60 years of the IMF and World Bank, but not everybody is celebrating
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COMMENTS 
As international bureaucrats congratulate each other on one more year of 'reducing poverty around the globe', activists worldwide are protesting the Bretton Woods institutions' structural adjustment programmes, undemocratic decision-making and destructive free trade agreements
Amidst belly dancers, jugglers and heavily armed police, activists from around the world converged in Washington DC on April 24, 2004 to wish the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank a very unhappy 60th birthday. While international bureaucrats congratulated each other on one more year of 'reducing poverty around the globe', a colourful array of activists in the streets protested against over half a decade of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes, undemocratic decision-making and destructive free trade agreements.
Mobilisation for Global Justice, one of the groups that organised the event, estimated that 3,000-3,500 activists were in attendance, other news sources suggested the numbers were around 1,000. The march itself passed by Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon, the IMF and World Bank buildings within DC.
At the end of the march people gathered in Franklin Square where free food from 'Food Not Bombs' was handed out and free books were distributed to the crowd in a free market style. Music, games and spoken word took place throughout the gathering. Speakers at the event included Alok Agarwal from the Save the Narmada Movement in India, Virginia Setshedi, a founding member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee in South Africa, and Marcela Olivera, who, along with her brother Oscar, helped lead the movement against water privatisation in 2000 in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
In 1944, at the Bretton Woods Conference, the IMF and World Bank were created to alleviate poverty and shape a new global economic order at the end of World War II. Currently, the World Bank distributes loans to governments in need, but first requires that those governments win the IMF seal of approval. The IMF facilitates the structural adjustment programmes and often, making sure the creditors get paid takes precedence over what would be beneficial for the country.
The IMF's prescription for job creation and economic success often entails eliminating government intervention in business, lowering trade barriers, privatising public sector organisations and opening economies to transnational corporations. This forced liberalisation usually takes place too fast and without proper trade and business safety nets in place. And though foreign investment and business might create jobs and open up the country to new markets, they also squash local competition and use the monopoly to raise prices and exploit workers.
As Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points out in his book, Globalisation and its Discontents, part of the problem with the IMF is that 'it does not acknowledge that development requires a transformation of society'. He argues that instead of rapidly enforced free trade policies, the IMF should focus on programmes in education, land reform and health care to generate social and economic improvements. In the end, as Stiglitz explains, 'The only safety net is provided by family and community, which is why it is so important, in the process of evelopment, to do what one can to preserve these bonds.'
Another criticism of these institutions is their notoriously undemocratic decision-making processes. Unlike other international organisations, voting power at the IMF and the World Bank is based on financial clout. Within this framework, the US controls 17% of the voting power while the world's seven most powerful countries control 45% of it. Though IMF and World Bank policies deeply affect the world's most impoverished nations, the IMF has always had a European managing director and the World Bank president has always been an American. The demand at the April 24 march in DC to drop the debt of developing countries proposed a solution to these harmful policies. Many activists believed, for example, that nations in Africa should have the freedom to spend their resources on fighting the AIDS epidemic instead of using them to pay back enormous IMF and World Bank loans. The demand to drop the debt has been met, unsurprisingly, with resistance from the IMF and World Bank.
However, the US government is currently pushing for the elimination of Iraq's debt because, as US officials argue, much of the loans were illegitimately used by Saddam Hussein and therefore, the current citizens and political leaders shouldn't have to repay them. Advocates for dropping the debt in other countries argue the same. Much of the current debt in Latin American and African nations was accrued by undemocratically elected and corrupt leaders, and is now being paid back with interest at the expense of the poorest sectors of society.
But there are success stories within this cycle. As an answer to their economic crisis in 2001-2002, Argentines have created some of the most remarkable experiments in direct democracy in Latin America. By organising locally and occupying abandoned factories and buildings to create autonomous communities and programmes, many Argentine citizens have responded effectively to the recent collapse of their economy.
With support in the opinion polls at 85%, President Nester Kirchner has taken on the neoliberal policies that led to the nation's economic crisis. He has put public funding back into social programmes and is also hinting that his administration may refuse to pay back their IMF and World Bank loans entirely. These kinds of unconventional practices resulted in a rapid economic growth rate of 8.6% for last year, with 7.1% projected for 2004.
As the march gathered in front of the World Bank building in Washington DC, the reflection of a raucous collection of angry activists was mirrored in the institution's shiny windows, and Ricardo Navarro, an El Salvadoran with Friends of the Earth International, screamed from the back of a pickup truck, 'Latin America is not for sale, Africa is not for sale, Asia is not for the sale, the earth is not for sale!' The crowd screamed back.
The April 24 IMF/World Bank march was a sombre reminder that even after 60 years of infamy, these organisations are still operating under the influence of shady intentions and institutional amnesia.
(Benjamin Dangl is an activist, freelance writer and editor of The Upside Down World News at www.UpsideDownWorld.org)
Third World Network Features, June 2004