The World Bank and IMF at 60: (It’s All) Just a Little Bit of History Repeating

Vol. 7, No. 3

September, 2004

by Hope Chu
50 Years Is Enough Network

The World Bank and IMF at 60: (It’s All) Just a Little Bit of History Repeating
By Hope Chu
50 Years Is Enough Network

This spring, April refused to go out like a lamb as thousands of people came
to Washington, DC to protest the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund, and the recipients of their corporate welfare. While the pedagogues of
the global economy met behind closed doors at the spring meetings of the
World Bank and IMF, protesters held a “Festival of Resistance” and
accompanying rally and march on April 24th, the culminating a week of
activities marking the sixty-year legacy of the World Bank and the IMF. This is
the 60th anniversary year of the founding of the Bretton Woods Institutions,
and many of the events in April centered around this theme. Through vigils,
demonstrations, teach-ins and debates, activists called on the two institutions
to reflect on their sixty year history.

Learning the lessons of history, however, doesn’t seem to be the Bretton
Woods Institutions’ strong point. The observation that “history repeats itself”
never seemed truer than when examining the past sixty years of the World
Bank and the IMF. Even the most notorious incidents of poor Bank and Fund
policy prescription – among them the water privatization scheme in
Cochabamba, Bolivia which was reversed by public resistance and the
Sardar Sarovar Dam Project on the Narmada River in India, which has been
at the center of nearly two decades of high-profile intensive struggle on the
part of the indigenous people living there – have failed to change thinking
within either institution. Lending for similar projects perseveres and is even,
after a long retreat, increasing.

Back to Basics: History 101 (featuring teachers from the Global South).

International actions throughout the year are focused on bringing the history
and shallow learning curve of the World Bank and the IMF to light. A
concerted effort began in late March with the 2004 Global Justice Teach-In
Tour, a two-week speaking tour that traveled to 17 cities in 9 states in the US.
Organized by the 50 Years Is Enough Network, the speaking tour featured
leading activists from South Africa, El Salvador, Tanzania, and the Dominican
Republic. They shared their experience resisting World Bank, IMF, and other
structural adjustment policies in their home countries and were joined by a
representative from the Southwest Workers’ Union in El Paso, Texas, who
helped to link their analyses of the global economy to domestic issues facing
U.S. communities.

Speakers on the 2004 Teach-In Tour included Virginia Setshedi (Anti-
Privatization Forum, South Africa), Victor Geronimo (Collective of Popular
Organizations, Dominican Republic, and an international coalition, the
Convergence of Movements of Peoples of the Americas [COMPA]), Fides
Chale (Tanzania Gender Networking Programme, Tanzania), and Vilma Ortiz
(Community organizer, El Salvador). The speakers shared their own
struggles against privatization, user fees, trade agreements, and the
destructive policies of the World Bank and the IMF with US activists in
churches and colleges across the country. Their stories bear witness to the
ahistorical and short-sighted policies perpetuated by the World Bank and the
IMF, and describe struggles against problems decades in the making.

April Action: Events during the IMF/World Bank spring meetings.

Events in Washington during the IMF/World Bank spring meetings
reverberated with the same sentiments of outrage; but moreover with disbelief
that, after 60 years of failed projects and policies, the Bretton Woods twins
have refused to learn the lessons to which the victims of countless
Cochabambas and Sardar Sarovars have had such first-hand exposure. A
vigil entitled “Cry of the People, Cry of the Earth: Will the World Bank and IMF
Repond?” coordinated by the Religious Working Group on the World Bank
and IMF underscored the deafness of the institutions to the voices of the
people they purport to help. Gathered in front of the World Bank, activists and
religious leaders from around the world challenged the institutions to reflect
on their part in the devastating global trends of the past 60 years: economic
polarization and the increasing gap between rich and poor, the slow erosion
of the environment, and the insurmountable and crippling burden of debt
borne by impoverished countries.

Earlier in the week, the Jubilee USA Network held an “Unhappy Birthday”
party for the IFIs – cosponsored by the 50 Years Is Enough Network and other
organizations – and delivered over 11,000 “Unhappy Birthday” cards to the
World Bank, demanding 100% debt cancellation. The cards were sent in from
over 30 countries, and urged debt cancellation without further conditionalities.
Citing Uganda’s success in increasing school enrollment following the
cancellation of that country’s debt, but lamenting the limited scope of the
World Bank and IMF’s debt relief program, the Unhappy Birthday cards are
another reminder of the institutions’ apparent unwillingness to learn from
history (or even from current events).

Strategies to combat this memory problem and to bring forgotten history to
light were the focus of this year’s 50 Years Is Enough Network conference,
held on Thursday and Friday during the spring meetings. “Resisting Market
Fundamentalism: Retirement Planning for the IMF and World Bank at 60” was
the title of the conference and it aptly reflected the focus not only on the
history of the World Bank and IMF in so-called “client” countries, but also on
the history of resistance and struggle within those countries. Attendees had
the opportunity to work with organizers and activists from affected countries in
intimate strategy-building workshops held throughout the one-and-a-half day
conference. Though attendance was limited, the energy at the conference
was palpable, and helped build enthusiasm for the next day’s events.

Calling at the Halls of Power: April and July Protests.

The dual history of the IFIs and their opponents was recounted, and in part
relived, during Saturday’s Festival of Resistance and preceding rally and
march. About three thousand protesters gathered in Washington’s Franklin
Square and, with a boisterous and lively urgency, marched to the World Bank
and IMF headquarters buildings. Along the way the march stopped at the
offices of several corporate beneficiaries of World Bank and IMF policies,
including Vivendi, Chevron, Bechtel, and Halliburton, where protesters called
on the corporations to acknowledge their part in socially, environmentally,
and economically destructive projects.

Halting at the doorstep of the powers-that-be, across the street from the IFI
headquarters, protesters listened to speakers including Virginia Setshedi of
the Anti-Privatization Forum, Ricardo Navarro of Friends of the Earth, El
Salvador, and Alok Agarwal of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the
Narmada Campaign) give testimony to the legacy of the World Bank and IMF,
and demanded that the institutions give their history more thought when
implementing future projects. Despite a heavy police presence and
containment by large fences, the rally remained non-confrontational and
retained focus on using the past to warn the institutions to make changes for
the sake of the future. The march then returned to Franklin Square for the
Festival of Resistance, a carnival-like celebration of resistance to the IFIs
which included a “Dunk Your Favorite World Bank Economist” tank and a “Pin
the Structural Adjustment Program on the Country” game.

Following the events in April, the 50 Years Is Enough Network, in cooperation
with the Mobilization for Global Justice, organized another demonstration in
front of the World Bank and IMF headquarters in Washington, DC. On July
22nd, sixty years to the day since the signing of the documents that created
the Bretton Woods institutions, protesters gathered in front of the two buildings
and held a peaceful yet pointed rally. The protest highlighted the findings of
the World Bank-commissioned Extractive Industries Review which
recommended that the Bank phase out its support for high-risk projects in oil,
mining and gas – in addition to recommending that the Bank follow its own
safeguard policies and international human rights laws in its projects.
Hundreds of press releases were handed out in front of a mock oil rig facing
the World Bank’s main entrance (the press release for July 22nd can be
viewed at < www.50years.org/cms/updates/story/146>.

The protest in Washington was only part of a series of coordinated actions
that took place around the world on July 22nd. Activists in Jakarta
(Indonesia), Lima (Peru), London (U.K.), Botosi (Bolivia), and Rome (Italy)
gathered to express the outrage of the international community at the 60 year
history of failed economic reforms, crippling international debt, misguided
development policy, and irresponsible lending practices that follows the
World Bank and IMF in their anniversary year.

In addition to helping to organize these events, the 50 Years Is Enough
Network issued four demands of the Fund and the Bank on their 60th
Anniversary to:
* Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public;
* Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, using the
institutions’ own resources;
* End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people’s access to food,
clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize;
* Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive
projects, and all support for projects that include forced relocation of people.
These demands, along with an addendum speaking to the culpability of the
IFIs in worsening the already disastrous HIV/AIDS pandemic – through the
decimation of health care systems and the perseverance of the crippling debt
owed to the institutions – have been endorsed already by hundreds of
organizations and individuals from dozens of countries. They can be viewed
in their entirety and endorsed at: signup>.

10 Years of Education, Mobilization, and Action: Another Anniversary in 2004

This year also marks the 10th anniversary of one of the Bretton Woods
Institutions’ most vocal and visible historians, the 50 Years is Enough
Network. Started in 1994 as the 50 Years is Enough Campaign, the Network
has been the prominent critical voice targeting the World Bank and IMF in the
US. To celebrate a decade of bringing to light the shameful history of the IMF
and the World Bank, of putting acute pressure on the institutions, of
supporting our partners in the Global South, and of dedication to global
justice, the 50 Years is Enough Network held a 10th Anniversary Celebration
during the April events. Over 150 people gathered to celebrate this
anniversary – and to celebrate Dennis Brutus, renowned poet, anti-apartheid
activist and long-time supporter of the Network, who turns 80 in 2004.

“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”

Although the IMF and the World Bank seem to harbor a willful amnesia, the
protests in April and those following (July 22nd and the ones to come in early
October, in DC and internationally) should serve as a clarion call to the
institutions demonstrating that the people have not forgotten the social,
economic, and environmental destruction their policies have brought upon
the Global South during the past 60 years. Indeed, the ranks of those who
remember history and learn from it are constantly swelling; this year, in
organizing these events in DC, global justice activists, including the 50 Years
Is Enough Network, coordinated with the March for Women’s Lives and
Choice USA in making the links between global justice and women’s rights.
In addition, the April events spotlighted issues of health care and medical
access in Bank- and Fund- affected countries and tied them to the battle over
health care being fought today by various unions in the US.

The World Bank and the IMF should heed the warning of philosopher George
Santayana: “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to
repeat them.” Millions of people in the Global South have already learned too
well the lessons of the institutions’ neo-liberal policies. In this 60th
anniversary year, these unwilling pupils of the so-called “Knowledge Bank”
will continue to campaign and protest against those policies and institutions
which hold them captive to universal privatization, trade liberalization, low
labor and environmental standards, and cuts in social spending; which deny
them access to basic and essential services; institutions which hold their
national economies in thrall to overwhelming debt obligations. In this 60th
anniversary year of the IMF and the World Bank, millions will resist the market
fundamentalism being hawked by the institutions; they have learned the
lessons history holds all too well. The question is, when will the World Bank
and IMF learn?

Maybe for a box below the article:

Help Teach the World Bank and IMF a History Lesson!
- Endorse the 60th Anniversary Demands! - < http://50years.org/cms/action/
apr2004/signup>
- Sign an Unhappy Birthday Card and send it - < www.jubileeusa.org/
jubilee.cgi?path=/take_action&page=bdaycards.html>
- Host a speaker or film festival – email <:info@50years.org>
- Organize for the Fall Meetings of the World Bank and IMF –
www.50years.org
- Learn more about the history of the World Bank and IMF – Purchase one of
our publications – http://www.50years.org
Learn more about the Extractive Industries Review – www.eireview.info

^TOP

50 Years Is Enough Network - 3628 12th St NE, Washington, DC 20017 USA
Tel: 202-IMF-BANK (202-463-2265) Email: info@50years.org