This is not simply a stranglehold over the world's technologies and existing profit streams, but actually chokes the potential for development in the South. Accordingly, the summit's final declaration defined development as a basic human right. Participants at the summit blasted the US in particular for imposing neo-liberal policies on the South and contributing to the high debts that have stifled economic development over the last two decades. This is especially true in Central America, whose foreign debt after World War II was negligible. And the region's income disparity between rich and poor is also the highest worldwide.
African countries fare even worse.
A case poignantly illustrated by the famine in the Horn of Africa. While the IMF and the WB blame the famine exclusively on the region's drought, it is the international loan agencies' policies that have forced countries as poor as Ethiopia to dismantle its drought safeguards. At a press conference in Havana, Arthur Mbanefo, Nigeria's permanent representative to the UN and the current G77 chair in New York, was quick to condemn the IMF's policies. In an age generating unprecedented and mind-boggling profits, absolute poverty has never been as stark. In the South, 1.3 billion people lack access to potable water, and 2.6 billion have no access to basic sanitation.