Background

We call on donor governments and Institutions to establish a fair and just world order in which International Financial Institutions (especially WB, IMF and WTO) operate within the broad principles enshrined under UN commitments and human rights obligations to better regulate world economy.

GCAP Beirut platform, 15 March 2006

Conditions imposed by the World Bank and IMF on poor countries, including forcing privatisation of services or cutting spending, enforcing trade liberalisation, are empowering people. IMF and World Bank conditions also take decision making away from local people and instead puts it in the hands of Washington based bureaucrats. Civil society organisations, parliaments and governments often find that they are unable to make choices about their policies because the policies have already been set by the World Bank and IMF. For example, decisions on budget allocations to health and education are often limited by IMF imposed spending ceilings.

The governance structures of the World Bank and IMF also give poor countries very little say in how the institutions are run. G8 countries dominate the boards of both institutions – the UK has a greater voting share than the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. At the Annual Meetings, the IMF board is likely to approve some increases in voting shares for middle income countries such as Mexico, Turkey and South Korea, but at the moment any increase in voting shares for Africa is highly unlikely.

The GCAP actions focus on ensuring any reform gives the poor a greater voice in the decision-making process of the IMF and the World Bank and in setting country-owned development paths without the imposition of harmful economic policy conditions.

Essential documents:

• Challenging conditions: A new strategy for reform at the World Bank and IMF, Christian Aid, July 2006
• The World Bank’s Strategy on Governance and Anticorruption – a civil society perspective, a CIDSE Background Paper, July 2006
• Trade Union statement to the 2006 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank (Singapore, 19-20 September 2006)
• Global Call for Actions against International Financial In$titution$, September 2006
• The IMF: Shrink it or Sink it, A Consensus Declaration and Strategy Paper, July 24, 2006
• ActionAid UK Response to the Summary Findings of the World Bank Review of Conditionality, August 2005
• Loosening the leash? World Bank Conditionality Review: Eurodad Policy Briefing, August 2005
• Verdict and sentence of the Asian Peoples’ Tribunal on Poverty and Debt, Battam/Indonesia, September 2006
• A Call for Participatory Decision-Making: Discussion Paper on World Bank-Civil Society Engagement, Joint Facilitation Committee, April 2005