Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

When ? February 17 2024
Where ? Kathmandu, World Social Forum 2024

IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org /World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

80 years it’s enough: the cases of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ukraine, Argentina

These two undemocratic institutions have been marginalizing and even excluding the states of the global South since they were founded in 1944. They continue to contribute to the neo-colonialism of the richest countries and the richest in general, and they exacerbate climate change, to the detriment of the peoples of the South and the periphery of the North.

It’s time to shout loud and clear that 80 years of a financial dictatorship that has maintained and reinforced the oppression of the peoples of the South by the rulers of the North is enough. That more than 500 years of plundering nature and the peoples of the South in the name of Western interests is enough. That the people come first, not the profits of multinationals, governments and the rich.

Both institutions act for the benefit of a handful of big powers and their transnational corporations that reinforce an international capitalist system that is destructive to humanity and the environment. It is urgent to initiate broad mobilizations for sovereign repudiations of the debt and to build a new democratic international architecture that favours a redistribution of wealth and supports the efforts of peoples to achieve socially just development that respects nature.

The IMF is taking centre stage as the multi-faceted crisis that has affected the world since 2020 deepens. It has signed credit agreements with around 100 governments over the past three years. In each of these agreements the IMF demands the continuation of neoliberal policies.

Various speakers will present the policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank in countries that are emblematic of the intervention of the Bretton Woods institutions. They will also describe the resistance and alternatives put up by the people and social movements.

Speakers:

Farooq Tariq, General Secretary of the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee, a network of 26 peasant organizations and a coalition member of the international platform La Via Campesina.

Yulyia Yurchenko, University of Greenwich, UK. She is the author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital (Pluto, 2017). Member of Socialny Rukh, Ukraine

Balasingham Skanthakumar of the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka and the CADTM’s South Asia network

Amali Wedagedara, activist and researcher specializing in agrarian debt and development, Sri Lanka

David Otieno, Kenyan Peasant League, CADTM Eastern Africa, Kenya

Solange Kone, World March of Women, CADTM Western Africa, Ivory Coast

ETC.