Solidarity needed for people of Pakistan

The whole nation of Pakistan continues to reel from devastating impacts of the unprecedented disaster that hit the country over a month ago.

The responses thus far from the international community are far from adequate and, in the case of the IMF, World Bank and ADB, even deplorable. These institutions have chosen to offer more loans rather than cancel the debts they claim from Pakistan. Together, loans from these institutions and other multilateral financial institutions constitute more than 50% of Pakistan’s total outstanding external debts. As of 2009 outstanding credits from the IMF are US$5.1B, outstanding loans from the World Bank amount to US$11.5B and from the ADB it is US$9B. Bilateral loans comprise more than 30%. The major bilateral lenders are Japan (US$6.67B), France (US$B2.17B), Germany (US$1.82B), USA (US$1.51), and China (US$1.88B). Total external debt of Pakistan as of 2009 is US$50.7B. (for more information see Annexes)

We call on our members and other peoples’ organizations, movements and citizens groups in the South and throughout the world to step up our efforts to press for Debt Cancellation for the people of Pakistan.

In addition, in the face of this climate-related disaster, we must urge those responsible for the climate crisis to pay reparations for its impacts on the people of Pakistan and other South countries. Many of the lenders to Pakistan are among those principally responsible for the historic and continuing excessive emission of greenhouse gases and massive deforestation thus the dangerous levels of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere causing the climate chaos. They must not only cancel the debts they claim from Pakistan, these institutions and countries must provide the financial reparations necessary for Pakistan to deal with the impacts of the floods and build resilience for future climate-related disasters.

We urge the following urgent actions:

1. Release press statements and letters to the editor to local and international media to disseminate our calls for debt cancellation and climate reparations. We are providing a pro-forma press release that you may revise according to your specific requirements. Also included as annex/attachment is the JSAPMDD statement which you may revise and use for your own organization’s statement or as basis for letters to the editor.

2. Promote calls through the internet via appropriate listserves, instant messaging & social networking, tools like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Friendster, Yahoo Messenger and dissemination of stickers, posters, short statements

3. Use a common logo for posters, profile pictures, stickers, postcards and other materials. The logo is on this paper and attached as a separate file.

4. Send a barrage of telecommunications messages (telephone, mobile phone, fax and e-mail) to the headquarters of the World Bank, IMF, ADB and/or to their offices in Pakistan and/or in your countries. For greater impact, let us do these together during the week of September 20 to 24. (Pls see Annex for Telephone & Fax #s and Email addresses). Send similar messages to embassies and finance ministries of bilateral lenders with priority to Japan, France, Germany, USA and China.

5. Sign up to petitions calling for debt cancellation for Pakistan such as the Avaaz online petition which you can find on:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/pakistan_cancel_the_debt/

6. Holding of mobilizations in front of the offices of the IMF, World Bank, ADB in our respective countries.