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By the same author
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World Bank critics denounce Civil Society Forum
22 April 2005 by The 50 Years Is Enough Network
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Activist organizations that monitor the activities of the international financial institutions today released a statement signed by over 60 civil society groups from 25 countries denouncing a "civil society forum" organized by the World Bank and scheduled for April 21-22 in Washington.
"The large number and broad range of organizations endorsing this statement indicate the serious concern in civil society about the World Bank’s efforts to rewrite history to persuade people that the Bank is committed to working constructively and meaningfully with citizens’ groups," said Doug Hellinger, Executive Director of the The Development GAP, which coordinated a global civil society network that engaged current Bank president James Wolfensohn in a ten-country investigation of the impact of the Bank’s economic adjustment policies.
"This publicly funded institution has undertaken three major participatory exercises with civil society over the past decade and has walked away from all three in the end, declining to act on any of their major findings and recommendations. Furthermore, its mandated Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, ostensibly designed to include citizens in national development planning, have likewise failed to provide an avenue for civil society input on the all-important macroeconomic programs that the Bank and IMF establish as the parameters for these national plans."
The statement asserts that "the prospect of helping to burnish the image of the World Bank at this moment assumes even greater importance in light of the U.S. government’s success in installing [Paul] Wolfowitz to serve as the Bank’s next president... We believe the Forum risks being used as a sign that civil society is open to collaborating with the Bank as it enters the Wolfowitz era."
"The approval of Wolfowitz as World Bank president could be the final nail in the coffin of the Bank’s legitimacy," said Virginia Setshedi of South Africa’s Anti-Privatisation Forum. "At a time like this we need to treat very cautiously any event sponsored by the Bank that claims to include critical voices."
The signers’ concerns about the image of World Bank openness that will be presented to the public extends to the portrayal of Wolfensohn, who is due to step down May 31 after ten years. "Wolfensohn will attend part of the meeting and is likely to take an unearned bow for very limited and dubious achievements," said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network.. "He has been shown repeatedly that the Bank’s economic policies are destructive and unsustainable, yet he has made few changes in core policies over a long period of time. In some ways, the Bank is actually going backwards, and its use of rhetoric and phony poverty plans to cover its tracks needs to be highlighted, not celebrated, particularly as Wolfowitz takes over the Bank."
The statement, included with this release, is being widely circulated among civil society groups working on the Bank. In signing on, Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee South and the Freedom from Debt Coalition in the Philippines stated, "We must make clear that until the World Bank takes civil society and its concerns related to economic and environmental justice seriously, we will not provide platforms where it can claim otherwise. And we are very far from that point."
| Statement: WORLD BANK COURTS NGOs AS WOLFOWITZ TAKES HELM On 21-22 April, the World Bank plans to host a Global Policy Forum in Washington, D.C., focusing on the "poverty reduction strategy" (PRS) process and World Bank-civil society relations. James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, is scheduled to attend for a few hours. It will likely be one of his last interactions with civil society before his ten-year presidency ends five weeks later and he is succeeded by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The civil society organizations endorsing this statement believe that this Forum is designed as a public relations exercise by, and for, the World Bank. Conspicuous omissions from the list of those invited, as well as the content of the draft agenda, strongly suggest that the Bank intends to obscure its troubling record of betraying formal participatory processes developed with civil society and to avoid the most fundamental questions about the PRS now required of all low-income Bank borrowers. The prospect of helping to burnish the image of the World Bank at this moment assumes even greater importance in light of the U.S. government’s success in installing Wolfowitz to serve as the Bank’s next president. Wolfowitz’s well-known role in planning and promoting the invasion and occupation of Iraq has raised reasonable fears that the World Bank will now be made more explicitly a tool of U.S. foreign and economic policy. We believe the Forum risks being used as a sign that civil society is open to collaborating with the Bank as the latter enters the Wolfowitz era. Given the outrage that has been expressed by groups around the world in response to this controversial appointment, that outcome would be very unfortunate. The World Bank controls this Forum, from deciding who is invited to what is on the agenda and how the meeting is conducted. The Bank is covering all the costs, which are undoubtedly substantial. The absence from the invitation list of virtually all of the people involved in the World Bank’s previous significant engagements with international civil society should concern those considering attending. Several thousand organizations and individuals from the South and North were involved in these exercises from the civil society side, many of them prominent voices in international development. This suggests that the Bank is using its control to prevent the Bank’s recent history from being part of the discussion. During the last ten years, the World Bank has participated in three lengthy international engagements with civil society on crucial development issues: structural adjustment (Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative), large dams (World Commission on Dams), and oil, mining, and gas exploitation (Extractive Industries Review). In each of these initiatives, the Bank rejected the exercise’s ultimate findings when they turned critical of its operations and demonstrated a degree of bad faith so substantial as to cast suspicion on the Bank’s motivations in any interaction with civil society. We understand that activists opposing specific World Bank projects or working to influence national economic policy in their respective countries sometimes find it necessary or helpful to meet with the Bank. We would distinguish this conference from such meetings on the grounds that it offers no new information and little realistic chance of influencing policy. The constricted agenda will also limit the possibilities of productive conversation — the first full day, for instance, is devoted to the controversial PRS process, but provides for no discussion of the program’s value or function, or of its single most controversial element, the exclusion of civil society from discussions on macroeconomic policy. In addition, the World Bank has yet to perform a serious review of the poverty impacts of the PRS, which would seem an elementary first step in evaluating its efficacy. Without any evidence that the PRS reduces poverty, the first day’s agenda on improving the PRS bypasses the essential question of whether the PRS is even viable. What the meeting does offer is the chance for the World Bank to escape accountability for its previous failings while looking out on the gathered crowd and reassuring itself, the media, private funders, parliamentarians, and government officials that it is open and communicating with a broad range of civil society. It offers the Bank the opportunity to reassure itself that cosmetic engagements will suffice to satisfy civil society, and that no further, more substantive engagement is necessary. It also offers one more chance for Wolfensohn to be honored for changing the orientation of the Bank toward civil society, regardless of the fact that, under his presidency, the Bank refused to implement the results of extensive civil society engagements and to change highly detrimental aspects of its operations opposed by citizens around the world. More ominously, the forum is designed, despite the Bank’s record, to enhance Bank-civil society relations at a time when the Bush Administration appears intent on intensifying the use of the institution to advance U.S. hegemonic interests through a new management team. Indeed, we can anticipate the promotion by the Wolfowitz Bank of structural adjustment and other free-market macroeconomic policies under the guise of "democratic reforms", as has been the practice of the Bush Administration. Hence, we urge all civil society groups to approach with caution any suggestion that a new formal mechanism for ongoing consultations between civil society and the World Bank be created. One such formation, the Joint Facilitation Committee (JFC), is now ending its difficult and largely unproductive two-year lifespan, with many of its members apparently eager to be done with it. The JFC was set up two years ago by the Bank and selected non-governmental organizations for the expressed purpose of enhancing World Bank-civil society relations, while thousands of citizens’ groups were still trying to hold the Bank accountable for not complying with the results of previous engagements. The JFC was originally slated to organize this Forum, but ultimately decided against it. Its other tangible project, a report on the Bank’s relations with civil society, which is due to be issued at the time of the Forum, has seen its credibility drawn into question because the Bank has provided its funding and because many groups involved in consultative processes, citing the Bank’s ultimate refusal to respect final outcomes, declined to participate. Any new vehicle resembling the JFC — designed to promote cooperation between the World Bank and civil society without introducing accountability for the Bank’s actions — is likely to prove equally frustrating and controversial, particularly in light of the U.S. choice to lead the institution over the next five years. We urge our colleagues to turn away from distractions like the JFC, the Global Policy Forum and never-ending and often counter-productive "dialogue" with the Bank and to intensify the dialogue, strategizing and mobilizing within our own community to effect fundamental change in the international financial institutions and their pernicious practices. Endorsed by: Focus on the Global South Shalmali Guttal, India/Thailand Jubilee South Africa Dennis Brutus South Africa The Development GAP Steve Hellinger USA Lokayan and Intercultural Resource Centre Smitu Kothari India Centre for Civil Society Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal Patrick Bond South Africa 50 Years Is Enough Ntwk Soren Ambrose USA Freedom from Debt Coalition & Jubilee South Lidy Nacpil Philippines Bretton Woods Project Jeff Powell U.K. Jorge Carpio FOCO Argentina Community Development Library Mohiuddin Ahmad Bangladesh BanglaPraxis Zakir Kibria Bangladesh LOKOJ Institute Arup Rahee Bangladesh Ashraf-Ul-Alam Tutu Coastal Development Partnership (CDP) Bangladesh Proyecto Gato European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies Belgium Bart Staes Member of European Parliament FIAN Jonas Vanreusel Belgium Cândido Grzybowski Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE) Rede Brasil Brazil Council of Canadians Canada Halifax Initiative Coalition Michael Bassett Canada Blue Planet Project Canada The Development Institute Dominica Institute for Economic Relocalisation Friends of the Earth- Germany (BUND) Germany WEED Daniela Setton Germany SAPRIN Hungary Karoly Lorant Hungary Enviro. Support Group The Other Media Madhumita Dutta India Delhi Forum Souparna Lahiri India River Basin Friends Ravindranath India Public Interest Rsch Centre Kavaljit Singh India Rural Volunteers Centre Arup Kumar Saikia India Sanjai Bhatt India Yayasan Duta Awam Indonesia CRBM Antonio Tricarico Italy ATTAC Japan Yoko Akimoto Japan Equipo Pueblo Domitille Delaplace Mexico Centro de Encuentros y Diálogos Interculturales Gustavo Esteva Mexico Water Energy Users’ Federation-Nepal Neeru Shrestha Nepal South Asian Solidarity for Rivers & Peoples (SARP) Gopal Siwakoti ’Chintan’ Nepal Friends of the Earth Intl. Netherlands A SEED Europe- The Disinvestment Campaign Netherlands Inst for Global Networking, Information and Studies Norway Chashma Lok Sath Mushtaq Gadi Pakistan NGO Forum on ADB Charity P. Cantillo-Dela Torre and Lala Cantillo Philippines Freedom from Debt Ana Maria R. Nemenzo Philippines Fnd for Media Alternatives Alan Alegre Philippines Josua Mata Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) Philippines Forum on African Alternatives Demba Moussa Dembele Senegal Anti-Privatisation Forum Virginia Setshedi South Africa Social Movements Indaba South Africa Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa Na’eem Jeenah South Africa Centre for Civil Society Raj Patel South Africa African Women’s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON) Uganda Christian Aid Olivia McDonald U.K. World Development Mvmt. Martin Powell U.K. Global Exchange / CodePink Medea Benjamin USA Africa Action Salih Booker USA Center of Concern USA TransAfrica Forum USA Public Citizen Sara Grusky and Wenonah Hauter USA Sunita Dubey USA International Rivers Network Patrick McCully USA East Timor Action Network USA The Oakland Institute Anuradha Mittal USA Sisters of the Holy Cross USA Center for Economic Justice Michael Casaus USA Peter Rachleff USA Medical Mission Sisters- Alliance For Justice USA Gender Action Elaine Zuckerman USA Public Services International Cam Duncan USA United Church of Christ Network for Environmental and Economic Responsibility Rev. Douglas B. Hunt USA |
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