Sample Letter to a G20 Finance-Minister
Dear Minister xxyy,
We are writing to you with regard to your/our country`s position at the upcoming G20 summit in France.
As churches /development organisations in xxyy and Germany who have been cooperating as partners, we already see signs that that due to the global financial crisis several developing countries are sliding back into over-indebtedness, like it happened in the 1980s. As a consequence we risk seeing a new "lost decade" with regards to development.
Discussions regarding a sovereign insolvency mechanism have become virulent across Europe following the Greek crisis. We have therefore welcomed the German government's coalition treaty as it defines the creation of an international sovereign insolvency framework as one of its objectives.
However Greece and a few other European countries are not the only ones at stake. According to the World Bank, seven out of thirty poor countries which have recently received debt relief are again at the brink of default. In addition, several countries which have never qualified for comprehensive debt relief show critically rising debt indicators. Hot spots of these alarming developments are previously unaffected regions too, like vulnerable island states, particularly in the Caribbean, and some economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The return of debt crises in countries as diverse as Greece and Argentina, Burundi and Jamaica, demonstrates that over-indebtedness is not a transitional, but rather a structural problem of the global market economy. It is essential to provide indebted sovereign states with at least the same level of protection as our legal systems provide for indebted corporations and individuals through orderly insolvency procedures. In fact an insolvency framework would serve to protect the people in indebted states as much as it protects their responsible creditors.
If a global reform is to be put on track, the appropriate forum for this would be the G20 - of which both our countries happen to be members. Just as the G8 has been instrumental in launching the debt relief initiative for the poorest countries ten years ago, it is today the G20 that needs to kick off a global reform process. The upcoming summit in France next November is the perfect moment to do so.
Together with our partners in xxyy/Germany we therefore ask you to:
Make sure the creation of an international state insolvency framework is part of the agenda of the G20 summit on November 3rd-4th in Cannes, France.
Please refer to proposals, which have already been discussed at the United Nations' "Financing for Development" Process and the World Financial Crisis Conference of 2009 as well as practical proposals for ad hoc and standing insolvency courts launched by leading academics as well as global civil society.
Sincerely yours,
Signatures