[Intl-tobacco] IMF/WB 60th Anniversary/EIR Action in DC

[robert.weissman@essentialinformation.org]

All those in the DC area -- please come out on Thursday morning!!


PRESS ADVISORY =AD July 20, 2004
Contact:  Soren Ambrose =AD w: 202-636-6097  m: 202-285-5836

CRITICS MARK WORLD BANK, IMF
60TH ANNIVERSARY WITH RALLIES WORLDWIDE
Focus on Imminent Controversial Decision on Oil & Mining Subsidies

Picket at World Bank (18th & Pennsylvania, N.W.)
Thursday, July 22, 2004 =AD 9 am

WASHINGTON =AD July 20, 2004 =ADGlobal justice activists will gather
outside the World Bank on Thursday to commemorate the 60th anniversary
of the signing of the documents that created that institution and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Coordinated actions are occurring in several other cities around the
world, including Jakarta (Indonesia), Lima (Peru), London (U.K.),
Geneva (Switzerland), and Potos=ED (Bolivia).

=B3This is not a happy occasion for the hundreds of millions of people
around the world who continue to suffer under the economic hegemony of
IMF/World Bank policies and projects,=B2 said Njoki Njoroge Njehu,
Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, a coalition of over 200
U.S. organizations founded in 1994, on the institutions=B9 50th
anniversary.

=B3The World Bank and IMF have reinforced the structures of corporate
globalization and imposed them from Argentina to Mexico, Senegal to
Mauritius, and Jordan to South Korea and Fiji with disastrous results
for millions of people,=B2 she added.

=B3The results of IMF & World Bank policies and projects are all too
clear: ecosystems ripped apart to sell valuable minerals, communities
subjected to ever-increasing poverty, the mounting debt burdens that
keep countries enslaved, and record profits for multinational
corporations,=B2 said Morrigan Phillips of Mobilization for Global
Justice (MGJ), a Washington activist group focused on economic justice.

MGJ and the 50 Years Is Enough Network were among the organizers of
demonstrations at the World Bank/IMF spring meetings in Washington
three months ago.  The demands made then have not yet been met; they
include the cancellation of impoverished country debt; an end to
imposed economic austerity programs; an end to financing for socially
and environmentally destructive projects; and the opening of the
institutions=B9 board meetings to the public.

Added to those demands now is one focused on the Extractive Industries
Review (EIR), a three-year process initiated by the World Bank and
completed last December. It found that  oil and mining projects funded
by the Bank do not contribute to poverty reduction (the World Bank=B9s
ostensible mandate), and that the Bank should phase-out its involvement
in coal and oil projects.  For those projects the Bank does participate
in, it recommended that it obtain free, prior, informed consent of the
communities affected.  It also called for other practices that are not
yet standard for the Bank:  respect for human rights; establishment of
land rights for indigenous groups; requirement of freedom of
association (to form unions, etc.); re-direction of funding to
renewable energy; and protecting biodiversity by establishing =B3no go=B2
areas for critical habitats.

Soren Ambrose of the 50 Years Is Enough Network noted that =B3The
management of the World Bank has released a draft response to the EIR
which pays lip service to many of its ideas, but makes very few firm
commitments.  It is apparent that the Bank=B9s top-level staff want to
continue providing subsidies to the mining and oil industries,
including some of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the
world.=B2

Ambrose continued, =B3We are here to reinforce the worldwide call on the
Board of the World Bank, which has the last word on the institution=B9s
position and will be making a decision in the next two weeks, to
recognize the seriousness of the issues addressed by the Extractive
Industries Review, and to adopt its recommendations in full.=B2

=B3For over ten years we have been talking with the leadership of the
World Bank, urging that care for people, especially the most
vulnerable, and for all of creation be made the centerpiece of economic
policy decisions. We hope that the EIR does not become one more case
where the World Bank promises much but delivers very little,=B2 observed
Marie Dennis, Co-Chair of the Religious Working Group on the World Bank
and the IMF, a coalition of religious denominations, institutions, and
social justice organizations that educate, advocate, and bear public
witness on global economic justice issues.=A0