World Bank/IMF meetings: Counter-summit of social movements Marrakech, 12-15 October 2023

28 June by CADTM International , Collective , Attac France , ATTAC/CADTM Morocco , Debt for climate

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This call to action is available on the counter-summit website, here.

For the second time since they were founded, the 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.

(WB) and the International Monetary Fund 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 (IMF) are holding their annual meetings in Africa. They will take place from 9 to 15 October in Marrakech, Morocco. Next year will mark the 80^th anniversary of their founding. We are saying: 79 years of neo-colonial exploitation is enough!

That’s why we’re organizing a counter-summit in Marrakech from 12 to 15 October, the International Day of Indigenous Resistance and the commemoration of the assassination of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary, pan-Africanist president who was executed shortly after calling for a united front against debt. Let’s make his legacy a reality, denounce the criminal policies of the IMF and the World Bank, denounce their practices and unite against their debtocracy!

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.

We, the social and climate movements, trade unions, women’s, small farmers’ and indigenous peoples’ organizations, non-governmental organizations and citizens of the world, are calling for and participating in the organization in Marrakech of a summit of social movements against the summit of the established order.

Our counter-summit will be an opportunity to show alternative paths to those of the World Bank and the IMF; to forge links and thus strengthen our movements, particularly with a view to COP28; to discuss, from the people’s point of view, the difficulties we are currently facing – economic, ecological, cost of living, repressive, gender-related, racial – and for which the World Bank, the IMF and their allies have a historic responsibility.

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.

It’s time to rise up and weave a network of struggles and alternatives to sow the seeds of a society in which the common good, respect for planetary limits, food sovereignty and climate and social justice take precedence. We will be the ones who decide our future, and we reject the one that the World Bank, the IMF and their allies want to impose on us. The time has come to put an end to their ideological colonialism!

So it’s time to say that if they don’t cancel our debt, we will repudiate it. Because the real debt is that of governments and multinationals, their historic, climatic, ecological and social debt to the people, and to the people of the South in particular!

It’s time to learn from and forge links with popular, ecofeminist, anti-racist, peasant and indigenous struggles. Those who have nothing, but who are not resigned to being the employees of a climate-destroying capitalism.

We dare to think that our mobilization will ensure that the World Bank and the IMF will not be celebrating their 80^th anniversary next year, but will already be calculating and honoring their old debt to the people. That we will thus be sending them, as the pillars of capital, into the dustbin of history.

Let’s get together in Marrakech from 12 to 15 October, on the occasion of the forthcoming annual meetings of the WB and IMF, to talk, share Share A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. and organize the struggle and build our society, our way of life. Join us there! We look forward to seeing you in Marrakech.

To join us in Marrakech or support our initiative, please check our linktree (we will get in touch with you as soon as possible)!

member of the CADTM network, the Association pour la Taxation des Transactions en Aide aux Citoyens au Maroc (ATTAC Morocco) was founded in 2000. ATTAC Maroc has been a member of the international network of the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt (CADTM) since 2006 (which became the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts in June 2016). We have 11 local groups in Morocco. ATTAC aims to be a network that helps those involved in social, associative, trade union and more broadly militant activity to take ownership of the challenges of globalisation on issues of social and citizen resistance.

www.attacmaroc.org
http://arabic.cadtm.org/

Address : n°140, rue Cadi Bribri Akkari 10000. Rabat. Maroc
Email : attac.cadtm.maroc at gmail.com
Website attacmaroc.org Tel 00 212 6 61 17 30 39

Author

Debt for climate

Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt