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The
All-Too-Visible Hand: A Five-Country Look at the Long
and Destructive Reach of the IMF
April
1999
Edited and Published by
The Development Group for
Alternative Policies
The Development Gap
Friends of the Earth
U.S.
Plans for a New Round: Negotiating More Agreements with Less Authority
Report prepared by Craig VanGrasstek for UNCTAD Workshop in Boca Chica,
Dominican Republic, August 1999
Technology
Transfer in the WTO Agreements
Report
prepared by Carlos Correa for UNCTAD, July 1999
Integrating
Least Developed Countries into the Global Economy: Proposals for a
Comprehensive New Plan of Action in the Context of the Third WTO
Ministerial Conference
Report of a Workshop
for Senior Advisors to Ministers of Trade in LDCs
LDC/CW/SA/6 (7 July 1999)
Challenges
of the post Lomé Trade Framework for the Least Developed Countries
Report prepared by Monya Anyadike-Danes for UNCTAD Workshop in Sun
City, South Africa, June 1999
Strengthening
Capacities for Participating in the Multilateral Trading System
Note for Course on Commercial Diplomacy, February 1999.
Civil
Society Perspectives on IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment
Policies
Statement presented at the First Public Hearing of the International
Financial Institutions Advisory Commission, U.S. Treasury, 20 October
1999
STATEMENT OF THE
DEVELOPMENT GAP ON THE PROPOSED MULTILATERAL AND G7 DEBT-REDUCTION PLAN
Rejection of IMF
Policies and Expanded Role in Debtor Countries
WERE
THE DC AND SEATTLE PROTESTS UNFOCUSED, OR ARE CRITICS MISSING
THE POINT_
The Vision Thing
by NAOMI KLEIN
In the four years before the Seattle
and Washington protests, similar hub events had converged
outside WTO, G-7 and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summits
in Auckland, Vancouver, Manila, Birmingham, London, Geneva,
Kuala Lumpur and Cologne. Each of these mass protests was
organized according to principles of coordinated
decentralization. Rather than present a coherent front, small
units of activists surrounded their target from all
directions.
Why
Civil Society Must Reject HIPC
by Yash Tandon (Director,
International South Group Network)
"It is clear that the
enhanced HIPC is only enhanced cheating. I am
afraid that is the only honest thing to say about it. It is high
level
cheating, high-level manipulation of the kind that took place at
Seattle.
This cannot be endorsed either by civil society or, in my view, by
the
UNDP. They must not be party to it.
The only way forward is to look at the issue of poverty and
development
with a fresh approach. The Washington Consensus must finally be
declared dead and it should be buried for good never to be resurrected in
any form or disguise. The poverty reduction strategies must analyse
fundamental causes that create poverty and underdevelopment. The analysis must
be done by the people affected, the people of the South, and be
implemented by their governments with the help of civil
society."
A
Better World for All: Progress Towards the International
Development Goals
In
a first-ever joint report by the UN, the OECD, the World
Bank and the IMF, the world's four principal development
institutions assess progress
towards poverty reduction goals and agree on a common
vision for the way forward. The goals for international
development address that most
compelling of human desires-a world free of poverty and
free of the misery that poverty breeds. This report
focuses on seven goals, which, if achieved in the next
15 years, will improve the lives of millions of people.
In words and pictures, with numbers and charts, it
describes progress towards the goals, what has been
achieved and the effort required to reach them. [Read
more]
Can
Africa Claim the 21st Century_
A
new study jointly written by the African Development
Bank, the African
Economic Research Consortium, the Global Coalition on
Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission on
Africa, and the World Bank -- "Can Africa Claim the
21st Century_" -- says that while war and discord
have renewed doubts about Africa's future, a more
complex and encouraging reality is also unfolding.
In countries that have made key economic reforms, such
as Mozambique and Ghana, growth and personal incomes
have risen and poverty has been reduced.
The press release and to a summary of "Can Africa
Claim the 21st Century_" is available here.
Order
the report.
Voices
of the Poor
What
is Voices of the Poor_
 Poverty
is pain; it feels like a disease. It attacks a person
not only materially but also morally. It eats away one's
dignity and drives one into total despair. —— a
poor woman in Moldova
Poverty
is like living in jail, living under bondage, waiting
to be free. ——a
young woman in Jamaica
What
is poverty_ Who are the world's poor women and men_ What
are their htmlirations_ Why do the poor remain poor_
As
the new millennium begins, the World Bank has collected
the voices of more than 60,000 poor women and men from
60 countries, in an unprecedented effort to understand
poverty from the perspective of the poor themselves. Voices
of the Poor, as this participatory research initiative
is called, chronicles the struggles and htmlirations of
poor people for a life of dignity. Poor people are the
true poverty experts. Poor men and women reveal, in particular,
that poverty is multidimensional and complex -- raising
new challenges to local, national and global decision-makers.
Poverty is voicelessness. It's powerlessness. It's insecurity
and humiliation, say the poor across five continents.
World
Bank World Development Indicators (WDI)
 The
latest World Bank annual statistical portrait of people
and the state of the world, the World Development Indicators
2000 (WDI) has just been published and is available on line.
One fact from the report: in 1998 a sixth of the world's
population, primarily the people of North America, Europe,
and Japan, received nearly 80 percent of world income, an
average of $70 per day. At the same time, 57 percent of
the world's population, living in the 63 poorest countries,
received only 6 percent of world income, an average of less
than $2 per day.
IMF,
World Bank policies have debilitating effect on developing countries,
says chairman of South Summit in Havana
World
Bank World Development Indicators (WDI)
Walden Bello* (Executive
Director, Focus on the Global South)
Why
Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda
In the wake of the collapse
of the Seattle Ministerial, there has emerged the opinion that
reform of the WTO is now the program that NGOs, governments,
and citizens must embrace. The collapse of the WTO Ministerial
is said to provide a unique window of opportunity for a reform
agenda. [Here]
Richard Falk
Meeting
the Political Challenge to Globalization
"The Battle of Seattle" that
occurred during the recent meeting of the WTO in Seattle needs to be
understood as the first crisis of globalization that poses a political
challenge.
Walden Bello* (Executive
Director, Focus on the Global South)
Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong
Agenda
In the wake of the collapse
of the Seattle Ministerial, there has emerged the opinion that reform
of the WTO is now the program that NGOs, governments, and citizens must embrace. The collapse of the WTO Ministerial is
said to provide a unique window of opportunity for a reform agenda.
Martin Khor:
How
the North got its way
At the
Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the rich
countries hijacked the agenda and the process. As Ministers spoke to
increasingly sparse audiences in the open plenary sessions, the real
negotiations went "underground" in small informal groups to
which most developing countries were not invited. Thus, the Conference's
focus was on the rich countries' agenda of prying open more markets for
their companies whilst the problems of developing countries were brushed
aside.
Third
World NGOs condemn secretive and undemocratic nature of Ministerial
Conference
The
undemocratic nature of the WTO Conference, where only a few countries
were invited to "informal" negotiating sessions, was a major
talking point. On 12 December, the Third World Network issued a Press
Release criticizing the untransparent process. This was widely covered
by the media. Below is the TWN Press Release.
Democracy,
transparency don't exist at WTO
SINGAPORE: On
paper, numbers alone would suggest that developing countries should have
a big say in world trade negotiations, but that would be in a democratic
and transparent WTO - and not like the one that currently exists, say
observers.
Solidar:
*[pdf-files
download
Acrobat]
Global
Trade Needs Global Rules
[spanish version][French
Version]
Summary
of the General Council's meeting
Vandana
Shiva:
The
Historic Significance of Seattle
European
Commission:
ACP-EU
Economic and Trade Provisions [rtf
format 86 KB]
Improving
the functioning of the WTO: Suggestions for a way forward
WTO New
Round Forward
A Unity Statement of
Philippine social movements, labor groups, people's organizations and NGOs
The
WTO Debacle in Seattle
John Dillon, Canadian
Ecumenical Jubilee Initiative
Lessons from the
First Year and Challenges for the Jubilee Debt Campaign
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