ECONOMY: Activists Gear Up for World Bank, IMF Talks

By Emad Mekay Reprint | | Print |

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Apr 17 2002 (IPS) - Activist groups have scheduled dozens of events, including demonstrations, here through the coming weekend to express displeasure with world issues ranging from the global war on terror to user fees on water consumed in African villages.

Organisers say their demonstrations, news conferences, and workshops — timed to coincide with the Apr. 20-21 spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — will illustrate again that their movement, which opposes the current world economic and military order, is alive and kicking.

After the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, campaigners here toned down their opposition to the type of globalisation spearheaded by bodies including the Bankd and IMF, World Trade Organisation (WTO), World Economic Forum, and the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers.

“For a while after 9-11, there was a feeling that the political climate has changed and that the movement will never hit to the streets again,” said Neil Watkins, coordinator of the World Bank Bonds Boycott, a group that seeks to persuade municipal and other investors not to invest in bonds issued by the World Bank as a means of generating working capital.

“But what happened in New York during the World Economic Forum (in February) gave the movement a shot in the arm,” said Watkins. “We regrouped and came together. You will see a renewed vitality at the weekend”

Organisers say they expect as many as 10,000 protestors at the weekend meetings. By comparison, they say, demonstrators here used to number in the hundreds in the mid-1990s. Some 30,000 turned up for the 1999 WTO talks in Seattle, USA; more than 20,000 protested against the Bank and Fund here the following year.

The spring gathering of finance officials from around the world normally is smaller and considered less important than the institutions’ full-blown annual meetings, which take place in the autumn.

But activists say the upcoming talks are particularly significant because they come in the wake of economic turmoil in Argentina, a prime client and pupil of the Bank and IMF.

They also come after the collapse of the multinational giant Enron, which the non-governmental Mobilisation for Global Justice says served “as a magnifying glass for the strength of corporate power and crookedness in the United States”, the country which serves as both model for and sponsor of corporate-led globalisation.

Analysts and activists from the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN) plan to use the meetings to highlight failed attempts by civil society to engage the World Bank.

“The Bank’s ultimate disposition in these endeavours has been characterised by disingenuous pledges, failure to cooperate or honour commitments, and refusal to accept results arrived at jointly, through agreed-upon processes,” the Network said in a statement.

The Network was set up to work with the Bank in assessing the effects of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on the public in borrowing countries.

Anti-debt campaigners Jubilee USA have planned an International Tribunal on the External Debt, which it says will try the Bank and Fund for being bad creditors to poor countries. The group wants total debt cancellation to free up resources for health and education programmes in indebted countries.

Separate events also have been planned to protest U.S. military involvement in Colombia and elsewhere and to demand the closure of the School of the Americas, the U.S. army school that trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Several of Latin America’s most notorious dictators and human rights abusers attended the school.

What will unite the diverse causes on parade in coming days, activists say, is a desire for alternative strategies and visions of a just and sustainable world — and a rejection of strategies pursued by Wall Street, the international financial institutions, and dominant Western nations.

“The major shareholders in the Fund and the Bank meet in the spring and in a self-congratulatory mood pat each other on the shoulder for what they’ve done,” said Rick Rowden, a researcher with Washington-based advocacy group, Results. “This is a good time for us to reveal the truth about their policies that have upset the poor and civil society groups in many developing countries.”

World Bank and IMF officials, however, have said their institutions’ advice and loans are designed to ensure stability and economic growth for both rich and poor nations.