Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – 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.

may be in violation of international law by knowingly providing agricultural loans to Uzbekistan’s government that are used to support forced labor in the state-run cotton industry, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) said in a report issued on Tuesday.

“The report concludes that the World Bank has been aiding and abetting the Uzbek government’s gross human-rights abuses, which violates international law on responsibility of international organizations for financial complicity in international crimes,” according to the ILRF, a US-based advocacy group.

In 2013, Uzbek civil-rights organizations alerted the World Bank that its funds could be contributing to forced and child labor on cotton farms and requested that the Bank launch an investigation.

The organizations continued to raise concerns with World Bank managers and the Bank’s board of directors, but the loans were never suspended despite credible evidence of systematic, state-led forced labor at World Bank-financed project sites, the ILRF asserted.

Recent reports from the field indicate that the Uzbek government’s policy of “systematically mobilizing healthcare workers, students and teachers” for the cotton harvest will remain in place this fall, the ILRF said.

Civil-society members estimated that as many as one million people were pressed into labor for the 2015 cotton harvest.

Since 2008, the World Bank has provided about $101 million in agricultural loans to Uzbekistan. The ILRF report said the Bank could be held liable in US courts over its lending practices.