The Indictment of International People's Tribunal to Judge the G7

SIGNED BY THE TRIBUNAL ON JULY 9,1993

This International People's Tribunal was convened as an urgent response to the prospect of the annual economic summit of the G-7 states, the seven leading industrial powers of the North, held in Tokyo, July 7-9, 1993. The motivation was two-fold: a strong expectation that the G-7 meetings would ignore the acute suffering being endured by the more than one billion people living in conditions of absolute poverty, 90% of whom are located in the South; and further, the deeply disturbing prospect in light of this defining circumstance that the G-7 would be purporting to set economic policy for the whole world despite the fact that this group of Northern states represented less than 20% of the world's population.

I: SITUATING THE TRIBUNAL

The formation of this Tribunal is an expression of the continuing struggle of the peoples of the world to establish effective forms of transnational democracy as a counter to oppressive patterns and practices emanating from the geopolitical centers of power in the North. It extends a growing body of practice with tribunals formed at the initiative of individuals and groups situated in what might be called global civil society. The first attempt was initiated by Bertrand Russell, the noted British philosopher, who formed an International People's Tribunal in the late 1960's to inquire into allegations that the United States was guilty of crimes both as a result of its recourse to war in Vietnam and its battlefield practices.
A prominent Italian parliamentarian, Leiio Basso, was inspired by the Russel I Tribunal, and founded in the mid-1970' s the International League for the Rights of Peoples, one of the main activities of which was to establish the Permanent People's Tribunal with its seat in Rome. Basso's idea was to create by democratic means an institutional form that would be available to the peoples of the world that had grievances that were being ignored by states and by international institutions. The Permanent People's Tribunal has so far responded to more than seventeen complaints over the years including such varied concerns as self-determination for Tibet, for Western Sahara, and for Puerto Rico, Soviet aggression against Afghanistan, US intervention in Central America, Brazilian responsibility for ecocide and crimes of humanity against the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, Turkish genocide against the Armenian people during World War I, and industrial disasters such as Bhopal and Minamata.
The most relevant precedent for the present Tribunal was the session of the Permanent People's Tribunal held in Berlin to coincide with the 1988 Annual Meeting of the IMF and World Bank. That session examined a range of charges that these international financial institutions were acting as agents for global capital and were responsible for imposing a variety of intolerable burdens on countries of the South in the name of market-driven policies, including various forms of conditionality and structural adjustment programs. The Tokyo People's Tribunal expands upon the Berlin session, shifting the focus from the IMF and World Bank to the G-7, and taking on the analysis of the linkages between the effort to maintain Northern dominance through the control of global market forces and the specific hardships being endured by economically vulnerable peoples, especially in the South.
This particular initiative here in Tokyo has delimited its task in a novel fashion. Rather than follow the normal practice of such tribunals and deliver a judgment of guilty in response to the allegations against G-7, this Tribunal has undertaken only to prepare an indictment on the basis of oral and written testimony and by relying on the knowledge and experience of its panelists. It has deliberately refrained from rendering a judgment. Such a role is reserved for the peoples of the world, as expressed by their representatives in the transnational network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and peoples' movements. The Tokyo People's Tribunal believes that it is more in keeping with the spirit of transnational democracy to leave the final decision, and its implementation, to the peoples affected, acknowledging their right of participation in a manner that contrasts with the operating logic of the G-7 summit.
This Tribunal is rooted in international law. We rely upon rules and standards drawn from that body of law to reach our conclusions. We are influenced, in particular, by some of the legal imperatives included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, especially the rights and duties associated with economic and social rights, and with participation in arenas of decision that affect these rights. We refer, especially, to the commitment in Article 25(3) to ensure that everyone on the planet enjoys an adequate standard of living and in Article 28 that insists that it is a human right enjoyed by everyone to have an international order capable of delivering on such a commitment.
We also rely upon the legal norms contained in the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development that clearly establishes the right of peoples to participate in all decision forums that bear on their positive development and that the highest priority in economic policy must be shaped by reference to human well-being, including "the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population." Principles 1, 5, and 6 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development are also supportive of the positions taken by the Tokyo People's Tribunal. The G-7 orientation is the very antithesis of such deference to international law. It is not only a matter of the failure to produce substantive results. It is also, and from an international law perspective more damning, the deliberate unwillingness to regard such obligations as in any way relevant to G-7 operations and mindset.
Of course, skeptical reactions are to be expected. Mainstream critics are likely to contend that the organizers of this Tribunal are usurping the role of governments and international institutions, that it is a hollow pretense to describe such a one-sided proceeding as a Tribunal, and the wholeundertakingisanexerciseinfutilityasonlyafool would expect the G-7 governments to heed a body formed in this manner.
We, the panelists and signatories of this indictment, firmly believe that there are convincing responses to such objections. Above all, we insist that it is the peoples of the world that are the ultimate holders of political sovereignty, including the legitimate right to generate appropriate norms and institutions, that as with the development process itself, so with the constitutional order of the world, it is to be measured as legitimate or not by its contributions to human betterment and well-being. If the industrial states can create the G-7 framework, certainly the NGO community can establish a people's tribunal!
Beyond this fundamental claim, it should be appreciated that this people's Tribunal does not pretend to be a court of law in the normal governmental sense. It invokes the institutional forms of law in a symbolic spirit, conveying a commitment to reasoned analysis, respect for facts, and fairness to the side accused of wrongdoing. The Tokyo People's Tribunal does contend that its inquiries are solidly rooted in international law, and that the indictment drawn up incorporates fundamental legal rules and standards that have been formally accepted as law by states, including the G-7 governments. In effect, the indictment exposes the failure of G-7 to live up to these international law standards, and proposes various forms of popular initiative to encourage their compliance.

But is not this Tokyo People's Tribunal flawed in its conception if it makes no provision for a right ofresponseby G-7 states'? Elementary rights of fairness always include a genuine right to explain and defend on the part of the party being accused. We would, in fact, welcome any indication of a willingness of global market forces or their governmental agents to discuss allegations of this character with us, but they have consistently and scornfully turned a deaf ear to peoples' voices. Besides, their position in defense is readily available in numerous official publications that argue on behalf of the primacy of market efficiency as the basis of human progress for rich and poor alike. Such approaches as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are intended to bring greater efficiency to the countries of the South, which in turn will facilitate their successful entry onto the world market.
We will in the indictment, and on the basis of testimony from several of the countries where these market-oriented principles have been applied, show that contrary to the claims of improving 'competitiveness', the burdens being imposed are causing a steady deterioration in living standards, and an increase in the quantum of human suffering. As such, these standard arguments put forward on behalf of G-7 exhibit both an intention to violate international law standards and a refusal to test their own theories by an empirical examination of the results. The witnesses that appeared before the Tokyo People's Tribunal confirmed the degree to which the G-7 approach reaps a harvest of disaster and despair for the poor and deprived on this planet, whether in the North or South.
We have no illusion that representatives of G-7 will be persuaded to change their policies as a result of our indictment, nor do we believe that we can force compliance in the foreseeable future. Our goals are primarily educative and mobilizing. We believe that many decent fellow citizens are not aware of the extent to which the IMF, World Bank, GATT, and other instrumentalities do the dirty work of managing the world economy to serve the interests of global market forces that are controlled by commercial banks and transnational corporations.

In this regard, it is important to understand that even G-7 states are no longer the main source of authority and policy, but are acting as agents, serving to enact the will of corporate and finance capital. By exposing these realities and their adverse human and environmental effects on the South, we hope that citizens everywhere will become concerned enough to take action designed to influence governments to change their ways in basic respects. It is not only governments in the North that need to be persuaded to abandon such an unconditional embrace of market logic, but also governments in the South that out of desperation or belief have gone along, or even actively endorsed, G-7 thinking and policies, including SAPs.

II: THE GLOBAL SETTING

The world that has been shaped by the G-7 is an unjust and deteriorating world. It is a world where the top 20% of the world's population is earning 150 times the income of the bottom 20%! It is a world where control over natural resources, industrial power, science and technology, information, military might, banks and finance, rests overwhelmingly with this dominant minority. It is a world in which the 15 largest global corporations have gross incomes greater than the gross domestic products of over 120 countries. Further, this control is being constantly sustained by corruption, repression, and a series of military interventions by the North in the South.
The G-7's aim is clear. It wants to perpetuate a global system in which its wealth and its power would remain dominant. In order to do this, the G-7 has chosen to pursue two closely-related strategies. One, it is determined to ensure that the power of its investments, its trade and its technology would be protected and enhanced through an economic system and a development philosophy which safeguard its interests. This economic order in turn is to be protected through political manipulation, military intervention, cultural brainwashing and biased information systems. The overriding goal being pursued is the constant expansion of global capital through the agency of the G-7, especially the US, Japan and Germany. Two, as part of the G-7 mission, a variety of economic and non-economic instruments are being used to make certain that the rest of the world acquiesces and remains subservient to this top-heavy global structure.
There are many dimensions of policy and many institutional forms relied upon to carry out the political and economic projects of the G-7 states, and their largely concealed principals - the centers of global capital and finance. In this Tribunal we have placed particular stress on the role of the World Bank and the IMF, as well as GATT, in imposing arrangements that have harmful human and environmental effects, and interfere fundamentally with the exercise of the rights of self-determination by the peoples of the world. In this regard, SAPs deserve particular attention because they are such blatant instruments of intervention that operate to deprive the peoples of the South of the opportunity to devote a greater proportion of their own resources to the alleviation of suffering caused by the sort of acute poverty that now afflicts an increasing number of the people living in the South.
It should also be realized that the poor in the industrialized North, now constituting a growing proportion of the population, numbering well over 100 million, are also being victimized, if more indirectly, by the same sort of neoliberal approach that guides the G-7 policy-making process. (In the USA alone there are today 62 million people living below the real poverty line, one out of every four persons). This approach favors, more or less unconditionally, deference to market forces and recently advocates openly a rollback of social services, including welfare benefits, that were the hard-earned achievement of struggles for economic justice by earlier generations.
The underlying dynamic driving this ascendancy of market forces is the globalization of capital, aprocess by which nation-states are often turned from a subject of action to an object, and are in a very real sense, front men for global capital. In this regard, G-7 states are themselves no longer in control, and increasingly play a role as agents, acting as custodians of the interests of global capital, insisting on a sovereignty that has already been substantially lost. The G-7 coalition that waged the Gulf War was able to act decisively and massively because its main purpose was to protect the supply and price of the resource most critical to the success of global capital oil When no such shared global economic interest is at stake, the G-7 falters and is unable to fashion a coherent response, as is evident in relation to the long Bosnian ordeal
At the root of practically all the charges made by the witnesses is a fundamental discrepancy between this logic of globalizing capital and the most elementary conditions needed to satisfy basic human rights, especially economic and social rights The denial of rights harms most severely those portions of society already marginalized and alienated as a result of prolonged misery The responsibility for this gross denial of such rights as a result of relying on market forces falls directly on the leaders of the G-7.
These market forces, as reflected in the large transnational corporations and banks, remain concealed, hiding offstage, partly to obscure their influence and partly to retain their advantageous position of being almost exempt from scrutiny and regulation on a global scale that corresponds to the global scope of their operations This financial Juggernaut possesses virtually absolute power and unlimited freedom to exploit the people and resources of the world without having to account for their actions even to governments, much less to the people whom they have victimized again and again If understood as largely a servant of these forces the World Bank becomes a bank rather than an international institution serving the common good, and the GATT becomes a closed bureaucracy with vast power essentially controlled by and accountable to the TNC community rather than a mutually beneficial framework for world trade
There are other objectionable patterns Dictators steal billions from poor countries, shamelessly depositing the funds in secret accounts in Swiss banks and elsewhere, and these huge pools of money remain beyond reach even when a popular movement drives a corrupt leader from power as happened in the Philippines in 1986 Banks for their own profit are completely shielded from any responsibility for lestonng such stolen funds, thereby denying more democratic gov ernments the resources needed for more progressive social policies and aggravating problems of indebtedness. Indeed, holding dirty money is especially profitable, as depositors forego interest payments in exchange for illicit promises of unconditional secrecy. It is a truly scandalous situation, as is the tolerance of flags of convenience whereby international banks and corporations are permitted to locate their headquarters in places that make not even a pretense of regulatory oversight. The notorious Cayman Islands and the Bahamas are not chosen as favorite sites for incorporation because of their scenery!
The need for this Tribunal is especially urgent at this time in world history. Not only does the G-7 act as a dutiful agent on behalf of the globalization of capital, but the capitalist ethos no longer faces any ideological resistance at the inter-governmental level throughout the South. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the embrace of a privatized market orientation by the successor states, and by China, there is no critical voice now being heard in the global corridors of power and no sense of an economic alternative. With the Communist collapse has occurred, temporarily at least, the unwarranted discrediting of socialist values and the weakening of labor movements almost every where, which had historically served as the main sources of pressure for a more compassionate approach to economic policy. Instead of a dialogue between alternative economic perspectives, there is now a capitalist monologue, with a resulting decline in political leverage to challenge the adverse human effects of market operations. The global market has become the only game in town, and the town is now the planet.
With the ending of the East/West dimensions of the Cold War the UN has itself been severely weakened with respect to giving an effective voice to the concerns of the South, perhaps most evident in the shocking decision two years ago to terminate the UN Center on Transnational Corporations, one of the few information-gathering mechanisms that was, at least to a modest extent, monitoring the activities of global market forces, and slowly laying the groundwork for a code of conduct to place some limits on transnational economic activity.

This Tribunal is extremely skeptical about the capacity and willingness of the G-7 framework to undertake needed reforms of sufficient magnitude, at least in the absence of strong political pressures from civil society. It is our fervent hope that by building a transnational democratic movement of citizens and their associations it will become possible to mobilize new pressures on behalf of those peoples struggling in different specific circumstances to resist the adverse human and environmental consequences of globalization-from-above. It is to these specific circumstances that we now turn, setting forth charges of abuse and illegality that arise from the practices relied upon by the instrumentalities of control used by G-7 states to carry out their mission to maintain, regardless of human costs, the present globally oppressive economic structure.

III: THE CHARGES

We rest these charges against the G-7 on two bases:
1. The fact that the governments of the richest countries of the world,
1.e. the G-7, define the policies of the IMF and the World Bank, since their combined votes control the institutions. The policies of these institutions serve the interests of global capital which dominates the G-7 governments. The witnesses demonstrated unequivocal links between the G-7 and the terrible human and environmental consequences of structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.
2. The fact that the countries of the G-7 are all signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are accountable to their own citizens and to the peoples of the world, through the UN, for their adherence to this and'other similar international legal commitments. By virtue of their vast economic power, they have a special moral and social responsibility to uphold the human rights standards set forth in these instruments.
The overwhelming concern of the witnesses and written testimony have been with the negative impact of structural adjustment policies and programs. The heart of this concern lies in the unmistakable evidence of a significant deterioration in the standard of living of thelarge majority of people, an intensification of poverty accompanied by the increasing enrichment of a few.
The percentage of Brazilians living below the poverty line went from 24%in 1980to 39% in 1988.After 12yearsof structural adjustment, 33% of Jamaica's population were living below the poverty line. After 30 years of structural adjustment, 50% ofFilipinos live below the poverty line.
Even more damning is the finding in the United Nations Children's Fund 1988 study. Adjustment with a Human Face, and in subsequent studies and reports by UNICEF and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, that during the 1980' s, 6 million children under the age of five died each year after 1982 because of the impact of SAPs.
The redistribution of wealth that has accompanied this increasing poverty can only lead to fundamental social disharmony and the destruction of social peace as a major consequence of SAPs.
But SAPs are ineffective, even on their own terms. A confidential analysis by the IMF of 66 SAPs during the 1980's showed the almost total failure of these programs in relation to their fiscal, monetary, income growth and debt reduction objectives. Further confidential analyses by the IMF of SAPs in the late 1980's and early 1990's upheld the earlier finding of the ineffectiveness of these programs.

Negative Consequences of SAPs

Witnesses underscored and confirmed these abusive patterns by documenting the impacts of SAPs in their testimonies. Illustrative data of these impacts is given in the annex to this indictment.
Their collective testimony reveals the following negative consequences from SAPs:
1. Sharp increases in unemployment around the world due to lay-offs of government personnel; the privatization of publicly-owned companies; competition from cheap imports and capital-intensive industry which is wiping out small and traditional enterprises; and policies of high interest rates leading to demand contraction. The ILO projects that unemployment will reach one billion by the year 2000.
2. The cheapening of labor through successive devaluations, the imposition of IMF wage guidelines and the suppression of unions. Average real wages, minimum wages and salaries as a percentage of national income have all fallen sharply as countries are pitted against one another as cheap-labor export production platforms.
3. Increases in the concentration of national income, the widening of the income gap and the contraction of the middle class, as large exporters, the national financial sector and international creditors gain at the expense of workers and the poor.
4. Skyrocketing costs of living faced by ordinary citizens as a result of the elimination of price controls and subsidies, devaluations, inflation-inducing increases in public debt, and official wage restraints.
5. The rapid expansion and deepening of poverty around the globe as a result of policies to repay debt, including an emphasis on export production, rising prices, wage control and unemployment, and the elimination of targeted government programs and protection of small producers. In many countries the majority of the population have fallen below the poverty line and face daily hunger.
6. An ever-increasing burden on women and children. To maintain family survival, women must compensate for declining family income and loss of social services while being denied access to productive resources and seeing their traditional skills, knowledge and production systems devalued and undermined.
7. The displacement of small-scale agricultural producers through the lowering of external tariffs and entry of highly subsidized agricultural imports, the removal of subsidies for farm inputs, the reduction of credit and a rise in interest rates, and an emphasis on export production at the expense of subsistence farming and staple food producers.
8. A growing dependence on food imports in many countries, as national levels of food self-sufficiency have dropped due to emphasis on exports and lack of attention to basic grains and other domestically produced food crops.
9. Broad environmental degradation, including the devastation of forest and marine resources, increased soil erosion, and industrial waste pollution - caused by an emphasis on exports and rapid resource extraction, intensive agricultural methods, deregulation of investments and inadequate oversight due to budget cuts, and poverty-induced exploitation of marginal natural resources by local populations. Adjustment programs have not internalized the social and ecological cost of the policy package.
10. The deterioration of health care systems around the world and the rapid spread of disease, including those associated with malnutrition and inadequate water-supply systems. Cuts in government health budgets have led to the closure of clinics and hospitals, the elimination of immunization programs, inadequate supplies, staff shortages, lack of adequate care, sharp increases in fees for tests and in prices of essential drugs, and the disappearance of some basic drugs from the domestic market. The effects have been particularly tragic for the health of women and children. The WHO Director General pronounced the current cholera epidemic in Latin America to be due directly to SAPs.
11. Decreasing school enrollment, increasing drop-out rates and rising functional illiteracy due to cuts in public education programs and rising fees and other costs to parents.
12. A decline in the productive capacity of many nations undergoing SAPs for lack of investment in physical infrastructure (to improve deteriorating feeder roads and poor water-supply and sanitation systems), industrial facilities and technology, and education and health systems. Financial speculation instead of productive investments and the elimination of local producers due to foreign competition are also factors, as is rising poverty and malnutrition which may condemn much of future generations to a marginal existence.
13. The undermining of democratic systems and processes where they exist as SAPs, imposed from above, skew the distribution of resources and decision making power at all levels, cause further erosion of confidence in political leaders, induce growing violence and the repression of crime, and force governments to intensify repression to control protests against policies imposed to maintain good standing with the World Bank and the IMF. These and other measures are responsible for gross and systematic violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as the right to development.
14. The continued growth of external debt, and, since the mid-eighties, the new (but at the same time historical) transfer of resources from the South to the North at annual rates of between $40 and $50 billion.

Specific Charges

On the basis of testimony and documentary materials presented to the Tribunal, ten distinct charges can be leveled against leading international financial institutions. These charges, which are not exhaustive, cover a variety of practices.
1. A consistent failure by the World Bank to implement its own policy directives relating to participation in World Bank projects, such as the requirement of submitting Environmental Impact Assessments before projects are implemented, thus giving a chance for those who will be affected by a project to present their concerns and defend their interests.
Such failures result in an exclusion from decision making and denial of rights of participation, constituting a denial of economic rights.
2. The consistent failure of the World Bank and the IMF to establish policy directives ensuring popular participation in the formulation and Implementation of structural adjustment policies and programs.
Such a pattern also results in exclusion from decision making and denial of rights of participation in policies that often have fundamental implications for peoples' lives.
3. The failure by the World Bank and the IMF to make public the periodic evaluations of their structural adjustment policies and to take appropriate action in response to deficiencies identified. This behavior amounts to a denial ot the right to information as protected by Article 19 ot the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and results in the continuation of policies that may be inimical to the interests of a country and its people, but serve the interests of transnational banks and elites in both North and South
4. Conducting WolldBankandlMFnegotiationsandother activities in a covert manner relying on secrecy to preclude criticism and opposition a set of practices that are anti democratic in their e\ \em e and (ontrary to the spirit of transparency.
This is a denial of the right to information and rendeis rights of participation meaningless It is a means of hiding for as long as possible policies that will not operate in the interests ot the majority of the people.
5 Coercion through imposition of 'structural adjustment policy packages upon governments in no position to refuse.
This is a denial of the principle of self-determination as set forth in Article 55 of the United Nations Charter and reaffirmed as a funda mental right in a common Article 1 of the International Covenants of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and of Civil and Political Rights which states that all peoples have the right to "freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development" This also, in effect, lesults in the usurpation of the functions of national governments, thus denying peoples' right to participate in their government as legally protected by Article 21 of the Universal Declaration This represents the wielding of superior power in order to implement policies that are clearly seen by many governments in the South as not being in their long term interests
6 The imposition of deprivations and harm upon peoples and the degradation and destruction of their environments through structural adfustment policies and programs and other development projects
This constitutes denial of rights such as the right to work (Article 23, UDHR), the right to education (Article 26, UDHR), the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of (self and) family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond (one's) control (Article 25, UDHR)
7 Displacement of people and disruption of communities in large scale World Bank development projects, such as dam and infrastructure projects, and failure to protect adequately the rights of such displaced persons.
This constitutes violations of many legally protected rights, including rights of livelihood and habitat
8 The failure to protect rights of indigenous peoples, minorities, and other vulnerable groups affected by structural adjustment policies and programs and other development projects
In its extreme form, as in Amazonia, such a pattern may constitute ethnocide and certainly involves gross violations of cultural rights
9 The failure of the World Bank and the IMF to institute adequate mechanisms of accountability on behalf of the people affected by their policies and projects and evasions of such obligations to accountability by recourse to an internal conspiracy of silence, reinforced by bureaucratic constraints on disclosure.
Such behavior constitutes both a violation of due process and a negation of the rule of law It enables these institutions to implement unpopular policies that are contrary to the best interests of the people, and aggravate the distress of those sectors of the population that are most disadvantaged
10 The insulation from liability by the World Bank and IMF even in instances of gross wrongdoing through the inclusion of immunity clauses in their agreements.
This insulation constitutes a serious violation of the right under international law to an effective remedy (Article 8, UDHR) and operates as a socially undesirable mechanism to shield international financial institutions and their most powerful members, the G-7 states, from appropriate responsibility for policies enacted under their auspices.

IV: RESPONSE AND REDRESS

Redressing the policies and practices which form the basis of our indictment (and substantially our proposals for reform) is indeed a formidable challenge. This will involve changing the basic structure and organization of multilateral agencies (such as the World Bank, the IMF and GATT) which the G-7 uses as instrumentalities for the furtherance of their economic objectives, for the preservation of present power relationships, and for the perpetuation of their domination of the peoples of the South. This in turn will involve the drastic reorganization of the G-7.
It would be simplistic to underestimate the difficulties ahead. But equally, it would be tantamount to despair and surrender, to be fatalistic in the face of such difficulties. Indeed, the Tribunal was presented with several cases in which the mobilization of people in both South and North effectively blocked, and in some instances reversed, destructive G-7 policies.
It is important therefore that both short- and long-term responses be mobilized within the sphere of transnational participatory democracy which must be the main areria for such struggles. But selective use (recognizing their limitations) of the institutions of the international, inter-governmental system and of the national state systems, in the South and North alike, need not be totally abandoned. A creative mix of responses in both of these arenas may well prove necessary.
In the domain of peoples' movements and civil society, more effective South-South and South-North linkages need to be forged at the micro-level to strengthen the political and economic base. At the macro-level the forging of effective peoples' alliances to advocate and lobby for policy changes and multilateral institutional-redesign are essential, if visionary. Thus, for example, to press for recognition by the G-7 (and their multilateral institutional agents) of human and social indicators and of ecological indicators to address human and social deficits and ecological deficits is crucial. But it is important that these alternative indicators, as well as the norms and standards they will help to implement and enforce, be articulated and elaborated at grassroots and community levels through an exercise of transnational popular sovereignty and as an expression oftransborder participatory democracy.
Of special concern is the enormous concentration of unaccountable power in the hands of transnational corporations which are the driving force behind the G-7 governments and the international financial institutions.
Response must take place at many different levels, ranging from grassroots resistance when whole communities are threatened by the intrusion of TNCs to a concentrated effort at the global level to monitor their performance and make them truly accountable to international human rights law. Response must also include continuing resistance to attempts to consolidate TNC dominance of the global economy through the current Uruguay Round of negotiations at GATT.
More immediately, however, the struggle for a better tomorrow needs to take place within the context of addressing today's disablement, disempowerment and victimization. So far as this legacy of the G-7 is concerned, there are important and immediate tasks of:
i) Effective relief, rehabilitation and de-victimisation of the evergrowing legion of victims of the G-7.
ii) Ensuring the protection against revictimization of those whose very humanity has been victimized by the G-7, its multilateral agents, and its transnational corporate principals.
iii) Securing the accountability at the Institutional level (be it multilateral, bilateral, or national) of those responsible for the creation of such victims, and 'disposable and expendable' people.
iv) Establishing the responsibility at the personal level in terms of both criminal and civil liability as well as popular censure and social ostracism. 'Iron-clad guarantees' of immunity from liability and institutional opacity and anonymity breed covertness and clandestine corruption. The more that personal responsibility can substitute for institutional accountability, the further along we will be in identifying those truly responsible rather than holding out the sacrificial lambs that the North will give to the South.
v) Compensation not in a narrow legalistic sense but rather in terms of a human impacts equivalent of the 'polluter pays' principle in the environmental sphere. The question here is who pays compensation to the human victims of structural adjustment policies and other development policies and programs? On what basis - How and Why? Once again the matter of compensation must not be a matter only of legal liability - tortuous, criminal or other - alone. It must be based upon principles of justice, fairness and non-discrimination. Compensation must be delivered both through legal and extra-legal community-based processes as well.
vi) Public censure and imposition of penal and other sanctions through both state and popular processes. Delegitimization and disempowerment are powerful mechanisms that the processes of transnational participatory democracy must rely upon. The institutions of state law may, at times, be able to play a supportive role. But the challenge lies in the people devising mechanisms for dealing with crimes against humanity rather than relying on state structures alone for that purpose.
vii) Preventive and injunctive remedies and relief. The Chipko struggle presented to us at this Tribunal clearly underscores the merit of preventive rather than remedial relief. It also highlights the capacity of people to act collectively even while their governments remain paralyzed or unwilling to act or even react.
While each of the above seven responses may be initiated in civil society, or the state sector, or the inter-governmental sector, it is crucial that existing international normative frameworks (in respect of human rights, environment and development) serve as the foundation for such actions. Only then can principle prevail over subjectivity. Only then can denials and grievances become the basis for popular mobilizations and the exercise of popular sovereignty.

V: CONCLUSION

The Tokyo People's Tribunal has drawn up this indictment to clarify the realities surrounding the role being played by the G-7 framework in the 'New World Order.' It is a role destructive of human well-being, with cruel and adverse effects on the poor everywhere and on the habitat of the planet. In preparing this indictment we have no illusion that the struggle can be won quickly or easily.
Yet there are reasons to be hopeful.
The cooperation of peoples across borders in a common endeavor to promote justice and nonviolence, to reduce human suffering and deprivation, and to protect the environment is building something new-areal network of social activists with local roots and a global outlook. We identify these developments as the beginnings of a transnational democratic order that might be called globalization-from-below, a movement of peoples being formed to resist and transform the kind of structures being maintained by the G-7 states, what we have labeled here globalization-from-above. There is also encouraging evidence that the critique of the World Bank/IMF approach to development is gaining credibility, and is beginning to put even officials of these institutions on the defensive in public discussion and debate.
In the end, our confidence about the future arises from the conviction that transnational democracy best represents the changing tides of history. No one a decade ago anticipated the collapse of the oppressive Soviet internal and external empire, but it happened quickly and decisively. We should not rule out the possibility that deep flaws in the G-7 approach to global domination will create a variety of opportunities for drastic reform and reconstruction. Sharpening the critical perspective is essential preparation in becoming ready. The Tokyo People's Tribunal seeks to contribute to this readiness on the part of the peoples of the world and their representatives.
We therefore invite all those around the world who share both our concern about the destructive role of the G-7 in its drive to maintain and intensify its global domination and our hope that, through transnational democratic processes, this drive can be thwarted and a more just and sustainable social order be created, to:
1) Signify their affirmation of this indictment by joining us in signing it.
2) Organize people's tribunals at the local, national, or regional level to refine, revise, or extend this indictment, to render judgment based on their own experience, and to formulate remedies appropriate to that experience.
3) Join together a year from now at the next G-7 Summit and 50th Anniversary of the IMF and the World Bank in a worldwide demand that widespread violations of human rights by the G-7 governments, the international financial institutions, and the transnational corporations and banks be stopped and those responsible be held accountable for their actions.

SIGN ED BY:

Panelists:

Clarence Dias, President, International Center for Law in Development, USA
Maitet Diokno, Secretary General, Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives
Richard Falk, Professor, Princeton University, USA Doug Hellinger, Director, The Development GAP, USA Kitazawa Yoko, Co-President, Pacific Asia Resource Center Ward Morehouse, President, Council on International and Public Affairs, USA.
Mushakoji Kinhide, Professor, Meiji Gakuin University ThongbaiThongpao,/ow}w, President, ThongbaiThongpao foundation, Thailand

Witnesses:

T.M. Ali, Professor, Sudan
Araki Takeshi,All-Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers Union (Jichiro)
Davison Budhoo, Director, Bretton Woods Reform Organization
Leonor M Brinones, President, Freedom from Debt Coalition, Professor, University of the Philippines
Arief Budiman, Professor of Economics, Umversitas Knsten, Indonesia
Arturo Grisby, Researcher, Nitlapan Research Institute, Universi-dad Centroamencana, Nicaragua Jennifer Jones, Director, Social Action Center, Jamaica
Kanno Yoshihide, fanner, Okitama Farmer's Exchange
Chandra Muzaffar, Director, JUST World Trust, Malaysia
Isagani Serrano, Vice President, PRRM (Philippines Rural Reconstruction Movement
Vandana Shiva, Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, India
Jaya Shnvastava, Director, ANKUR (Society for Alternatives in Education), India
Maria Clara Couto Scares, Researcher, 1BASE (Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis)

Authors, Japanese Testimony:

Fuke Yosuke, ODA Study and Research Group
Hirakawa Hitoshi, Professor, Bunkyo University
Kanda Hiroshi, ODA Study and Research Group
Kaneko Fumio, Professor, Yokohama City University
Mural Yoshinri,, ODA Study and Research Group
Nagase Rie, ODA Study and Research Group

Organizing Committee Members:

Doi Takako, Diet Member
Fukamizu Masakatsu, Catholic priest
GotoMonshige, Chairperson, All-Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers Union (Jichiro)
Hayashi Yoko, Lawyer
Hoshino Masako, Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC)
Inoue Reiko, Director, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)
KitazawaYoko, Co-President, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)
Kuriki Yasunobu, Professor, Senshu University
Kuroda Yoichi, Japan tropical Forest Action Network (JA7AN)
Douglas Lummis, Professor, Tsuda College, Co President, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)
Maejma Munetoshi,Secretary General, National Christian Council in Japan
Maeno Ryo, Director, Institute of Socialist Politics and Economics (ICPE)
Matsul Yayori,As;an Women's Association
Miyazaki Shigeki, Professor, Mei/i University
Mural Yoshinori, Professor, Sophia University
Mushakoji Kinhide, Professor, Meiji Gakinn University
Muto Ichiyo, Co-President, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC) Nakahara Michiko, Professor, Waseda University
Oda Makoto, Novelist
Orito Nobuhiko, Seikatsu Club Consumers' Cooperative Union
Tanaka Yukio, Secretary General, Friend's of the Earth, Japan (FOEJ)
Tsuwa Keiko, Chairperson, Japanese Women's Council
Ukita Hisako, Japanese Catholic Council for Justice and Peace
Utsumi Aiko, Professor Keisen Jogakuen College
Yokota Katsumi, Director, Fukushi Club Coop

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