IFI criticism intensifies ahead of meetings
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After Genoa, the next stop for the global protest caravan is the Bank and Fund annual meetings in Washington DC. Conservative estimates have put the number of expected protesters at 40,000 but with trade unions announcing their backing numbers could be far higher. The Bank, Fund and government delegations are changing their plans in response.
Several of the less influential delegations are opting out of the meeting, particularly since the Bank and Fund announced that they would be cut back to just two days. The Development and International Finance and Monetary Committee meetings will now both be held on Saturday 29th September to avoid the protests scheduled for the next day. Officials have said there will now not be time for meetings usually held with developing country delegations.
“Whether they meet for six days or two, the institutions’ agenda remains the same: more layoffs, less government spending on social programs, less credit for small farmers and businesses, more privatisation and higher corporate profits,” responded Njoke Njoroge Njehu, Director of 50 Years is Enough, one of the lead protest mobilising groups.
While lawyers for anti-globalisation protesters filed a lawsuit against the Washington police department arguing that planned measures to contain demonstrations were “unconstitutional”, officials welcomed the decision to shorten the meetings. “We are thinking of faxing the demonstrators a list of forthcoming meetings we would like shortened,” the Financial Times quoted one official.
The meetings have been moved from their usual luxury hotel location to the more easily policed Bank and Fund headquarters. It is rumoured that a wall may be built around them, as at Genoa. The Bank has agreed, however, to meet some critics in a televised debate. “The IMF and World Bank ought to put their arguments to debate not only in the United States but in every continent,” comments a leader article in The Guardian (UK). “They are publicly financed bodies which need to admit they have no monopoly on expertise”.
The World Bank has just completed a detailed report on globalisation in time for the annual meetings stating it is a “powerful force for poverty reduction”. Yet its report (see story, p. 2) does admit that billions of people are failing to benefit from globalisation and that it has “some adverse effects”. Oxfam International called the report “business as usual” and said it failed to set an agenda for making globalisation work for the poor.
The entire approach of the World Bank is now widely questioned. Jessica Einhorn, a former Bank managing director hand picked by Wolfensohn, argues in this month’s Foreign Affairs that the World Bank “takes on challenges that are far beyond any institution’s operational capabilities”. Financial Times journalist Stephen Fidler, writing in Foreign Policy, also commented “James Wolfensohn has presided over what many close to the Bank view as a tragic deterioration of the world’s premier development institution, which they describe as rudderless and lacking strategic direction”.
Both articles point out that it is often the rich-country members who, like fashion accessories, have pushed more functions on to the Bank, “The countries that own it – its shareholders – must streamline its many functions and even devolve certain tasks to other institutions” commented Einhorn.
Official Annual Meetings website
The Bretton Woods Project website will feature regular reports and recommended links during the annual meetings period.