Summit lacked poverty eradication action plan

Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While welcoming last week's declaration of the New Asia-Africa Strategic Partnership, a coalition of NGOs criticized the absence of an action plan to address issues such as the expansion of multinational firms, debt reduction and trade liberalization.

"The governments should have come up with an action plan to push global efforts for debt reduction and poverty alleviation," the NGOs said in a joint press release.

The governments of the two continents also need to join forces to re-form and democratize the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, to make them live up to "true multilateral principles", the release said.

An action plan is needed to prevent people in Asia and Africa from becoming "modern slaves" in the global capitalistic-driven economy, the release said.

The NGOs said the new strategic partnership should have included plans to ensure the transfer of technology from developed to developing countries.

After the government refused to allow the NGOs to participate in last week's Asian-African Summit in Jakarta, they organized a series of conferences that were held in conjunction with the summit.

The meetings were held in Jakarta, Bandung, Garut and Yogyakarta, involving at least 15 foreign and local NGOs.

Bonnie Setiawan said earlier the meetings discussed "important, substantive issues neglected by the government" at the summit.

"Local and foreign participants discussed, among other things, poverty and interfaith issues," said Bonnie, director of the Institute for Global Justice (IGJ).

The IGJ was joined in the coalition by among others the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development and the Christian Conference for Asia.

Earlier, Ali Alatas, the United Nations' special envoy for UN reform and a former foreign minister for Indonesia, said many nations in Asia and Africa still did not have economic freedom 50 years after the original Asia-Africa Conference was held in Bandung.

He said many Asian and African countries were burdened by debt and their inability to compete directly in the global market.

Alatas said true independence, justice and equality could be achieved only if Asian and African nations worked together, built up the necessary political will, pooled their resources and acted in unison to address their challenges.