50 years - no more!
International Viewpoint #261 November 1994
ONE HUNDRED solidarity movements, among them the French campaign "50 ans, ça suffit!" (50 years, that's enough! and the
Brussels-based
Committee for the
Cancellation of the
Third World Debt
(CADTM), organised a counter-summit to that of the IMF in Madrid in
September. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the
Bretton Woods accords the solidarity movement was ensuring that there was a voice for all those who are never heard in the official conference chamber. ANKE
HINTJENS describes the highlights of the counter-summit.
T HROUGHOUT the world, people are organising to reject the policies of the international economic institutions and their blind faith in the free market system. On 29 September, during the festivities for the 50th anniversary of the Bretton Woods institutions, India was hit by a strike against the country's structural adjustment programme and the signing of the GATT accords. The protests, called by the National Platform of Mass Organisations, completely paralysed the banking, mining, metalworking, insurance and postal sectors. For three years now India has been obliged to apply a structural adjustment programme. The slogan behind the strike: "Three years is enough!"
One of the organisers of the Indian resistance to GATT and the IMF is Vandana Shiva, and she was present at the counter-summit in Madrid. Free trade, which becomes a world system with the new GATT agreement, is not a new system. It is simply the prolongation of colonisation. The IMF, the World Bank and the GATT say they wish to liberalise the world market and free it from the interference of the public powers. But in reality they have established a system of planning without precedent in history, in favour of the most advantaged. The application of the structural adjustment programmes in India has brought no relief to the ordinary people, on the contrary. The modest agrarian reform applied after independence has been suppressed. The number of unemployed in the cities has increased by four million in two years. Out of an active rural population of 400 million, there are now 110 million unemployed. Traditional food production is being suppressed because it is not commercially viable, and that which cannot be transformed into money will not appear in the statistics and consequently cannot be taken into consideration in the
'development" projects. Land is being grabbed for agro-export. This leads to the contradiction that whereas the number of calories produced in India has grown in the last few years, the number of calories consumed per head has diminished. The plague epidemic did not happen by chance. The restrictions in the refuse collection sector and the dismantling of the health sector have created the necessary conditions. What kind of catastrophe might have occurred if this epidemic had broken out some years later, when the health sector will be completely privatised? The IMF and the World Bank have imposed on us a 'model of development' by which entire communities are sacrificed in the name of progress. The nefarious consequences of this policy are blamed on our governments. But how can they be responsible? The IMF and the World Bank replace all the ministers. In India, the programme of structural adjustment is parachuted directly to the minister of finance and applied without the prime minister being aware of it!"
Vandana Shiva's testimony gives an idea of the atmosphere at the Madrid counter-summit. For a whole week, different workshops examined aspects of the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions. Every day some 1500 people were mobilised to participate in the work. Youth were numerous and they matched their words with actions. Delegates to the official meetings were welcomed by demonstrations of angry youth. One World Bank press conference was disrupted by a smartly-dressed militant who put the other side of the story, while other activists unfurled a banner for the attention of the photographers: "50 years is enough". Madrid's police had a difficult week.
During the week of debate, the CADTM organised a meeting on the role of the IMF in the explosion of the civil wars in Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda. Michel Chossudovsky, a professor from Ottawa university and an active member of CADTM, led the meeting.
In 1984, the United States wrote, in a "highly confidential" text, that it wished to see the free market restored in
Yugoslavia. In 1989 a structural adjustment programme was applied. The recipe is a familiar one.
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International Viewpoint #261 November 1994
• Devaluation
• Privatisation of self-managed businesses, where the economic balance sheet was positive
• Destruction of social security
• Abolition of financial transfers from the central State to the republics
Consequently, many republics no longer saw any advantage in being part of the federal republic. From the first year of the application of the structural adjustment programme the standard of living diminished by 40%. The IMF measures therefore contributed to the atomisation and distress of the Yugoslav repu-
Madrid forum denounces this destructive economic model and demands the annulation of all the debts. It demands a halt to the interference of the Bretton Woods institutions in the internal affairs of the sovereign countries... It is time to end the existence of these type of institutions. The only thing to discuss is the timing and the [way in which we dismantle] the Bretton Woods institutions."
blic.
"The only thing to
Somalia was also subjected to an absolutely devastating structural adjustment programme. The country lived to a discuss is the timing great extent from the export of capital and the way in which from the Gulf countries. It was self-sufficient in food on the basis of a fragile we dismantle the equilibrium between peasants and pastoral farmers. In 1981, the IMF obliged it to apply a restructuring of the economy. In addition to devaluation, Somalia had to make economies in veterinary services.
The cattle farmers were no longer able to pay for services and cattle died because of untreated diseases. Moreover, the government was obliged to tax water.
The sum of these measures led to poverty and famine.
For Rwanda, it is the same schema but more so, the country being obliged
No dialogue possible to apply restructuring in the midst of THE week of activity culminated in a tumultuous demonstration of 15,000 war. In November 1990, Rwanda had to people against the IMF and the World Bank. A discussion also took place devalue its currency by 50%. The coun- between the solidarity movements and representatives of the IF and try, which had had a fairly low inflation World Bank. Pierre Galand and Vandana Shiva spoke in the name of the rate of 4.2%, saw it rise to 19.2%. The solidarity movements. Two thousand people followed the debate. The IMF government was no longer authorised to representative recited the catechism of his organisation and the audience pay a fixed price to coffee cultivators. found it difficult to contain their indignation. The World Bank speaker was Food production, linked to coffee pro- more subtle. He appealed to the NGOs not to see the World Bank as an duction, went into free-fall. The opening enemy but to improve communications in the interests of the people. of the frontiers for the import of cheap Vandana Shiva and Pierre Galand did not enter into this debate. Both said food (often called "humanitarian aid") that the World Bank was only taking up themes like ecology and womens destroyed the internal market for the liberation to render its policy of adjustment a little more presentable. No peasants. The new loans that the country dialogue was possible with institutions which habitually lied. received as a present for applying the Pierre Galand focussed his attention on the fact that programmes of adjustment programme were used to buy adjustment were also being imposed on the European countries, and said weapons. that the vicious circle of austerity should be broken in the interests of the peoples of the North as well as the South. He appealed to the NGOs and
These economic "destructurings" do the solidarity movements to engage more in politics. It was necessary to not, of course, explain the racism on work harder for democracy from below and resist the tendency to globaliwhich the genocides were based but they sation which distanced people still more from political power. nonetheless created a fertile base for The room stood up to applaud our speakers. And the debate was closed: such disasters.
At the end of its labours, the counter-summit released a declaration in which it demanded the suppression of the international economic authorities and cancellation of the third world debt: "The
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Bretton Woods institutions." 50 years is enough! AH O
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