What's wrong with the World Bank?

ireland / britain | miscellaneous | opinion / analysis Monday November 12, 2007 02:37 by Paddy Rua - WSM (Lucy Parsons branch)

On the 12th and the 13th of November, Ireland will be the host country to a meeting of the International Development Association (IDA), the branch of the World Bank which deals with lending to the poorest countries of the world.

Grassroots-Dissent poster calling for the demo

The World Bank and its sisters organisations of global capitalism, the IMF and WTO have their origins in the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944. Although the World Bank attempts to present the goal of the organisation as “reducing poverty”, this has never been their objective. Their main objective is to fund large-scale power and infrastructure projects in the third world to prepare the way for the exploitation of these countries natural resources and cheap labour by northern corporations.

The poor have no say in “development” projects which often displace them, rob their countries of valuable natural resources, and contribute to the climate change which is hitting their countries the hardest. The World Bank has no democratic accountability to those whom its decisions affect, decisions which take place behind closed doors and with little transparency.

The World Bank, in conjunction with the IMF also provides loans to countries in debt in return for “structural adjustment” reforms to their economy which usually involve the slashing of healthcare, education and social services budgets, to the detriment of the local population, as well as dropping tariffs and opening their markets to a flood of cheap western imports. These often destroy local industry, farming and quality jobs, increasing the availability of easily exploitable labour for multinational corporations to take advantage of.

Regardless of whatever alleviating measures are taken, because of the very nature of global capitalism, the World Bank cannot be transformed into a benevolent global institution, since its very premise is to protect and promote the interests of multinational corporations.

On the 12th and the 13th of November, Ireland will be the host country to a meeting of the International Development Association (IDA), the branch of the World Bank which deals with lending to the poorest countries of the world. In this meeting, rich countries will decide how much money IDA will get, money which will be used as a means to blackmail the most vulnerable economies in the world into a number of “structural adjustment” programmes designed to the measure of the rich business clique who runs the world.

Help expose the real motives of the World Bank by attending the protest on Monday November the 12th in Malahide. We will meet at Connolly Station at 12:00 o’clock.

Check out www.indymedia.ie for more details