Omar Hamed

The premier item on the G20’s agenda at it’s next meeting in Melbourne, in November 2006, is the reform of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fifty Years is Enough Network describe them as two US-controlled institutions that for the last fifty years have been,

“imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.” Once Southern countries build up large external debts, as most have, they cannot get credit or cash anywhere else and are forced to go to these international institutions and accept whatever conditions are demanded of them. None of the countries has emerged from their debt problems; indeed most countries now have much higher levels of debt than when they first accepted IMF/World Bank “assistance.”(1)

The IMF and World Bank have been under pressure from a number of different corners in recent years, including the Argentinean uprising (between 2001 and 2002), mass mobilisations across the planet against neo-liberalism, and campaigns for the rich nations and these international finance institutions to drop the debt’ that many developing nations owe them.

The IMF is losing its grip over much of the developing world with Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Uruguay and Turkey seeking to pay back their loans as fast as possible, and high global commodity prices which have cut the IMF’s outstanding debt from over $70bn in 2003 to currently just over $20bn.(2) With the legitimacy of the Bretton Woods consensus under fire, and more and more nations refusing to take up its loans, the rich nations will be seeking a way to prolong the new world disorder they seek to build via the Washington consensus However, the iron grip of the IMF remains on many poor nations, such as Papua New Guinea, who are forced into “liberalising their economies and reducing social spending” by the IMF and World Bank. (3)

Barry Coates, the executive director of Oxfam New Zealand wrote that, “Because of its debts, Papua New Guinea has few resources to fund HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care… HIV infections are increasing by up to 50 percent per year and, if the epidemic follows the path of Zimbabwe, by 2020 the working age population in PNG will be 40 per cent smaller than it is today.”(4)

Oxfam and the Make Poverty History coalition think that if debt relief was offered to all 62 developing countries that need full debt cancellation to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) then progress will have been made. However, many of us who will hit the streets in Melbourne in December 2006 to protest against the G20 believe that the IMF and World Bank cannot be reformed, and that because of the stranglehold that the United States has over these institutions, the only way forward is to abolish both the World Bank and IMF, for developing nations to stop repaying their loans and for a new and fair institution to be set up to manage loans to nations.

As Global Exchange points out, “voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation’s financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-7) holding a total of 45%.” (5)

The WTO straightjacket’
The G20’s agenda of neo-liberalism and privatisation has been accurately described as “capitalism with the gloves off”. The G20 is pursuing neo-liberal economic reforms across the world, particularly in vulnerable developing nations such as those in the Pacific. Australia, aided by New Zealand, is working towards a free trade area in the south Pacific, while the European Union is seeking to impose free trade agreements with its former colonies and could, with its economic power, very easily crush Pacific economies through its Economic Partnership Agreements’. Add into this the predatory behaviour of many of the G20 nations in the WTO and World Bank towards developing nations and you have a very disturbing picture painted of many of the G20 nations acting in an imperialist nature as each seeks to carve out its own slice of the world.

The WTO aims to fit nations into a straightjacket of privatisation and deregulation which, in reality, will be dominated by corporate power and characterised by a loss of indigenous sovereignty and the “marginalisation and impoverishment of vulnerable sectors of populations”, as the nation-states involved move towards full compliance with the World Trade Organisation’s neo-liberal trade regime. (6)

The recently averted accession to the WTO by Tonga demonstrates the disastrous consequences that joining the WTO has for developing nations. Oxfam New Zealand, in its report, Blood from a Stone, exposed the reality of Tonga’s accession. Tonga will be allowed tariffs at no more than 20%, resulting in tariff cuts that are expected to “affect Tonga’s ability to provide basic health care, education, water supply and other essential services for its people.” (7)

“What can we do? We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.” (Arundhati Roy)

Neo-liberalism must be stopped. Subcomandante Marcos of the Mexican Zapatista movement said: “what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there…”

The only way to a humane and fair world where global poverty really is history is to mobilise people, especially young people and students, to struggle for a better world and against the corporate agenda that will be promoted at the G20. Our, and everyone else’s, future is not for sale. We will join forces to resist the rule of the market, the cutting of social spending, deregulation, privatisation and the global push to make us forget about that thing called “community”. (8)

In December 2006, we will dance through the streets of Melbourne to oppose the G20 and the World Bank and IMF and the stooges of imperialism, like Paul Wolfowitz, that run them.

“Against the single economic blueprint where the market rules, we represent diverse, people-centred alternatives. Against the monoculture of global capital, we demand a world where many worlds fit…
Resisting together, our hope is reignited: hope because we have the power to reclaim memory from those who would impose oblivion, hope because we are more powerful than they can possibly imagine, hope because history is ours when we make it with our own hands.” (9)

References:
(1) Fifty Years is Enough, RESIST THE IMF & WORLD BANK! STOP CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION!
(2) Gabriel Kolko, AN ECONOMY OF BUCCANEERS AND FANTASISTS
(3) Oxfam’s Questions and Answers on Debt
(4) Drop the Debt by Barry Coates
(5) Global Exchange : World Bank / IMF Questions and Answers
(6) Professor Jane Kelsey, A People’s Guide to PACER, Commissioned by the Pacific Network on Globalisation, Suva, August, 2004.
(7) Oxfam International Briefing Note, Tonga: Blood from a Stone, December 15, 2005.
(8) Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcà­a, What is “Neo-Liberalism”? A Brief Definition, February 26th, 2000.
(9) Notes from Nowhere, We are Everywhere, 2003, London.

LEARN MORE

Read Omar’s other article on the G20, and about why he plans to protest against the G20 in Melbourne, Get Up! Stand Up! Say No to the G20

Websites:
Global exchange
Focus on the Global South
Fifty Years is Enough
Oxfam New Zealand
Make Poverty History
ARENA

DVDs:
The Fourth World War!
The Take
(both available to borrow from the Just Focus library)

Books:
No Logo” by Naomi Klien
“Empty promises : the IMF, the Word Bank, and planned failures of global capitalism”

TAKE ACTION!

• Join the Aotearoa Radical Youth: Send an email to radicalyouth@enzyme.org.nz asking to join or check out their website
• Join Global Peace And Justice Auckland
  Send an email with subject line “subscribe to GPJA list” to mike@unite.org.nz
• Listen to David Rovics and visit his site
• Got a job? Why not join a union