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DEVELOPMENT: Activists Will Mark ‘Unhappy Birthday’ of Bank, IMF

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Apr 20 2004 (IPS) - Angry at the state of global affairs, thousands of protesters are trickling into Washington to demonstrate against the World Bank and IMF, making time to party for women’s rights, dance for the environment and puff on water pipes in the name of Middle East peace.

Fun aside, the focus of activists’ protests is the semi-annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), two bodies that critics say work for the benefit of corporations based in the group of seven (G7) most industrialised nations, cementing the domination of rich states in world affairs.

The meetings coincide with the 60th anniversary of the two Bretton Woods institutions, so named after their birthplace in the U.S. state of New Hampshire following the Second World War.

Demonstrators are expected to turn out in the thousands, a marked change from the hundreds who protested here in the mid-1990s, when the anti-corporate globalisation movement was officially born.

Today, anti-IMF and World Bank protesters take to the streets alongside human rights and peace campaigners, among others.

Critics of the IMF and the bank say the institutions have strayed from their original mandate over the past 60 years, moving towards a form of market fundamentalism that only considers the profit of northern powers, blind to human costs.

The IMF’s original mandate was to promote "international monetary cooperation" and monitor a complex gold-based exchange system between nations, while the World Bank charter states that the organisation should work to promote development and fight poverty..

Little wonder that one of the planned protest activities is an "unhappy birthday party" in downtown Washington to highlight the global debt crisis, which activists say is still partly fuelled by policies of the two institutions. Protesters plan to distribute ”unhappy birthday” cards and cut a sad birthday cake.

Anti-debt organisation Jubilee USA, the group organising the "party" says the World Bank and IMF continue to drag their feet on debt cancellation, using a limited and conditional debt relief programme instead.

Thousands of people in the world’s poorest countries continue to die needlessly from preventable diseases and HIV/AIDS because money that could be spent on health care is instead servicing nations’ debts, they add.

A new plan in the pipeline at the bank and IMF to review debt burdens is just a distraction from the real issue of complete debt cancellation, argue the groups.

"The new debt framework paper looks like another way to bureaucratise the whole process rather than a real step forward," said Soren Ambrose of the Washington-based 50 Years is Enough Network, a group set up 10 years ago to protest the two institutions’ poor record in the developing world.

A number of activists from developing nations will also fast outside IMF and World Bank headquarters to protest the bank’s involuntary resettlement policy, used to relocate people who live on the future sites of projects.

Campaigners say that people who lose their homes or livelihoods as a result of such undertakings should have their standard of living improved, or at least restored, something that does not happen under current policies.

The World Bank has funded numerous large-scale infrastructure projects, including mines or dams, which have affected many local communities. The activists, who plan to fast for three days beginning Friday, include people from India, Zimbabwe and Paraguay.

Human rights groups, environmental charities, religious leaders and indigenous peoples will also demonstrate against the international financial institutions’ misuse of public money via investments in projects that, among other negative impacts, damage the environment and lead to human rights abuses while failing to reduce poverty.

The World Bank has been criticised for funding highly controversial projects like the Baku-Ceyhan gas pipeline – which will cross Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey – and in the process, of funding multinational corporations like Shell and BP.

"The World Bank gives millions of dollars of taxpayers money to multinational companies like Shell for projects which lead to climate-change, damage the environment and lead to human rights abuses," said Hannah Ellis of Friends of the Earth, one of many groups that will campaign during the meetings.

Activists and critics will also demand a positive response to recommendations from the extractive industries review, a bank-commissioned study released in January that urges the body to end its support for extractive industries like gas and oil, and to redirect its money into renewable energy.

In the face of constant criticism, IMF and bank officials have maintained that their institutions’ advice and loans are designed to ensure stability and economic growth for both rich and poor nations.

On the official agenda this weekend is a review of the state of the global economy and the status of the IMF’s economic crisis prevention efforts. The meetings will also examine the state of multilateral efforts to curb poverty in the world’s low-income countries.

The naming of the next executive director of the IMF will also be discussed, amid accusations that the process, which traditionally appoints a European to the helm of the IMF and an American at the World Bank, is undemocratic..

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

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the G7 – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – will also gather in the U.S. capital Saturday.