Caracas, October 7 (RHC)-- Venezuela addressed the UNCTAD forum on Wednesday in favor of moving towards multilateralism and genuine international cooperation, in the face of the remnants of hegemony that truncate development with equity, and also urged to correct the unfair global financial system.

Venezuelan Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez intervened virtually, via streaming-on-line, during the XV United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which is being held on-line from October 3rd through the 8th.

The conference is UNCTAD's highest decision-making body, where member states assess current trade and development issues and formulate global policy responses.  It also sets the organization's work priorities for the next four years.

The Venezuelan vice president said that if the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated anything, it was the economic, ecological and ethical unsustainability of the international system and the profoundly unjust and unequal nature of the current world order.

She noted that hunger affects more than 800 million people in the world while food is wasted in developed countries, according to figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

"That is inequality.  2,700,000 children die each year from causes associated with malnutrition, while the 10 richest men in the world saw their combined wealth increase by 540 billion dollars during the pandemic in 2020.

"The world's 26 richest people own the same wealth as half of the world's population," according to OXFAM data," recalled the Venezuelan vice president.

Humanity's problems cannot be overcome without addressing the profound imbalances in our society.  Hence the important role of an organization such as UNCTAD in addressing economic and social challenges.

"We believe that this organization should play a concrete role in helping developed countries to definitively abandon the neocolonial vision, the remnants of hegemonism that truncate development with equity.

"UNCTAD must also consider the unsustainable burden of external debt.  The growing digital divide, the decrease in trade flows, and the inhumane impact of unilateral coercive measures affecting more than 30 countries."

Venezuela joins the reiterated call of different voices in the world to correct the unfair distribution of the Special Drawing Rights of the International Monetary Fund to address the effects of the pandemic.

Delcy Rodriguez also indicated that Venezuela reiterates its denunciation that the IMF refuses to deliver to our people the five billion dollars that correspond to our country to fight the pandemic.