of the National Capitol, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, vice minister of that organization, and Oscar Luis Hung Pentón, president of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba (ANEC) conveyed to them the most cordial greetings in addition to inviting them to the debate on today’s challenges, reported the ACN.
The vice chancellor pointed out that the adoption in May 1974, by the United Nations General Assembly, of the Declaration and Program of Action for the establishment of a new international economic order, was a fair and legitimate effort with a view to beginning to break the chains imposed during four centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism.
He emphasized that developed capitalist countries have sabotaged these agreements since their creation under the leadership of the United States.
Today we face, he said, perhaps with greater understanding, the challenge of the urgent need to modify the rules and structures, of an unjust and ineffective nature, that govern the world economy, which perpetuate and have aggravated the conditions of subordination, dependence and underdevelopment for most of the countries of the South and their respective peoples.
Congress gives us the opportunity to examine the extraordinary and important decisions of 1974 and do so critically, taking into account the lessons of the last five decades, he said.
Our government is deeply grateful to the Progressive International, especially its leadership, for the call, said Fernández de Cossío.
Meanwhile, Oscar Luis Hung Pentón stated that the acute economic tensions between the United States of America and China since 2017, the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020, the armed conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and the consequent deterioration of multilateralism, have deepened a situation of successive and overlapping crises at the international level in a general context of redefinition of hegemony.
As an expression of this, the president of the ANEC noted, world production has been markedly weakened and tensions and contradictions in the system of international economic relations have increased.
The congress was convened together with the Progressive International, and at the opening its general coordinators, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla and David Adler, pointed out that 50 years after the United Nations General Assembly imagined a new international order based on equity, sovereign equality and cooperation between all States, the situation for the nations of the South has worsened.
Therefore the call to the participants in this forum, not only to maintain the dialogue begun a year ago at the inaugural Congress, but to sharpen the debate on where South-South cooperation is headed and strengthen the coalition that pursues it, to make proposals and action plans as ambitious as those outlined by the New International Economic Order.
After the opening day, the first of the eight panels scheduled for these two days began to meet, the one dedicated to evaluating the state of the ONEI, with interventions by several delegates, including former Colombian president Ernesto Samper.
