WORLD BANK -
ENEMY OF THE POOR
Open letter to the Co-president of World
Bank - NGO Working Group, from Pierre Galand, Secretary General of Oxfam
Belgium, published by
Le Soir 11 March
1994.
{simultaneously published in AISLING, the last Druid monastery
on the planet’s, own quarterly}
PIERRE GALAND, as Secretary General of Oxfam
Belgium, spent three years dial with The World Bank in a working group setup
between NGOs and the Bank. His hope was that the Bank could be influenced to
change its Structural Administration policies. Now he has resigned. Below is
his open letter of resignation.
"After having taken part in a dialogue with the Bank over three and a half
years in the NGO Working Group, I now want to give my resignation to the Group
as it appears clear to me that there is no space for manoeuvre in which to make
the Bank more humane.
I am retiring before the end of my period in office because I refuse to be the
Banks accomplice. I refuse to support this indispensable and regrettable
inevitability preached by the Bank and I prefer to take part in the
strengthening of organisations of landless peasants, of street children, of
reception centres for the many women who refuse to become prostitutes in Asian
cities, and trade unions who are fighting against the theft of their resources
and the dismantling of their production capacity.
At just a few months from the 5Oth Anniversary of the UN and the BRETTON WOODS
institutions, I wish to withdraw both from the Working Group which brings
together NGOs, and the WORLD BANK, as well as from the steering group. I am
forced to take this step because of concern for intellectual honesty and
honesty towards the numerous friends with whom I work in countries of the
so-called "Third World". I had hoped that, working together in the
midst of this group, we might have moved some way towards co- development,
taking account of the fate of the most deprived of peoples. This hope was
founded on the fact that the Bank has learned to make excellent analyses, that
it is able to speak about important issues - the priority of the struggle
against poverty, the need to protect the environment. The Bank goes even
further, defending the principle of human rights and the rights of minorities
and exerts pressure on governments in this context. The Bank is even capable of
putting forward very interesting proposals for what would be useful for the
development of this or that group or people.
The question therefore is: why do such handsome speeches accompany such
scandalous practices, because the practice of the Bank is to condition its
interventions to the socially criminal policies of strict adjustment. The bank
is very well informed on the state of poverty, of the many impoverished and of
the abandonment of populations on our planet. That being the case, are we dealing
with purely cynical and deceitful policies?
Now, I note the condition deepening every day, that hunger kills surely than
the worst of wars, that the neglect of the sick without care, of illiterate
people, of the homeless, of those out of work are increasing at an
unprecedented rate and the remedies of the WORLD BANK are poisoned medicines
which this process only deepens.
In my soul and my conscience I must say to you "Enough". You have
stolen the legitimate reasoning of development NGOs on eco-development, on
poverty, on popular participation. At the same time your structural adjustment
policies and your activities hasten the "social dumping" of the South
by forcing them to emerge without protection onto the global market. Thanks to
you and your colleagues in the IMF, multinational enterprises are able to
relocate because you are creating conditions of production at a reduced social
cost.
The result of your joint IMF/ WORLD BANK intervention is translated into a
consistent pressure on entire economies for more competitiveness, higher
performance.
[...] In this "fin de siecle" period, growth and competition have
become means by which minorities can become disproportionately richer faster
and which no longer have a development effect either in co-operation or
redistribution.
Inequalities are more and more glaring, the hungry are legion, they are dying without provoking revolt and indignation.
As long as the WORLD BANK maintains its senseless selection of structural
adjustment policies, I think we will all have to mobilise both ourselves and
the greatest number of victims of this type of intervention so that we can do
battle against it.
[...] My wishes for the WORLD BANK, on the eve of this anniversary, will be
simple: 50 years --- that's enough. I consider you as one of the chief enemies
of the poor and the rights that are defended in the heart of the United
Nations.
You are today the most incredible and extraordinary public relations machine
which imposes on the world a disastrous sense of inevitability as if
development were necessarily reserved only to the few, and poverty inevitable
for those no longer able to perform or compete.
The revival of a development economy, one which promotes social justice through
the access by the greatest number to an income from work, imposes on us an
urgent need to FIND ANOTHER INSTITUTION with which to replace you, so that
people can take part in and benefit from actions which will give them back
their dignity, food, self-sufficiency and the right to diversity in
co-development.
[...] World Bank intervention is translated into a consistent pressure on
entire economies for more competitiveness, higher performance. Such an
objective is itself only reached by ever increasing pressure on governments to
economise on and reduce social rights which are judged to be too expensive.
This means that the only governments who are good students in your eyes are
those who are prepared to prostitute their economies to the people holding the
reins of multinationals and big international finance groups.
All this is happening as though the reasoning of the Bank, in favour of the
sacrifices of structural reconversion put forward as necessary for economic and
market globalisation, were in some way the indispensable "crossing of the
desert" on the way to the Eden of development.
Now, what I see is that Africa is dying ... but that the Bank is growing
richer; Asia and Eastern Europe see themselves
plundered of their riches ... and the Bank supports the IMF and GATT
initiatives which authorise this plunder both material and intellectual. Latin
America, like other continents, sees its children used as a manpower reserve or
worse still, as a reserve of human organs for the new transplant trade with
North America. I deduce from all this that the Bank is, for most of us, simply
the object of a very big misunderstanding because, whatever it might say, the
Bank is the instrument, at the service of orthodoxy, of a model of growth based
on competition, not on co-operation. Its task is to ensure that all, small and
large, can participate in the great global market. Very rarely and, in any case
not today, has growth meant "development"
After having taken part in a dialogue with the Bank over three and a half years
in the NGO Working Group, I now want to give my resignation to the Group as it
appears clear to me that there is no space for manoeuvre in which to make the
Bank more humane.
I am retiring before the end of my period in office because i refuse to be the
Bank's accomplice. I refuse to support this [...]
Open letter to the Co-president of World Bank - NGO Working Group, from Pierre
Galand, Secretary General of Oxfam Belgium, published by Le Soir 11 March 1994.
1.Non-government organisations. 2.The
World Bank and The International Fund, with GATT coming later.