The health and humanitarian crises induced by the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global economic crisis, while the urgency to restore global growth may result in furthering the unresolved environmental and climate emergency. Inequalities within and between countries have been exposed and magnified, while unpaid domestic and care work have once again stepped up to increase the already huge subsidy to the global economy. Despite seductive narratives, powerful forces are already at play to use the crisis to further consolidate the already skewed concentration of economic and political power in few hands. We cannot allow this to happen.
We urgently need systemic solutions to the broken global economic architecture that reinforces the status quo of a global division of labour focused on the extraction of wealth and resources from the Global South. Decolonising the global economy needs to be the key priority. This is the time for the UN to promote again a global transformation based on the human rights framework, as it did 75 years ago. Time for rhetoric is over. The time to mobilize jointly around structural transformation is here. The time to act is NOW!
We call for an International Economic Reconstruction and Systemic Reform Summit under the auspices of the UN, as it remains the only place where developing countries are at the table with equal voice and vote. The Summit should work towards global consensus on a new global economic governance architecture that could foster systemic reforms while promoting human rights, gender equality, social equity and environmental justice.
