[stop-imf] Jubilee South Pan-Africa Declaration on PRSPs Kampala

[Robert Weissman]

JUBILEE SOUTH  PAN-AFRICAN DECLARATION ON PRSPs
                 Kampala, 10-12 May 2001

     =91POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY PAPERS=92
      STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMMES IN DISGUISE

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have produced their
Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSPs) within the context of
corporate globalisation. This process is being driven by and for the giant
transnational corporations (TNCs) and global financial forces. These
utilise the economic, political and military powers of their governments,
and the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose
policies on the South and to restructure and run the world to serve their
interests.

These forces have led to the enrichment of the corporations and their
=91share-holders=92, as well as small elites in the South - to the heavy co=
st
of the vast majority of people of the world. The World Bank and IMF have
found it necessary to impose PRSPs onto the most impoverished countries
because the intertwined processes of enrichment and impoverishment have
led to growing international resistance to the forces, aims and effects of
globalisation.

Social organisations and popular movements across the world have come out
against structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in their various guises,
particularly as based on the feminisation of adjustment to the further
detriment of women and children. Our campaigns have exposed the use of
debt as a deliberate mechanism utilised by the World Bank and IMF to
enforce the implementation of ever harsher structural adjustment
programmes that are wreaking havoc across the world.

As a result, the World Bank and IMF are facing a deepening crisis of
legitimacy. Thus they have introduced PRSPs mainly as a public relations
exercise to demonstrate a supposedly new-found concern for the poverty in
the poorest countries of the South, and to prove that they have a genuine
desire to see the people of these countries =91participating=92 in finding
solutions to their poverty.

But we are not fooled! Our sharing of experiences over the days of this
workshop have strengthened our common understandings. We are clear that
the PRSPs represent nothing other than yet another attempt by the World
Bank and the IMF to continue imposing their structural adjustment
programmes on the people of our countries. In fact, the PRSPs will result
in an even more comprehensive control by the IMF and World Bank - not only
over financial and economic policies but over every aspect and detail of
all our national policies and programmes. This will entrench the
continuation of IMF and World Bank control over our countries, and
contribute to the continuation of the global power relations, in which the
rich overwhelmingly concentrated in the North dominate the South and the
whole world.

In this context, and on the basis of the long, deep and painful
experiences of SAPs in our countries, we reject:

=B7 SAPs in any form or with any cosmetic =91adjustments=92;

=B7 PRSPs as the latest version of structural adjustment;

=B7 HIPC initiative as debt =91relief=92

=B7 All SAP-HIPC-PRSP conditionalities in order to be granted debt =93relie=
f=94;

=B7 =91Relief=92 of only a portion of debt and continued repayment of the
remaining debt which will simply ensure continued control and domination;

=B7 Any attempt to use our organisations to legitimise structural
adjustment, HIPCs, PRSPs or debt =93relief=94; and

=B7 Any further role or interference of the World Bank or IMF in our
countries.

=B7 Any further loans to finance HIV-AIDS programmes which only serve to
further indebt our countries, which increase our dependence on the
institutional finance institutions, while millions of our people continue
to suffer and die in the pandemic in our countries.

On the basis of our review in this workshop of a number of experiences of
PRSPs in countries in Africa (and Latin America) and on the basis of
in-depth analysis and wide-ranging discussion, we note that:

=B7 PRSPs are located within the IMF and World Bank macro- economic
framework and this is not open for debate. The poverty programmes are
expected to be consistent with the neo-liberal paradigm including
privatisation, deregulation, budgetary constraints and trade and financial
liberalisation. Yet these have exacerbated economic and social crises in
our countries.

=B7 They focus only on internal factors and ignore the role of
international/global factors and forces in creating economic crises and
poverty in our countries.

=B7 The only aspects of our realities that are open to consultation are
those =91outside=92 the macro-economic realm, and even the realisation of
these is actively contradicted by the requirements and constraints of the
macro-economic prescriptions.

=B7 The neo-liberal paradigm is also not acceptable because it fails to
explicitly locate programmes to tackle poverty and subordination within
effective gender equity perspectives and gender frameworks. Mere gender
=91mainstreaming=92 is totally insufficient as a remedy.

=B7 The World Bank and IMF are manouevering to regain their legitimacy by
offering poverty =91reduction=92 and debt =91relief=92 whereas we demand fu=
ll
release from all debt bondage and the total eradication of poverty.

=B7 These so-called poverty programmes have been imposed on countries in a
manner which ignores and replaces existing anti-poverty and national
development programmes. As such, they are an external intervention with
little or no regard for national dynamics, and are an unacceptable
intrusion . But they cannot easily be ignored given that countries have to
implement these programmes as an additional conditionality even for the
much criticised HIPC debt =91relief=92.

The experiences of the functioning of PRSPs in our countries raise a
number of additional concerns with regard to the involvement of
organisations of civil society:

=B7 The PRSPs are not based on real peoples participation and ownership, or
decision-making. To the contrary, there is no intention of taking civil
society perspectives seriously; but to keep participation to mere public
relations legitimisation;

=B7 The lack of genuine commitment to participation is further manifested i=
n
the failure to provide full and timeous access to all necessary
information, limiting the capacity of civil society to make meaningful
contributions.

=B7 The PRSPs have been introduced according to pre-set external schedules
which in most countries has resulted in an altogether inadequate time
period for an effective participatory process.

=B7 In addition to all the constraints placed on governments and civil
society organisations in formulating PRSPs, the World Bank and IMF retain
the right to veto the final programmes. This reflects the ultimate mockery
of the threadbare claim that the PRSPs are based on =91national ownership=
=92.

=B7 An additional serious concern is the way in which PRSPs are being used
by the World Bank and IMF, both directly and indirectly, to co-opt NGOs to
=91monitor=92 their own governments on behalf of these institutions.

In some instances, notably in those countries in which governments have
not been open to civil society participation or have not had poverty and
development on the agenda for discussion, the PRSPs initially appeared to
open up a space for civil society organisations to engage their
governments. However, this has not achieved the desired effect of
challenging structural adjustment. Furthermore, many organisations have
invested so much energy in the PRSP processes that they have been
distracted from their work in opposing SAPs and HIPCs and campaiging for
debt cancellation. The lesson we have learnt is that we need to return to
our own agendas and reinvigorate and further strengthen our engagement and
work with people at the grassroots.

We as African civil society organisations need to:

=B7 Continue and intensify our efforts to expose to the people in our
countries, and the world, the inter-linked aims and effects of SAPs, HIPCs
and PRSPs, and the strategic purposes of the World Bank and the IMF;

=B7 Mobilise our people and link up with our allies in the South, and
partners in the North, for immediate and total cancellation of our
external debts without external conditionalities;

=B7 Proactively engage with our governments on issues as determined by our
agendas and on the basis of genuine participation and popular empowerment
within our own societies, communities and cultures;

=B7 Mobilise to encourage and push our governments to stand together and
repudiate the debt;

=B7 Mobilise our people to challenge and change the global economic system
through campaigns and actions to shut down the World Bank and IMF and to
stand up to other forces, including the WTO, Northern governments such as
the EU (through the Cotonou Agreement) and the US (through AGOA), as well
as their TNCs;

=B7 Mobilise our peoples to oppose the ruling elites who are implementing
structural adjustment programmes and further entrenching neo-liberal
policies in our countries.

We call upon our peoples to develop further - and deepen through
intensified analysis, discussion and full participation - our own
democratic, people-centered, gender equitable and environmentally
sustainable national, regional and continental alternatives as the basis
for a united African challenge to the current oppressive, exploitative and
destructive global system.

Participants

=B7       African Organisation on Debt and Development (AFRODAD -
Africa) =B7       African Women=92s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON) =B7
  Africa Trade Network (Southern Africa) =B7       Alternative
Information and Development Center (AIDC - South Africa) =B7
Associacao para Desenvolvimento Rural de Angola (ADRA -
Angola) =B7
 Asapsu - Cote d'Ivoire =B7       BEACON - Nairobi =B7       Botswana
Council of Churches =B7       Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace
(Malawi) =B7       Center for International Studies (CEI) (Nicaragua) =B7
     CMID - Ghana =B7       CONGAD (Senegal) =B7       Divida
(Mozambique
Debt Group) =B7       Ecumenical Support Services for Economic
Transformation (ESSET  South Africa) =B7       Gender and Trade
Network
(Southern Africa) =B7       GERA =B7       Peace Humanius (Cameroon) =B7

  International South Group Network (Southern Africa) =B7       Jubilee
2000 Angola =B7       Jubilee 2000 Cameroon =B7       Jubilee 2000
Nigeria