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Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 18:08:52 -0800
From: charlotte utting <[log in to unmask]>
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To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [WASAN] FW: [adnalist] ACTION: Boycott World Bank Bonds - Support
Africa's Right to Health
----------
From: Nunu Kidane <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 09:27:48 -0800
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [adnalist] ACTION: Boycott World Bank Bonds - Support Africa's
Right to Health
ADNA Event: 011116
Message from: Africa Action
For contact information see also:
http://www.africapolicy.org/adna
ACTION: Boycott World Bank Bonds - Support Africa's Right to Health
Africa Action Tells World Bank: Cancel Debts, End Structural
Adjustment to Respond to Africa's Health Crisis
New effort launched among the African American religious
community to boycott the purchase of World Bank Bonds
Press Release, November 16, 2001
Contact: Vicki Lynn Ferguson, (202)5467961
Aisha Satterwhite, (212) 7851024
Friday, November 16, 2001 (Washington, DC/New York City)
On the eve of this weekend's rescheduled World Bank and
International Monetary Fund meeting in Ottawa, Canada, Africa
Action has issued a statement calling on these financial Goliaths to
cancel Africa's debts and end harmful "structural adjustment"
policies.
These actions, the statement said, were essential to allow African
countries to mobilize their own resources against the HIV/AIDS
pandemic and the wider health emergency of which it is a part.
Africa Action's executive director Salih Booker said, "While the
World Bank boasts of providing new loans for Africa's health and
other social sectors, its demands for debt repayment are suffocating
the continent."
The Rev. Dr. Molefe Tsele, General Secretary of the South African
Council of Churches, supported the Africa Action statement saying
that, "The role of the World Bank in Africa is a critical ethical issue.
As a matter of conscience, people should take action to register
their disapproval with the World Bank's policies by boycotting their
bonds!" Dr. Tsele is in the US to attend two consultations with Black
American clergy on the east and west coasts organized by Africa
Action.
Africa Action is increasing its support for the World Bank Bonds
Boycott Campaign. Africa Action calls on all those who support
Africa's right to health to boycott World Bank bonds in order to put
pressure on the institution to cancel Africa's debt and end the
imposition of economic policies harmful to health.
The organization's statement stressed that Africa has already lost
more than 17 million people to AIDS. More than 7,000 Africans die
of the disease every day. The pandemic feeds on and accentuates
structural inequalities and other societal divisions. It threatens to
overwhelm African efforts to set the continent on a path towards
greater human security and a just share in today's interconnected
global economy.
**************
November 16, 2001
AFRICA ACTION
Statement on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the State of Africa's Health
On the Occasion of the Meetings of the Development Committee and
the International Monetary and Financial Committee in Ottawa,
Canada, November 17-18, 2001
This weekend, in Ottawa, Canada, the Development Committee and
the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) will hold their annual
meetings, originally scheduled to take place in Washington, DC at
the end of September and postponed following the September 11th
terrorist attacks. As these important committees now convene to
assess the state of the world economy, Africa Action calls on the
Directors of the World Bank and IMF to respond to the continent's
health crisis as a matter of the greatest urgency.
There is no greater single threat to Africa's stability and to its social
and economic development than the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the
broader health emergency of which it is a part. Africa has already
lost more than 17 million people to AIDS, and the continent is home
to 25 million of the 36 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS.
More than 7,000 Africans die of the disease every day. The
pandemic multiplies the impact of other major diseases such as
malaria and tuberculosis. It undermines fragile health systems and
positive initiatives in all sectors. It feeds on and accentuates
structural inequalities and other societal divisions. This threat to the
fundamental right to health threatens to overwhelm African efforts to
set the continent on a path towards greater human security and a
just share in today's interconnected global economy.
It is no coincidence that Africa is at the epicenter of the global AIDS
pandemic. Africa's health crisis is intimately related to the dynamics
of an international system that has long marginalized the African
continent and trapped it in a cycle of dependency and
underdevelopment. The role of the World Bank and IMF in this
international system has been pivotal. Over the past two decades,
the policy prescriptions of these institutions have exacerbated the
social and economic crises facing African countries. They have
denied Africa's people the right to health and deprived them of
resources necessary to cope with the current health crisis.
Africa Action calls on the World Bank and the IMF to take the
following essential steps to allow African countries to mobilize their
own resources against the current health crisis:
1) Cancel all debts owed to the World Bank and IMF by African
countries;
2) End harmful "structural adjustment" conditions and similar
policies.
We also call on the United States' Executive Directors to the World
Bank and IMF to use their significant voting power within these
institutions to push for the realization of these demands.
The World Bank and IMF in Africa
The World Bank and IMF have become immensely powerful
institutions in Africa. When economic crisis hit the developing world
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, African governments, desperate
for funds to meet their growing external debt obligations and their
critical domestic needs, turned to the World Bank and IMF for
financial assistance and were forced to accept the conditions
attached to their loans. The World Bank and IMF used this leverage
to dictate economic policies to African countries. As the debt crisis
worsened through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Africa became
even more dependent on the World Bank and IMF. These
institutions thereby gained an increasing degree of control over
African economic policies.
These policies have had terrible economic and social
consequences. Average incomes across the continent have
declined, and the percentage of the population of sub-Saharan
Africa subsisting on less than $1 per day has increased, now
reaching almost 50%. Conditions of poverty have worsened in most
countries, providing fertile ground for the spread of the AIDS
pandemic and other infectious diseases. The persistent economic
crisis faced by African countries, compounded by the massive
burden of debt to the World Bank, IMF and other external creditors,
have denied them the resources they need to respond to the new
health crisis and related challenges.
In recent years, following criticism of the negative social impact of
their involvement in developing countries, the World Bank and IMF
have adopted a public stance of support for "poverty reduction" and
social development programs. The World Bank, in particular, boasts
that its lending priorities have changed dramatically and that it is
now the largest funder of health, education and HIV/AIDS programs.
We welcome those actions that reflect a shift towards prioritizing
social development. We also welcome the greater focus on
HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs, and the genuine
engagement of many Bank personnel in efforts to contribute to the
solution of particular problems. However, World Bank resources to
address HIV/AIDS and other needs still come as loans rather than
grants. The new focus on "poverty reduction" further increases the
complexity of loan conditions and allows even greater intrusion into
the domestic policies and priorities of African countries. Most
importantly, new initiatives by the World Bank and IMF to address
Africa's health crisis and socioeconomic challenges cannot succeed
while other actions by these institutions continue to undermine the
prospects for development.
Priority Actions
Africa Action calls on the World Bank and IMF to demonstrate their
commitment to Africa's social and economic development, and to the
fight against the AIDS pandemic, by immediately taking the following
crucial steps:
1) Cancel all debts owed to the World Bank and IMF by African
Countries The countries of sub-Saharan Africa spend $13.5 billion a
year servicing the debts they owe to rich country governments and
to the World Bank and IMF. Most of these loans are of questionable
legitimacy, based on the circumstances under which the debt was
incurred and the purposes for which it was used. Yet the creditors
of the debt still insist that the money be repaid. Over the past two
decades, African countries have spent more on debt repayments
than they have received in development assistance or in new loans.
The consistent diversion of resources from spending on health care
to debt repayment has had disastrous effects on health care
systems in many African countries.
The current international debt relief framework, the Heavily Indebted
Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), launched by the World Bank and
IMF in 1996 and "enhanced" in 1999, was presented by creditors as
capable of providing a lasting solution to the debt crisis for the
world's most impoverished countries. Despite claims that this
scheme is providing adequate debt relief to those countries that
qualify, it is clear that it has failed. In the 24 countries that have
qualified for HIPC debt relief to date (including 20 in sub-Saharan
Africa), governments still spend more on annual foreign debt
repayments than they do on health care for their own populations.
On average, these countries have seen a reduction of less than one-
third in their annual debt repayments. The reality is that HIPC is
designed to serve creditors by squeezing the maximum possible in
debt payments from the world' s poorest economies, while only
cancelling what is not being paid in any case. This leaves them still
subject to overwhelming debt burdens.
Recent independent studies have shown that the World Bank and
the IMF can afford to cancel the debts of the world's poorest
countries from their own resources, without negatively impacting
their credit ratings. We call on the World Bank and IMF to
immediately cancel all debts owed to them by African countries.
We also call on these institutions, and on the World Bank in
particular, to provide grants rather than loans to tackle the AIDS
crisis and other development challenges. Further loans to African
countries add to the indebtedness that has trapped them in a cycle
of dependency.
2) End harmful "structural adjustment" conditions and similar policies
The austere conditions imposed on African countries by World
Bank and IMF "structural adjustment" programs over the past two
decades have had devastating social consequences in African
countries, and particularly in the area of health care. The imposition
of cutbacks in government spending on health care has led to the
closure of hundreds of clinics and created severe shortages in
medical staff and supplies across the continent. The privatization of
health care services, and the introduction of "user fees" for basic
health care, both mandated by the World Bank and IMF as part of
"structural adjustment" lending, effectively created a "two-tier" health
system in which the poor majority have been denied access to basic
care and treatment. At the same time, the health of Africa's people
has deteriorated because of deepening poverty, widespread
malnutrition and epidemics of infectious diseases.
"Structural adjustment" lending and related policies have undermined
the right to health of Africa's people, directly contributing to the
current health crisis and to the inability of African governments to
mobilize resources in response. We call for an immediate end to
imposition of these policies.
Conclusion
In recent years the World Bank and the IMF have responded to
critics by changes in language, additional programs in social
sectors, and declarations of openness to dialogue. However, these
institutions have firmly resisted change in the fundamental policies
they have imposed on African and other developing countries. As
long as these institutions remain resistant to this change, outside
critics must continue to expose the flaws of bank- imposed policies.
We must also reinforce the incentives for change by actions that
impose real penalties on these institutions for their intransigence.
Africa Action therefore reiterates its support for the World Bank
Bonds Boycott Campaign, an initiative that targets the World Bank's
primary source of funding (the sale of its bonds).
In the same way that the divestment movement grew to break the
power of the apartheid regime in South Africa, communities, socially
responsible investment firms, trade unions, churches and other
institutions are deciding to exclude World Bank bonds from their
investment and retirement portfolios until the World Bank makes
fundamental changes in its policies.
We encourage all those concerned for Africa's Right to Health to
join this effort, and, in particular, to insist that investment in World
Bank bonds be conditioned on cancellation of Africa's illegitimate
external debt and an end to imposition of harmful structural
adjustment conditions on African countries.
We call on the World Bank and IMF to act upon the demands laid
out in this statement, as a necessary prerequisite for constructive
action in support of Africa's right to health and sustainable
development.
We call on the US Executive Directors to these institutions -- Carole
Brookins at the World Bank and Randal Quarles at the IMF -- to use
their influence in favor of directing these institutions to address
Africa's devastating health crisis through acting on these demands.
Africa Action: Incorporating American Committee on Africa (ACOA),
The Africa Fund, and Africa Policy Information Center (APIC)
Washington Office: 110 Maryland Avenue, NE #508,
Washington, DC 20002, USA.
Tel: (202) 546-7961
Fax: (202) 546-1545
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
New York Office: 50 Broad Street, #1701,
New York, NY 10004, USA.
Tel: (212) 785-1024
Fax: (212) 785-1078
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
--------------------
This message from Africa Action is distributed through the
Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA) via IDEX
Nunu Kidane
Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA)
Communications Facilitator for IDEX
International Development Exchange - IDEX
827 Valencia Street, Suite 101
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: (415) 824 8384
Fax: (415 824 8387
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