I'm here as a representative of the World Association for Christian Communication, an international organization that "promotes communication as a basic human right, essential to people’s dignity and community", and "advocates full access to information and communication, and promotes open and diverse media". Iinformation and communication technologies have acted as the central nervous system for the t existing financial architecture, so if we are to create new structures we also need to think about the regulation of information and communications technologies. At the same time, developments in information and communication techology may offer new ways of strengthening "bottom up" communitarian and democratic approaches and of supporting people's movements and initiatives.
One of the many pieces of reading we were given for the flight to Sao Paulo was the "Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System". Once you get past that mouthful, it is salutary to realise that it is more than three years (three years and one week to be exact) since the commission stated:
It is also imperative that policies be framed within a set of goals that are commensurate with a broad view of social justice and social solidarity, paying particular attention to the well-being of the developing countries and the limits imposed by the environment. It would be wrong and irresponsible to only seek quick fixes for this current crisis and ignore the very real problems facing the global economy and society, including the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the growth in inequality in most countries around the world, the persistence of
poverty in many places, and the deficiencies in governance and accountability, especially within international organizations. To many, the crisis is but one symptom of a deeply dysfunctional set of global arrangements.
