This July the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), turns 50. Birthdays are a good time for reflection, so let’s take a moment to ask what the IFC is, and what it has done for the world.

Recent attempts by the World Bank to further greenwash its image fall far short of the meaningful changes in the development paradigm needed in order to cut greenhouse emissions and reverse the effects of global warming.

As economists and politicians debate what to do about the latest challenges facing the IMF, civil society groups have a straightforward answer: take the IMF off life support.

After the conclusion of this year’s Group of 8 (G8) summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, civil society continues to call on leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations to keep last year’s promises to fight poverty and underdevelopment — to increase effective aid, develop more just trade relations, and deliver broader and deeper debt relief. Yet with energy security headlining the past weekend’s agenda, G8 leaders seem to have forgotten last year’s priorities, instead focusing on increasing oil production, with the world’s poor paying the price in millions of deaths from disease, famine, and environmental disasters caused by climate change, and pushing impoverished countries further into debt.

Just over a year ago – June 2005 – Economic Justice News reported on the creation of a new IMF mechanism called the Policy Support Instrument (PSI). At that time, we were speculating on the reasons for its invention, and concluded that it was most likely a clever tool for maintaining IMF policy domination in countries that would be getting 100% of their IMF debts cancelled by the G8 debt deal then being concluded.

Halifax Initiative

Re: Statement on the IFC-financed Marlin Mine, Guatemala by Civil Society Organizations

Dear Mr. Executive Director,

The Marlin gold mine, wholly owned and operated by Glamis Gold Ltd., is the first major mining project in Guatemala since neo-liberal reforms were introduced to attract global mining capital. The project is an important test case for the mining industry, which hopes to profit from the new frontier that Guatemala represents. The Marlin mine, which benefited from a $45 million loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is also critical for the World Bank, whose involvement in the mining sector was highly criticized in the Extractive Industries Review (EIR). ...

“The Truth is Out There” was the catchphrase of the popular TV show The X-Files, in which FBI agents exposed the secrets of a shadowy government conspiracy. With the web of deception the Bush administration has constructed around the invasion and occupation of Iraq – from the WMD wild goose chase to unauthorized government wiretaps and scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib – one might feel we need a pair of near-psychic detectives to uncover the many agendas of the Bush administration.