WORLD BANK, IMF CONFRONT THEIR CRITICS.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn yesterday defended the institution as a force for social justice, reports Agence France-Presse. At the IMF, likewise condemned by academics, NGOs, and street protesters, research director Michael Mussa said their wrath should be directed at the US Congress.
Wolfensohn and Mussa in separate news conferences in Washington were reacting to reports that thousands of protesters are preparing to pour into the streets of the US capital for a demonstration they hope will "shut down" the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF on Sunday and Monday. Backed by reports from human rights, ecological, and faith-based organizations, activists have accused the two institutions of imposing social hardship and environmental devastation on developing countries that borrow from them.
Wolfensohn said he was disturbed by the anticipated actions of the protesters but stressed that the Bank was open to dialogue. "Of course I'm concerned about the noise outside," he told reporters. "It would be impossible not to be affected when you operate in an institution where you think that what you're doing is dealing with justice and dealing with poverty. It's a bit demoralizing when you see that there's a mobilization for social justice [but] that's what we're doing every day."
He said the Bank had helped lift 300 million to 400 million people out of deep poverty, although the number of poor people remained about constant because of population increases. The Bank was committed to projects that help protect the environment and improve education and health, he added.
Wolfensohn noted that the World Bank had long reached out to NGOs and shared many of their values, reports the International Herald Tribune (p.20). In his meetings with finance and development ministers, he said, he would strive to "ensure that we can have a view of the development paradigm that is...open, consultative, based on partnership."
The message he took from the WTO ministerial meetings in Seattle, said Wolfensohn, was that people were concerned about the structure of international organizations and demanding a "greater sense of participation." He continued, "What we're trying to do is to open the place up by being ready to deal with civil society and have much, much more dialogue."
The Bank, Wolfensohn said, has employees in the field "who do nothing but interface with civil society. So it's just the wrong image to say that we're not working with civil society. It is simply not correct."
The Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, Reuters, and O Globo (Brazil) also report on Wolfensohn's remarks, as the international media continue to report on the protests in Washington. Libération (France) and Reuters note that a few hundred protesters also marched in the streets of Paris yesterday urging cancellation of Third World debt.
Also, Wolfensohn writes in the Daily Yomiuri that as policymakers from developing and developed countries prepare to gather in Washington for the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, their mission will be to push for greater progress in tackling the most pressing issues in development today.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post (p.A1) reports that at the World Bank and IMF, embattled staffers are wondering "Why Us?" The Bank and IMF are full of experts on schools, electric power for villages, clean water, AIDS, river blindness, road building, and financial management. And what many want to know this week is this: How is it that we are being called the cause of world poverty?
Many of the demonstrators "would benefit from going and working in a poor country for a few years, seeing what it's like and how difficult it is to make progress," says Ian Johnson, vice-president of the environmentally and socially sustainable development network, who spent five years in Bangladesh in the 1970s helping get emergency food and clean water to villages.
Johnson and Jeffrey Waite, an education specialist, say they welcome informed debate with the Bank's critics, many of whom they respect as deeply committed and concerned about the issues, but they wonder whether its really radical opponents understand the basics of how the Bank and poverty alleviation work.
To many people, there's a paradox in the air. They feel they've never done their job so well-they've reformed their huge institutions, making them more responsive to local concerns. Two years ago, they helped pull the world back from near financial collapse with $100 billion in emergency loans. Yet so often, the thanks they get is fire from all directions.
Wolfensohn likes to say the organization he inherited five years ago simply doesn't exist anymore. He's now got about 3,200 people in field offices, up from about 1,800 five years ago, in an attempt to combat a culture of direction from headquarters. He's replaced most of his 30-plus vice presidents and is about to bring on board an African as a managing director, a powerful job in the tier just below him.
The defenders contend they have made significant reforms and more are on the way, the story says. A "quiet revolution" is underway at the IMF, said interim chief Stanley Fischer. He cites the write-off of debt owed by desperately poor countries, the phase-out of obsolescent lending programs, and the release of once-confidential documents.
"We have never done more in the history of the institution to reach out," echoes Wolfensohn. "The clear future of development is in engagement with the local communities."
Further, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown yesterday delivered a robust defense of the world's financial system against attacks from anti-globalization protesters amassing in Washington, reports the Guardian (UK, p.25). The protesters were misguided enemies of the poor, Brown said, noting that IMF and the World Bank, which some protesters want dismantled, were an essential part of the battle against global poverty relief. "I think people should recognize that the way forward is to make the international institutions work better rather than launch a campaign simply against their existence," he is quoted as saying.
Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Dean Joseph Nye writes in the IHT (p.8) meanwhile that information and international investment will not rid the world of poverty. But technology and investment can help reduce poverty, when they are combined with sound government policies and help from institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. With responsible leadership and a healthy dose of imagination, globalization can help the poor achieve living standards that most citizens of industrialized countries take for granted.
All healthy societies need protest, writes Hamish McRae of the Independent (p.4). Right now we need to be reminded of the flaws of the global market economy, and we need to think of ways of buffering the impact of globalization on the potential losers. However, we surely also need to remember what an extraordinary burst of prosperity much of the world is experiencing. And we need to be aware of the underlying fragility of that prosperity.