From: Bob Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 17:05:50 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: WTO-IMF: Poverty in Africa, May 2001
From: "George Dor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 11:30:17 +0200
Subject: Jubilee South Pan-Africa Declaration on PRSPs Kampala
JUBILEE SOUTH PAN-AFRICAN DECLARATION ON PRSPs
Kampala, 10-12 May 2001
?POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY PAPERS?
STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMMES IN DISGUISE
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have
produced their Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSPs)
within the context of corporate globalisation. This process
is being driven by and for the giant transnational
corporations (TNCs) and global financial forces. These
utilise the economic, political and military powers of
their governments, and the World Bank, IMF and World Trade
Organisation (WTO) to impose policies on the South and to
restructure and run the world to serve their interests.
These forces have led to the enrichment of the corporations
and their ?share-holders?, as well as small elites in the
South - to the heavy cost of the vast majority of people
of the world. The World Bank and IMF have found it
necessary to impose PRSPs onto the most impoverished
countries because the intertwined processes of enrichment
and impoverishment have led to growing international
resistance to the forces, aims and effects of globalisation.
Social organisations and popular movements across the
world have come out against structural adjustment programmes
(SAPs) in their various guises, particularly as based on the
feminisation of adjustment to the further detriment of women
and children. Our campaigns have exposed the use of debt as
a deliberate mechanism utilised by the World Bank and IMF
to enforce the implementation of ever harsher structural
adjustment programmes that are wreaking havoc across the world.
As a result, the World Bank and IMF are facing a deepening
crisis of legitimacy. Thus they have introduced PRSPs mainly
as a public relations exercise to demonstrate a supposedly
new-found concern for the poverty in the poorest countries of
the South, and to prove that they have a genuine desire to
see the people of these countries ?participating? in finding
solutions to their poverty.
But we are not fooled! Our sharing of experiences over the
days of this workshop have strengthened our common
understandings. We are clear that the PRSPs represent nothing
other than yet another attempt by the World Bank and the IMF
to continue imposing their structural adjustment programmes
on the people of our countries. In fact, the PRSPs will
result in an even more comprehensive control by the IMF and
World Bank - not only over financial and economic policies
but over every aspect and detail of all our national policies
and programmes. This will entrench the continuation of IMF
and World Bank control over our countries, and contribute to
the continuation of the global power relations, in which
the rich overwhelmingly concentrated in the North dominate
the South and the whole world.
In this context, and on the basis of the long, deep and
painful experiences of SAPs in our countries, we reject:
- SAPs in any form or with any cosmetic ?adjustments?
- PRSPs as the latest version of structural adjustment
- HIPC initiative as debt ?relief?
- All SAP-HIPC-PRSP conditionalities in order to be
granted debt ?relief?
- ?Relief? of only a portion of debt and continued repayment
of the remaining debt which will simply ensure continued
control and domination
- Any attempt to use our organisations to legitimise
structural adjustment, HIPCs, PRSPs or debt ?relief?
- Any further role or interference of the World Bank or
IMF in our countries
- Any further loans to finance HIV-AIDS programmes which only
serve to further indebt our countries, which increase our
dependence on the institutional finance institutions, while
millions of our people continue to suffer and die in the
pandemic in our countries.
On the basis of our review in this workshop of a number of
experiences of PRSPs in countries in Africa (and Latin
America) and on the basis of in-depth analysis and
wide-ranging discussion, we note that:
- PRSPs are located within the IMF and World Bank macro-
economic framework and this is not open for debate. The
poverty programmes are expected to be consistent with the
neo-liberal paradigm including privatisation, deregulation,
budgetary constraints and trade and financial
liberalisation. Yet these have exacerbated economic and
social crises in our countries.
- They focus only on internal factors and ignore the role
of international/global factors and forces in creating
economic crises and poverty in our countries.
- The only aspects of our realities that are open to
consultation are those ?outside? the macro-economic realm,
and even the realisation of these is actively contradicted
by the requirements and constraints of the macro-economic
prescriptions.
- The neo-liberal paradigm is also not acceptable because it
fails to explicitly locate programmes to tackle poverty
and subordination within effective gender equity
perspectives and gender frameworks. Mere gender
?mainstreaming? is totally insufficient as a remedy.
- The World Bank and IMF are manouevering to regain their
legitimacy by offering poverty ?reduction? and debt ?relief?
whereas we demand full release from all debt bondage and
the total eradication of poverty.
- These so-called poverty programmes have been imposed on
countries in a manner which ignores and replaces existing
anti-poverty and national development programmes. As such,
they are an external intervention with little or no regard
for national dynamics, and are an unacceptable intrusion.
But they cannot easily be ignored given that countries have
to implement these programmes as an additional
conditionality even for the much criticised HIPC debt ?relief?.
The experiences of the functioning of PRSPs in our countries
raise a number of additional concerns with regard to the
involvement of organisations of civil society:
- The PRSPs are not based on real peoples participation and
ownership, or decision-making. To the contrary, there is
no intention of taking civil society perspectives seriously;
but to keep participation to mere public relations
legitimisation
- The lack of genuine commitment to participation is further
manifested in the failure to provide full and timely access
to all necessary information, limiting the capacity of civil
society to make meaningful contributions
- The PRSPs have been introduced according to pre-set
external schedules which in most countries has resulted
in an altogether inadequate time period for an effective
participatory process
- In addition to all the constraints placed on governments
and civil society organisations in formulating PRSPs, the
World Bank and IMF retain the right to veto the final
programmes. This reflects the ultimate mockery of the
threadbare claim that the PRSPs are based on ?national
ownership?
- An additional serious concern is the way in which PRSPs
are being used by the World Bank and IMF, both directly
and indirectly, to co-opt NGOs to ?monitor? their own
governments on behalf of these institutions.
In some instances, notably in those countries in which
governments have not been open to civil society
participation or have not had poverty and development on the
agenda for discussion, the PRSPs initially appeared to open
up a space for civil society organisations to engage their
governments. However, this has not achieved the desired
effect of challenging structural adjustment. Furthermore,
many organisations have invested so much energy in the PRSP
processes that they have been distracted from their work in
opposing SAPs and HIPCs and campaiging for debt cancellation.
The lesson we have learnt is that we need to return to our
own agendas and reinvigorate and further strengthen our
engagement and work with people at the grassroots.
We as African civil society organisations need to:
- Continue and intensify our efforts to expose to the people
in our countries, and the world, the inter-linked aims and
effects of SAPs, HIPCs and PRSPs, and the strategic
purposes of the World Bank and the IMF
- Mobilise our people and link up with our allies in the
South, and partners in the North, for immediate and total
cancellation of our external debts without external
conditionalities
- Proactively engage with our governments on issues as
determined by our agendas and on the basis of genuine
participation and popular empowerment within our own
societies, communities and cultures
- Mobilise to encourage and push our governments to stand
together and repudiate the debt
- Mobilise our people to challenge and change the global
economic system through campaigns and actions to shut down
the World Bank and IMF and to stand up to other forces,
including the WTO, Northern governments such as the EU
(through the Cotonou Agreement) and the US (through AGOA),
as well as their TNCs
- Mobilise our peoples to oppose the ruling elites who are
implementing structural adjustment programmes and further
entrenching neo-liberal policies in our countries.
We call upon our peoples to develop further - and deepen through
intensified analysis, discussion and full participation - our own
democratic, people-centered, gender equitable and environmentally
sustainable national, regional and continental alternatives as the
basis for a united African challenge to the current oppressive,
exploitative and destructive global system.
Participants:
- African Organisation on Debt and Development (AFRODAD -Africa)
- African Women?s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON)
- Africa Trade Network (Southern Africa)
- Alternative Information and Development Center (AIDC - South Africa)
- Associacao para Desenvolvimento Rural de Angola (ADRA - Angola)
- Asapsu - Cote d'Ivoire
- BEACON - Nairobi
- Botswana Council of Churches
- Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace(Malawi)
- Center for International Studies (CEI) (Nicaragua)
- CMID - Ghana
- CONGAD (Senegal)
- Divida (Mozambique Debt Group)
- Ecumenical Support Services for Economic Transformation
(ESSET South Africa)
- Gender and Trade Network (Southern Africa) GERA
- Peace Humanius (Cameroon)
- International South Group Network (Southern Africa)
- Jubilee 2000 Angola
- Jubilee 2000 Cameroon
- Jubilee 2000 Nigeria
**********
George Dor
Work address:
Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) -
Johannesburg Office, 3rd fl Cosatu House, cnr
Leyds and Biccard Streets, Braamfontein, South Africa
Home/postal address:
60 Isipingo Street, Bellevue East 2198, South Africa
Work Tel: 27 11 339 4121
Work Fax: 27 11 339 4123
Home Tel: 27 11 648 7000
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
..........................................
Bob Olsen, Toronto [EMAIL PROTECTED]
..........................................
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