2004 is:
– the 60th anniversary of the founding of the World Bank and the IMF;
– the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the 50 Years Is Enough Network campaign;
– a U.S. presidential election year; and
– and a crucial year for the struggles for global justice.
For six decades, the World Bank and IMF have imposed policies, programs, and projects that:
– Decimate women’s rights and devastate their lives, their families, and their communities;
– Subjugate democratic governance and accountability to corporate profits and investment portfolios;
– Trap countries in a cycle of indebtedness and economic domination;
– Force governments to privatize essential services;
– Put profits before peoples’ rights and needs;
– Abet the devastation of the environment in the name of development and profit;
– Institutionalize the domination of the wealthy over the impoverished – the new form of colonialism; and
– Facilitate corporate agendas through the economic re-structuring of countries enduring conflict and occupation, such as East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In the 60th anniversary year of the IMF and World Bank,
we demand the following measures from the institutions and the governments which control them. Add your voice by endorsing these demands:
– Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public;
– Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, using the institutions’ own resources;
– End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people’s access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize. (Such « structural adjustment » policies include user fees, privatization, and economic austerity programs.);
– Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.
We furthermore recognize the urgency of the world’s most catastrophic health crisis, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We assert the culpability of the international financial institutions in decimating health care systems of Global South countries, and reject the approach of fighting the pandemic with more loans and conditions from these institutions. We call on the world’s governments to best deploy their resources by fully funding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. We demand the elimination of trade rules that undermine access to affordable life-saving medications.
Help end global economic injustice driven by the policies, projects, and programs of the international financial institutions!
Educate, Organize, Mobilize!
Be the change you want to see in our world!
Organize public events in 2004, help expose the continued use of power, veiled by rhetoric, to enrich corporations, banks, and investors at the expense of people and the planet.
Mass mobilization April 22 – 26, 2004:
Take a public stand in Washington DC during the IMF/World Bank semi-annual meetings
Help Organize events throughout 2004 — speaking tours, monthly coordinated local & global actions, global justice film festivals, non-violent direct action, street theatre, conferences & teach-ins, popular education, vigils, etc.
Localize the movements for global justice, organize an event in your community.
Endorse the Demands
Visit www.50years.org, email info@50years.org; or call202/463-2265 for details & updates