IMF/WB Opponents in Dubai Call for More of Spirit of Cancun

50 Years listserv
Sep 22, 2003
by 50 Years Is Enough Network

PRESS RELEASE: September 22, 2003
50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice

Contacts:
In Dubai: Njoki Njoroge Njehu
In Washington: Soren Ambrose

IMF/WORLD BANK OPPONENTS IN DUBAI CALL FOR GLOBAL SOUTH
TO EXTEND CANCÚN’S “SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE”
Bank’s “World Development Report” Also Critiqued

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - September 22 - Representatives of civil
society groups in Dubai for the joint annual meetings of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank hailed the collapse of negotiations at
last week’s ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
Cancún, Mexico, and called for developing country delegates in Dubai to
continue to display the “spirit of resistance” they showed in Cancún.

“Cancún was the first time that developing countries from the Global South
stayed united in defense of their obvious common interests,” said Njoki
Njoroge Njehu, a Kenyan who directs the U.S.-based 50 Years Is Enough
Network. “For decades, Africa, the Caribbean, the Asia-Pacific region, and
Latin America have been exploited by the economic and political power of
wealthy countries, exercised through the international financial institutions,”
she said, adding, “Their arrogant over-reaching has finally gone too far, and
the South has said no more. By making their resistance public here in Dubai
as well, developing countries can decisively demonstrate that they will no
longer be taken for granted, and no longer serve as the playthings of the rich.”

Shelly Emalin Rao, of the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education, and
Advocacy (ECREA) in Suva, Fiji, pointed out, “What happened in Cancún was
possible because, for all its obvious flaws, the WTO has a modicum of
democracy and transparency. It took 8 years for the South to stand up and
refuse the North’s manipulations there. It’s even harder at the IMF and World
Bank, where most meetings and documents are kept secret and the South
has even less leverage. Argentina last week managed brilliantly to resist the
most destructive of the IMF’s demands on utility prices.” Rao added that “The
broken pledges from Doha reflect the same Northern agenda as the IMF/
World Bank conditions -- privatization, cuts in health and education spending,
elimination of subsidies and credit, trade and investment deregulation, and
export orientation -- that have ruined our economies for decades. All of our
governments here in Dubai should follow the examples of Cancún and
Argentina by finding the power in resistance.”

“For the last two years, the World Bank has been arguing the case of
developing countries, saying the North should reduce its agricultural
subsidies,” said Demba Moussa Dembele, of the Forum for African
Alternatives in Dakar, Senegal. “But it was the World Bank itself which
insisted our countries open up to trade and investment from the North, and
told us to trust in global markets. Did they not know then about the market
distortions created by the subsidies and trade restrictions in the North? After
‘advice’ like this, the World Bank should not just be urging the North to
change its policies, but should take material responsibility for misleading us
down the path of rigged prices and poverty.”

Njehu noted that the World Bank’s flagship publication, the World
Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People, launched
yesterday in Dubai, “sets a new standard for nebulousness.” The Bank’s
fervent advocacy of turning over essential services to the private sector got
muddled this year, said Njehu, by a mounting record of failures and
increasing reluctance on the part of corporations to invest in the South. “It
looks like the message of the Report shifted as the year went on, with the
result being an extraordinarily bland document that offers no original analysis
or guidance on providing basic services.”

Njehu said the Report simply ignores vital questions: “It doesn’t even go into
the risks of turning over basic services to private providers, particularly with
regard to establishing workable regulatory frameworks in impoverished
countries. I live in a country where Enron and friends used regulatory gaps to
subject the people of California to blackouts and blackmail, and where a de-
regulated system led in August to an unprecedented power failure from New
York to Detroit and across the border to Toronto. If the Bank is going to talk
about entrusting public services to the market forces of private profit, it needs
to offer a lot more than this WDR.”

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