\u201cThis is a global crisis and it needs global solutions. We are experiencing a downturn in\u00a0global economic development,\u201d admits the pillars of the world economic and social order \u2013\u00a0the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Bank (WB),\u00a0International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Labour\u00a0Organisation (ILO) and the German Chancellor \u2013 in their February 2009 joint statement.1<\/p>\n
We, the labour and migration groups and advocates in Asia, assert that this is a\u00a0comprehensive and multi-faceted social, economic, financial and environmental crisis. \u201cIt is a\u00a0systematic crisis, a crisis of the development model,\u201d as we declared at the 2009 World\u00a0Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.2<\/p>\n
This crisis is the latest eruption of the compounded effects and devastation of the neoliberal\u00a0development ideology espoused by the \u201cWashington Consensus\u201d, and systematically imposed\u00a0since the end of World War II by the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, WB, WTO), the\u00a0OECD, global capitalists and multinational corporations. This will not be the last, or the\u00a0worst economic crisis, especially for the workers, migrants, women, and the poor,\u00a0marginalised and vulnerable peoples in Asia and the world.<\/p>\n