The Argentine-based section of the worldwide Jubilee debt forgiveness movement used the World Social Forum to further its campaign for debt relief. The Argentine organization is about to become a member of the new steering committee of the Hemispheric Social Alliance. This information comes from the "Alai-amlatina" Agencia Latinoamericana de Información:

International People's Tribunal on Debt Launched at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre

  
"We have come to hear the evidence of suffering, exploitation but also resistance presented by peoples from the Third World on account of the payment of a debt that they and we consider illegitimate and immoral," said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, 1980 Nobel Prize recipient and a Tribunal Juror.

Bringing together 50 witnesses and jurors from that many nations, the International Tribunal constitutes the largest international public forum on debt ever convened. The tribunal is being held on February 1-2 as part of the Second World Social Forum.

According to Beverly Keene, Jubilee South regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, "the Tribunal is a forceful manner of highlighting and building worldwide support around the continuing need for the cancellation and repudiation of illegitimate debt, a central lynchpin of the neoliberal system of domination."

Founded in Johannesburg in 1999, Jubilee South is a network of dozens of anti-debt campaigns, organizations and social movements in 34 countries, including the Brazil Jubilee South Campaign, one of the cosponsors of the Tribunal. The Tribunal represents the launching of Jubilee South's global campaign on the illegitimacy of debt and for the reparation of the social, historical and ecological debts owed by the North to nations of the South.

"The Tribunal is an ethical and political exercise, more than a juridical one," said Lidy Nacpil, Jubilee South coordinator for Asia and the Pacific. Through testimony which includes dance and poetry, witnesses drawn from all sectors of society will illustrate and educate about the illegitimate nature, dynamics and consequences of debt domination. It is intended to sharpen general understanding of the place of debt in the unjust global, corporate-dominated order.

Jurors will consider the evidence presented, in conjunction with their own understanding of debt illegitimacy and global injustice, in order to arrive at a verdict that gives the specific names of culprits and points the way to the other world that is possible free from debt and economic subjugation.

Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina," Agencia Latinoamericana de Información,
[email protected]