Ecumenical News International ENI News Service 9 October 1996 World Bank to invite religious leaders to values summit ENI-96-0581 By Edmund Doogue Washington, DC, 9 October (ENI)--The World Bank will invite leaders of the world's main religions to Washington next year to discuss spiritual and cultural issues with bank officials. The meeting, which will be coordinated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, is part of efforts by the bank to improve its image and to engage in dialogue with its critics, including the churches, church-related aid agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs). The bank, which lends US$ 20 billion every year for development projects world-wide, is frequently criticised for imposing its own economic principles on developing countries, which, critics claim, means that rich rather than poor countries benefit from the aid. The World Bank - along with the International Monetary Fund - was set up by the allied powers in the 1940s to prevent further economic and currency collapses such as those which led to World War II. Now 180 states are members of the bank, though critics accuse the G-7 group of leading industrial nations of dominating the bank and its policies. Leading bank officials this week denied many of the criticisms and called for churches and NGOs to learn more about the World Bank's policies. "Some of it [criticism by NGOs] is valid," Andrew Steer, director of the bank's environment department, told ENI. "We could have done a better job in the past on a number of issues." But the criticism, he said, failed to take into account changes in bank methods and was often ill-informed. "Quite frankly, I think most of the religious groups should educate themselves. The issues are too serious to allow sloppiness and laziness which is the case in some of the religious papers I read," he said. Steer also said that ideological differences were often at the heart of the problem. But, he said, the bank - "while continuing to do our work of alleviating poverty and child mortality" - wanted to deepen its understanding of spiritual and cultural issues in relation to development. Brian V. Wilson, bank vice-president for financial policy and institutional strategy, told ENI: "A lot of the angst [among NGOs] is about structural adjustment." (Through "structural adjustment programmes", the bank requires some borrowing nations to implement basic reforms of their economy.) "But we are not saying: 'You must have a free-market society'," Wilson said. "We are trying to allow civil society to operate. And we try to ensure that the loans get to where they're directed, not swallowed up by government administration." Steer said that in some countries, before structural adjustment was implemented, central government structures controlled by "cronies" of the government were subsidised by heavily-taxed, rural farmers. "Do you really think poor farmers should be taxed to subsidise rich, inefficient cronies of governments?" Steer asked. "Structural adjustment has helped remove this discrimination against farmers in rural areas who make up two-thirds of the world's poor. "I think the point is not whether conditionality is good or bad, it's which conditions should be applied. If you asked people at the World Council of Churches whether or not they wanted conditions to protect the environment or to reduce criminality, they would say 'yes'." Both Steer and Wilson pointed out that many aspects of bank loans are forgotten or ignored by critical NGOs. Wilson stressed that loans to the world's poorest countries, through the bank's International Development Association, were at extremely low interest rates (0.5 to 1 per cent) and repayable over 40 years. According to Steer, the bank is the world's biggest financier of a range of important services from AIDS prevention to literacy programmes for girls. Speaking of the attitudes of World Bank staff, Wilson said: "What strikes me about the bank is that it's highly values-driven. There are people from many different backgrounds and there is a bigger purpose than self-aggrandisement. Without having to agree on the nature of God or even if there is one, there is this strong sense of values. How much more constructive it would be," he said of NGOs and churches, "if we were working together." Steer said many people at the bank had religious beliefs and that 20 different staff Bible-study groups met every week. But until recently there had been no official attempts to question whether this fact had implications for the bank's work. However, with the growing realisation in recent years that purely technical solutions did not work, the World Bank was exploring new possibilities, including organising a conference on "Ethics and Spiritual Values - Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Development" which was held in October 1995. [766 words] All articles (c) Ecumenical News International Reproduction permitted only by media subscribers and provided ENI is acknowledged as the source Ecumenical News International Tel: (41-22) 791 6087/6515 Fax: (41-22) 798 1346 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ECUNET: ENI PO Box 2100 CH-1211 Geneva 2 ------------------------ End of message from list: eni-full ---->
