Worldbank/60 years is enough

Worldbank/60 years is enough
by AfricaFocus (posted by raf) Wednesday, Apr. 14, 2004 at 7:33 AM

50 Years is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice / Call to Action for Mobilization April 21 - 25 in Washington, DC /

For six decades, the World Bank and IMF have imposed policies,
programs, and projects that:

* Decimate women's rights and devastate their lives, their
families, and their communities;
* Subjugate democratic governance and accountability to corporate
profits and investment portfolios;
* Trap countries in a cycle of indebtedness and economic
domination;
* Force governments to privatize essential services;
* Put profits before peoples' rights and needs;
* Abet the devastation of the environment in the name of
development and profit;
* Institutionalize the domination of the wealthy over the
impoverished - the new form of colonialism; and
* Facilitate corporate agendas through the economic re-structuring
of countries enduring conflict and occupation, such as East Timor,
Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In the 60th anniversary year of the IMF and World Bank, we demand
the following measures from the institutions and the governments
which control them. Add your voice, endorse the demands:

* Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public;
* Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF,
using the institutions' own resources;
* End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access
to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to
organize. (Such "structural adjustment" policies include user fees,
privatization, and economic austerity programs.);
* Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally
destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and
all support for projects such as dams that include forced
relocation of people.

We furthermore recognize the urgency of the world's most
catastrophic health crisis, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We assert the
culpability of the international financial institutions in
decimating health care systems of Global South countries, and
reject the approach of fighting the pandemic with more loans and
conditions from these institutions. We call on the world's
governments to best deploy their resources by fully funding the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. We demand the
elimination of trade rules that undermine access to affordable
life-saving medications.

Help end global economic injustice driven by the policies and
programs of the international financial institutions!

Educate, Organize, Mobilize!
Be the change you want to see in our world!

Organize public events in 2004, help expose the continued use of
power, veiled by rhetoric, to enrich corporations, banks, and
investors at the expense of people and the planet.

Mass mobilization April 21 - 25, 2004:
Come to Washington! Take a public stand in Washington DC during the
IMF/World Bank semi-annual meetings.

email info@50years.org or call 202/463-2265 for details & updates

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)