Global Policy Forum

By Gumisai Mutume

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund prepare for their annual meetings in Prague in September, a growing anti-globalization movement is also mobilizing. The more formal civil society campaigns aimed at World Bank and IMF policies are rallying around groups such as the East European Bank Watch, Friends of the Earth International and Jubilee 2000 Czech.

The anarchists, who tend to garner the most media attention at such conferences, are led by the Prague-based International Campaign Against Globalization, as the countdown to Sept. 26 -- the day of protest in Prague -- gathers momentum in more than 30 countries.

From Sept. 19 to 28, the World Bank Group and the IMF will hold their annual general meetings in the Czech capital. At their Spring meetings in April, more than 6,000 protesters in Washington DC demanded the shutting down of the institutions and attempted to disrupt activities. "They know it will not be business as usual and that paying lip service to the world's problems will no longer work," says Njogi Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years is Enough campaign in Washington DC. "More and more ordinary people are becoming educated about the issues."

The 50 Years is Enough campaign was launched in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the IMF and World Bank by progressive international development organizations and social movements to reform these institutions. Now, even more radical proposals such as de-funding these international financial institutions are on the agenda. Forces opposed to the IMF and World Bank are finding support among conservative U.S. politicians whose hostility to the Bretton Woods institutions and growing xenophobia make de-funding a real possibility.

Prague will bring forces hostile to the Bank and IMF together again. This is the first time a prestigious event of the global economic elite will descend on Eastern Europe, but it will not be the first time that the international financial institutions have been hounded by protestors.

The demonstrations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Seattle late last year and at the Bank and IMF Spring meetings in Washington DC showed the power of popular resistance against global capital. Teach-ins and workshops, electronic mail discussion forums and live concerts will support street protests in Prague as ordinary people take it upon themselves to monitor globalization, the dramatic international expansion of trade, investment and financial relationships, and demand accountability from its agents such as the Bretton Woods twins.

The Initiative Against Economic Globalization -- Prague 2000 will be "a counter summit where the specific harmful aspects of globalization will be discussed and alternatives proposed," notes a statement by a loose coalition of various Czech environmental, human rights and anarchist groups spearheading the campaign.

If the plans of the anti-globalization movement succeed, Sept. 26 will see mass action of non-violent civil disobedience aiming to enter and stop the conference. Activities are being organized in more than 30 different countries including Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Italy, India, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

"The challenge to the workers' movement is to shut down that summit with the biggest international demo Europe has ever seen," notes a protest Internet portal titled Destroyimf. As in the other big anti-globalization showdowns, the Internet is playing a crucial mobilization role.

The anti-globalization movement is a broad grouping of ideas and ideologies from right-wing anarchists, socialists, workers movements, church groups, students and alternative thinkers. Some want a slowdown in neo-liberal policies such as trade liberalization, privatization of state assets, shrinking government spending, export-led industrial policy, lifting of tariffs, deregulation of business and cost recovery on social services.

They say that due to major internal contradictions, the free market orthodoxy is crumbling. Global financial crises such as the Mexico meltdown of 1994-95, the Asian crisis of 1997 and subsequent smaller crashes have brought new counter-challenges to the free reign of the markets.

In September, protestors will be saying the Bank and IMF do not listen to developing countries. They will also say the Bretton Woods institutions are unaccountable and undemocratic and they need to undergo more rapid reform or be scrapped.

"Again and again, in Southern Africa and across the Third World, the IMF's free-market economic advice and conditions on loans have been disastrous," says George Dor of the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa. "These disasters have led to a profound crisis of legitimacy for the Washington institutions."

The anti-IMF and Bank movement derives ammunition from ex-employees like former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, who has noted that the IMF is populated by "third-rate economists" and that some of the advice they have given developing countries only deepened their crises.

Minor battles have been won. The Bank now says it includes gender sensitivity in more than a quarter of all its projects. The Bank recently stopped funding the Narmada and Arun Dams in India and Nepal and pulled out of the China Western Poverty Reduction Project, after environmental and human rights activists blasted the projects. It also continues to talk of greater public access to information.

One aspect of the IMF's "illegitimacy" that is set to be a rallying point for protestors in September is the massive control exercised by the U.S. government. The United States has 18 percent of the IMF vote compared to Africa's five percent

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50 Years Is Enough Network http://www.50years.org

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