The need to have a fairer international financial system was one of the points of agreement of the leaders of the 22 countries gathered at the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit in the Dominican Republic, who stressed the importance of dealing with the climate crisis and guaranteeing the food security in a world still suffering from the impact of the pandemic and affected by the war in Ukraine.
“It is essential to have a fairer, more democratic, inclusive and supportive international financial system, which broadens and strengthens the level of participation of developing countries in decision-making, and which allows them to access, under favorable and transparent conditions, the financial resources necessary to promote their economic recovery processes, improve the conditions of external indebtedness and the construction of more equitable, prosperous, just and sustainable societies that contribute to the achievement of the right to development”, states the text of the declaration of 49 points agreed upon in Santo Domingo.
He President Alberto Fernandez He mentioned the issue this Saturday in his speech, in which he called for “drastically changing the financial system.”
“If we also realize that what we are looking for must be achieved at a time when humanity is still recovering from the effects of a pandemic, in which the central world is entangled in a war unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which alters the global economy, in which the foundations of the international financial system creak and in which the climate observes changes that flood or dry up vital territories for humanity, then the dimension of the objective becomes gigantic”, he pointed out.
The Argentine president was one of those who promoted that this issue be included in the closing document of the summit, as was his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, as recognized by the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, at the final press conference.
For his part, he Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canelcalled for a “deep restructuring” of the international financial architecture to advance in a fairer and more sustainable region, while his Bolivian counterpart, Luis Arce, recalled the banking crisis recently generated as a result of the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States and He assured that it was due to the “inadequate regulation of the financial system” of that country.
The one who shared the concern about the risks of financial deregulation was the Chilean Gabriel Boric: “Today’s uncertainty seems to indicate that big capital and its staunch defenders had not learned enough from the 2008 crisis and its effects, as always, the poorest suffer it”.
“Today’s uncertainty seems to indicate that big capital and its staunch defenders had not learned enough from the 2008 crisis and its effects, as always, are suffered by the poorest”gabriel boric
In the first fully face-to-face summit since Guatemala in 2018, the message of a large part of the 13 heads of state and government of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Andorra, Spain and Portugal , was to seek unity despite the differences.
“Let’s take advantage of this opportunity to reinforce our coincidences, which will always be more than disagreements,” said Abinader at the meeting held in the Convention Room of the Ministry of Relations, on the Caribbean Sea, while the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou, who even assured that “these forums are similar to group therapy”, he acknowledged the differences with several of his peers, but he said he was optimistic about “having common ground”.
Inspired by the official motto of the summit, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, highlighted the need to move towards a “more just, inclusive and feminist” Ibero-America in a world where inequality and poverty rates skyrocketed after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
On the other hand, the socialist president assured that the Latin America’s relationship with the European Union (EU) it has a lot of “potential” and that Spain will try to promote it during its presidency of the bloc, which will take place during the second half of this year.
“We will celebrate a summit that has not been held since 2015, between the EU and Celac, which will have an important political, economic and environmental content. Not only declarative, but also executive”he stated, in relation to the meeting that both parties will hold on July 17 and 18 in Brussels, while expressing his desire to close the trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur.
Pedro Sánchez highlighted the need to move towards a “more just, inclusive and feminist” Ibero-America
The ratification of that treaty, for which an agreement was reached in principle in 2019 after 20 years of negotiations, is one of the objectives that the European bloc has been proposing for this year. However, the Mercosur countries have expressed their concerns about the difficulties that the new European environmental regulations may generate for their exports.
This was one of the issues that Alberto Fernández discussed this Saturday prior to the summit in a meeting with Sánchez and with the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, in which both parties spoke in favor of continuing to work to find a joint solution.
The European bloc was used as an example by Colombian President Petro, who called for Latin American integration to be “true” and not “rhetoric”.and at the same time warned about the implications of climate change, alleging that the world could disappear by 2070 and calling for the protection of the Amazon rainforest, which is divided among nine countries.
Outside of the issues on the official agenda, which also included digital transformation, the war in Ukraine hovered over the summit, in which the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, even spoke out against sending weapons to Kiev and considered them “non-legitimate”. “Unilateral sanctions, referring to the measures taken by Western countries against Russia for the invasion of the neighboring country.
The Mercosur countries have expressed their concerns about the difficulties that the new European environmental regulations may generate for their exports
Boric returned to the issue of human rights violations in Nicaragua, as he had done at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) in January in Buenos Aires, and said that “it is not acceptable” that shut up “before the family dictatorship of (Daniel) Ortega and (Rosario) Murillo in Nicaragua that has just deprived 94 opponents of their nationality and deported more than 200 political prisoners.”
Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada harshly criticized the Chilean president during his speech and accused him of using Nicaragua “as a platform to demonstrate his betrayal of the Chilean people and his surrender to the North American empire and its allies.”
For his part, Díaz-Canel reiterated his solidarity with the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, “subjected to permanent destabilization attempts.”
The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, whose presence was in doubt until the last moment, finally did not travel to Santo Domingo because he tested positive for covid, his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, announced on Twitter.
Boric once again touched on the issue of human rights violations in Nicaragua, just as he had done at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac)
Had he traveled to the Caribbean country, this would have been his first time at an Ibero-American Summit since he took office in 2013.
The heads of State and Government, vice presidents and foreign ministers present in Santo Domingo also adopted the Ibero-American Environmental Charter and the Ibero-American Charter of Principles and Rights in Digital Environments, as well as a Critical Path to Achieve Inclusive and Sustainable Food Security in Ibero-America, as indicated in the closing statement.
One of the notable absentees from the event was the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a great promoter of regional integration, who was supposed to start a tour of China this weekend but was canceled at the last minute due to pneumonia. The Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Nicaraguan Ortega, who do not usually go to these events, did not travel to the Dominican Republic either.
About the next summit
The next summit will be held on November 29, 2024 in Quito, under the motto “Innovation, Inclusion and Sustainability in Ibero-America”, as announced by the Ecuadorian President, Guillermo Lasso, at the close of the meeting in Santo Domingo.
