By Eric Msikiti & Thomas Kachere:
Fight Inequality Alliance, a global movement that seeks to combat inequality, has criticised the just-ended G20 leaders’ summit held in South Africa.
It says delegates to the summit failed to make radical decisions to address the challenge of inequality.
The movement co-convened, at the G20 leaders’ summit, the We the 99 People’s Summit, bringing together civil-society representatives, labour movements and youth leaders from 50 countries in Africa and the global south to demand justice for the world’s majority population that faces poverty.
Speaking at the end of the leaders’ summit, Fight Inequality Alliance Media and Communications Specialist Daud Kaisi said the G20 summit has “simply ensured that the interests of the few, the 1 percent, the billionaires, the multinational companies and big economies, are protected”.
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“Instead of talking about debt cancellation, what they’re calling for is restructuring of that particular debt. On issues of climate change, for instance, the G20 is tackling the climate change issue as if it is an environmental issue when we know that climate change is also an inequality issue, affecting mostly people from poor nations including.
Malawi,” Kaisi said.
Kaisi also warned that economies could collapse unless the group of 20, which controls the biggest gross domestic product in the world, acts to save humanity.
“But what we are seeing is rich countries failing to use that particular power to save humanity and also the planet. So, this, again from the G20, is a letdown because they haven’t provided the solutions that are going to save the interests of the majority but, rather, [they are] keeping their wallets and bank accounts fat,” Kaisi says.
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In a related development, health rights advocate Maziko Matemba has praised G20 leaders for adopting a paper on strengthening disaster resilience and response.
Matemba played a key role, as analyst and facilitator, in Working Group 7 at the summit.
“It was a humbling experience working with other nations. My area of analysis given was on Strengthen Disaster Resilience and Response Working Group 7, as an analyst and facilitator, which was picked as a priority in the G20 final point 8 of the communique,” Matemba said.
Meanwhile, The G20 summit has ended with a joint declaration committing to “multilateral co-operation”.
The declaration, which covered climate change mitigation and economic inequality, was adopted despite objections from the United States, which boycotted the meeting in Johannesburg.
Speaking at the closing ceremony on Sunday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the agreement showed that “shared goals” outweighed the countries’ differences.
It was the first time the gathering of the world’s major economies was held in Africa.
