Last week, hosted in the splendour of Havana’s National Capitol, scholars, diplomats and policymakers — from Senegal to Sweden, Colombia to China, Australia to Argentina — laid out a concrete and inspiring path out of this age of intolerable plunder and vengeance. They came together for the 50th Anniversary Congress on the New International Economic Order to produce a roadmap for a Global South insurgency to remake the world system through new and alternative institutions of global governance for peace, prosperity and planetary protection.

The Congress — co-convened by the Progressive International and the Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba  — brought together leading scholars, diplomats and policymakers to Havana from 36 countries, including Brazil, South Africa, China, Colombia, Kenya, Indonesia and Spain, for three days of intense discussion, deliberation, and preparation of a Program of Action to secure peace through sovereign development in the twenty-first century.

Participants included Ernesto Samper, Former President of Colombia, Attiya Waris, UN Independent Expert on foreign debt, other international financial obligations and human rights, Mathu Joyini, Permanent Representative of South Africa to the UN, Cristina Reis, Brazilian Undersecretary for Sustainable Economic Development, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Vice-Chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Andrés Arauz, Former Ecuadorian Central Bank Governor, Marlon Ochoa, Finance Minister of Honduras and Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Columbia Center for Sustainable Development. For a full list of participants, please click here.

The Havana Congress concluded with a presentation by President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez outlining the vision of the Cuban Presidency of the Group of 77 + China for the New International Economic Order.

The assembled delegates debated strategies and tactics for winning a New International Economic Order and worked on major, structural reform proposals under five themes:

• Finance, Debt, and the International Monetary System
• Science, Technology, and Innovation
• Climate, Energy, and Natural Resources
• Commodities, Industry, and International Trade
• Governance, Multilateralism, and International Law

Proposals included a debtors club, cartels for critical minerals, coordination on commodity prices, BRICS financing for Southern state capacity, detailed programmes of regional integration including industrial strategy and collective public purchasing for medicines and components, reduction of material-technical dependency on the Global North, regaining national control over foreign exchange earnings, national and regional industrial policy, investment in food and renewable energy sovereignty, a global global, multilayered buffer stock system for essential commodities including food and critical minerals, coordinated exit from ICSID, denunciation of bilateral investment treaties, cross-border payment systems where international reserves are deposited, mobilisation of Special Drawing Rights for Southern development, establishing an association of raw material exporters, activate force majeure clauses so that all patents to combat climate change are ended, reparations for historical CO2 emissions from the Global North, and many more.

These proposals will be developed into a renewed and detailed Program of Action for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order ahead of the September 2024 United Nations General Assembly alongside partner governments from around the world. This programmatic development, which will be overseen by a technical committee of the Progressive International, will be carried out through online fora and at further in-person conferences, with Algeria, Honduras, Mexico and Colombia all mooted as host nations.

The Progressive International is publishing a selection of speeches and interventions made at the Congress. Please scroll down to the Blueprint section of this email and on our website to read them.

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Marc Rudin is a self-described “graphic artist, musician, friend and revolutionary” stating that his “works stand for international solidarity.” This artwork is licenced on the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0