Loggers and drug traffickers killing Tarahumara people in Mexico's Sierra Madre. The world's largest mine dumping tailings into a Papua New Guinea river which thousands of people depend on, making it 60 percent biologically dead. Roads cutting through ancient Amazon rain forest. The forced relocation of approximately 1.9 million of the poorest people in the world.
Sounds horrible? It is, and you're paying for it. These are just a few of the results of projects financed in part by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The U.S., as a large donor nation, controls 19 percent of the votes in these institutions and implicates our entire country in "development" programs which result in higher poverty, repressive governments and environmental destruction.
During the annual meeting of World Bank-IMF in Washington, D.C., this October, another group of people met as well. This other group, the 50 Years Is Enough Coalition, brought together economists, activists and students from the many countries being affected by World Bank-IMF projects and programs. They were pissed.
I had the opportunity to meet up with youth activists from every continent in the world who form the network ASEED (Action for Solidarity, Environment and Economic Development). These young people, who live in culturally rich but economically devastated countries of the world, are fighting for their right to determine their own economic future. As young people, they are affected by World Bank-IMF policies in ways with which students in the U.S. could perhaps empathize.
As Pamela Redwood of Jamaica said, "To us, academic freedom means the right to receive an education." But World Bank-IMF economic indicators see education funding as a liability. "Those who have the highest illiteracy rate, the highest infant mortality rate, are being told to cut education, and cut social spending by the World Bank-IMF," said Wamuya Gatheru of Kenya.
The World Bank-IMF began 51 years ago at Brentton Woods, in an attempt to reconstruct war-torn countries and regulate international currency exchange in the post World War II era. Yet these institutions, with their top-down management and strict adherence to neo-liberal economic principles, have not only failed to help developing countries but have channeled billions of dollars and resources out of the Third World and into the First.
The "Debt Crisis" of the 1980s caught the governments of borrowing countries holding the bag for many loans they did not make. In other cases the governments making the loans were dictatorships, leaving newly-emerged democracies with large foreign debts while former leaders have escaped with both impunity and millions of dollars. Today's debtor countries are essentially being blackmailed by the World Bank-IMF to take more loans either to repay on the original debt or for monstrous projects which do more destruction than good. This new round of loans came with some dubious strings.
Coupled with "Structural Adjustment Programs," these loans demanded that borrowing countries:
˜ slash social spending
˜ devalue currency
˜ liberalize trade
˜ sell off public resources and enterprises
˜ put all available resources into production for export
SAPs do not help poor countries develop economically. Instead, they assure that poor countries pay the debt by selling off their forests, their fish, their minerals, their labor and their future. Haitian economist Chamille Chalmers explained that since the introduction of SAPs in his country in 1982, there has been a sharp increase in poverty. Today, 80 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty as a result of IMF "stability" measures.
When citizens protest these measures they face political repression. As Lina Cabaero of the Philippines explained, "SAPs cut the subsidies to education but they increase the subsidies to national defense." Through SAPs, the World Bank-IMF dictates domestic policy to 116 countries. The citizens who are affected by these policies did not vote for them, do not benefit from them and do not want them. Alicia Casa of Costa Rica said "We're not asking that the IMF model be made assessable. We're demanding that it not be imposed on us anymore. Don't adjust our structures!"
The World Bank-IMF is being criticized from inside and out. An internal World Bank report ranked 37 percent of the bank's projects "unsatisfactory" by their own criteria. Of course, the people living under SAPs have different criteria, such as access to potable water, sewage and education. Two recent World Bank projects the ARUN III Dam planned for Nepal and the Narmada Dam planned for India, have been stopped because of popular protest by both the people living in the affected countries and international supporters.
Meena Raman of Malaysia gave these words to U.S. citizens who are against World Bank-IMF policies: "You in the U.S. have access to the politicians who are financing these destructive policies, and you have the power to stop them."
Naomi Mudge is a history senior and will be outta here in May.