INTERNATIONAL APPEAL
World Bank, IMF: Enough!
International Viewpoint #261 November 1994
THE campaign's objective is to establish an international network of citizens groups, community organisations, trade unions, NGOs, church organisations, and so forth, through the establishment of activist committees in each country and city.
We are asking for support in publicising, reproducing and distributing the international appeal as widely as possible.
Can you or your organisation sponsor the campaign, or collect signatures
(individual and collective)?
Contact the campaign at: World Bank, IMF: Enough! 29 rue Plantin, 1070 Brussels, Belgium a +32 • 2 • 523 • 4023 fax +32 • 2 • 522 • 6127
T HERE is little to celebrate as
the international community commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods agreement, which led to the founding of the IMF, World Bank, and GATT. The "structural adjustment programmes" imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions has led to famine and the brutal impoverishment of the developing world while contributing to the "thirdworldisation" of the countries of the for-
While the World Bank's mandate consists in "combating poverty" and protecting the environment, its actions have contributed to the dismantling of health and education programmes. Its support for large scale hydro-electric and agro-industrial projects has speeded up the process of deforestation and destruction of the natural environment, leading to the forced displacement and eviction of several million people. In the South and East, hundreds of millions of under-nourished children are denied the fundamental right to primary education. In several regions of the world, the brutal suppression of public spending, combined with the collapse of purchasing power, has led to a resurgence of infecious diseases including tuberculosis, ara and cholera.
The GATT agreement further vioperty rights. Several clauses of the "structural adjustment programme" are now permanently entrenched in the articles of the new World Trade Organisation (WTO). The WTO's mandate consists in regulating world trade to the benefit of the international banks and transnational corporations, as well as "supervising" (in close collaboration with the IMF and the World Bank) the enforcement of national trade policies.
In the developed countries of the North, similar socially oppressive economic policies are now being applied. The consequences are unemployment, low wages and the marginalisation of large sectors of the population. Social expenditure is curtailed and many of the achievements of the welfare states are being repealed. State policies have also encouraged the destruction of small and medium sized businesses.
### Feeding on poverty
In the South, the East and the North, a privileged social minority has accumulated vast amounts of wealth at the expense of the large majority of the population. This new international financial order feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the natural environment. It generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife, undermines the rights of women and often precipitates countries into destructive confrontations between nationali-
The time has come for humanity to respond forcefully and to establish an agenda for social change. We the undersigned - citizens, workers, teachers, writers, artists, civil servants, trade unionists, members of NGOs throughout the world - re-assert the fundamental right of people to national economic sovereignty, democratic development and social justice. We denounce the destructive "economic model" and re-assert our firm opposition to the interference of the Bretton Woods institutions and the new WTO in the internal affairs of sovereign states. *
Bretton Woods Against the
institutions
First signatories:
Samir Amin (economist, director of the Dakar Third World Forum, Egypt), Jean-
Marie Baise (Ecolo deputy, Belgium),
Agnès Bertrand (ECORAPA, France),
Madeleine Briselance (SOS, Tahiti, France), Janet Bruin (International League of Women for Peace and Liberty,
Switzerland), Humberto Campadonico
(professor of economics, San Marcos University, Peru), Felix Cardenas (Aymara de Bolivia, Movimientà "Pacha-Kuti", Bolivia), Carlos Carnero Gonzalez (United
Left European deputy, Spain), Michel
Chossudovsky (Ottawa University, Canada), Didier Daeninkx (writer, France), Christine Daure Serfaty (France), Erik de
Clerck (general secretary, frères des hommes, Belgium), Germain Dufour (Ecolo deputy, Belgium) Bruno Dujardin (Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium), François Gagnon (Regroupement-ActionMilieu, Canada), Pierre Galand (general secretary Oxfam, Belgium), Susan George (co-director Transnational Institute, member of the Greenpeace International Council), Edward Goldsmith (The Ecologist, Britain), François Houtart
(director CETRI, Belgium), Albert
Jacquard (geneticist, France), Bernard
Lacaube (Latin America Association,
France), Jacques Liesenborghs (Ecolo deputy, Belgium), Santiago Lorente
(professor, University of Madrid, Spain),
Ernest Mandel (Economist, Belgium),
Gustave Massih (CEDETIM, France),
"Sub-commandante Marcos" (Zapatista
Army of National Liberation, Mexico),
Leana Nuez (UNICARAGUA, FSLN,
Nicaragua), Miguel Nuez (ACSUR, President de Las Segovias, Spain), Orlando Numez (sociologist, member of FSLN Assembly, Nicaragua), René Nuez
Tellez (member of the FSLN national leadership, Nicaragua), Gilles Perrault
(writer, France), James Petras (writer,
USA), Luis A. Reveco (director of Third
World First, Britain), Jean Ronveaux
(general secretary of CNCD, Belgium),
Lola Saiz (co-ordination des ONG de
Madrid, Spain), Catherine Samary (economist, Université Paris X, France),
Abraham Serfaty (militant, Moroco), Vandana Shiva (economist, India), Christine Sibilotte (comité justice sociale SA, Québec), Henri Simon (Ecolo deputy, Belgium), Lodewijk Steenwegen (Agalev deputy, Belgium), Ruth Stör-Mougel
(Solidarity with the peoples of Central America and the Caribbean, France), Lise
Thiry (virologist, United Left, Belgium),
Gianni Togoni (general secretary of the Peoples Permanent Tribunal, Italy), Alain
Tondeur (Socialist Workers Party, Belgium), Eric Toussaint (Committee for the Cancellation of the Third World Debt,
Belgium), Francis Wurtz (Communist
Party, France) 3
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