G20 Durban

OPEN LETTER

DRAW A RED LINE TO THE ERA OF BILLIONAIRES

Dear President Ramaphosa,

As you hold the Presidency of the G20, the group of the world’s richest nations, the inequality crisis is quickly deepening. This crisis is not an accident, but the outcome of a system built to favour the very few at the top at the expense of the rest. People across the world are speaking up and the pressure for change is growing. They are no longer waiting for world leaders to fix the inequality crisis. They are drawing a red line to the era of billionaires. It is high time that the G20 responds with decisive action.

We write as people on these frontlines of inequality and climate breakdown across the Global South. We draw the red line to this era of extreme wealth and rule by the rich and powerful. We draw the line because this is no longer a time for half measures and empty words.

Members of the G20 have the ability to drive real change. Yet G20 countries have continued to look away from the deep, structural transformations the world urgently needs.

This Presidency of the G20 held for the fourth year in a row in the Global South - and now for the first time on African soil - brings the neocolonial nature of the global finance architecture, and its huge impacts on global inequality into sharp view. In the current polycrisis, the global majority are bearing the brunt of this system that has neither been structurally nor economically decolonized. 

The Presidency of the G20 provides you with an opportunity to take truly bold steps to make the richest pay their fair share in taxes and to cancel the debt. There is an urgent need to transform the current regressive taxation system that has shifted the burden from the corporations and wealthy class to the poor class. The debt crisis is also placing crippling burdens on peoples in the Global South who are living at the sharp end of inequality and are facing the brunt of the climate crisis. Predatory loan practices, which has financiers borrowing to already highly indebted Global South countries at higher interest, is deepening this global divide. Over 3.4 billion people now live in a country where their governments are caught between meeting rising interest payments or staffing hospitals, building schools and investing in climate resilient infrastructure. 

We urge you to guide the G20 in agreeing on:

1. Taxing the super-rich to redistribute extreme wealth and fund essential services.
2. Cancelling debts that are crippling countries’ ability to invest in people and the planet.
3. Establishing new global financial rules -- reflecting the aspirations of people everywhere -- that put people and the planet, not profit, at the centre.

As G20 Finance Ministers meet between July 17-18 for the last time ahead of November’s leaders summit, now is the time for bold action that history will judge as a legacy worth leaving.