| Description | In September 2006, the IMF and the World Bank organised their Annual Meeting in Singapore on September 19-20. In the spirit of resistance to neoliberal policies and in keeping with the history of people's struggles worldwide against economic domination, Asian movements together with an international group of networks, movements, campaigns and NGOs convened an International Peoples Forum vs the IMF and the World Bank on September 15 to 17. The Forum has a convergence of activities and actions that articulate critiques, express protest and assert alternatives to the role, policies and operations of these institutions.
For more than sixty years, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank together with their partner regional development banks and export credit agencies, have used international finance capital to exercise control and restructure the societies of the South to serve the interests of global private corporations and the economic and geo-political agenda of the few powerful nations that control these institutions.
The resulting effects on people's lives, on communities, on the environment, and on the economic as well as political structures in the South have been profound and over the years have generated numerous resistance struggles against these institutions.
In recent years they have declared themselves to be champions of "poverty reduction" and "good governance."
The participants find the World Bank and IMF responsible for policies and actions that lead to the intensification of poverty and deprivation, the violation of basic human rights, the curtailment of basic political and civil liberties, the undermining of national sovereignty and democratic governance, and the subversion of the right to development.
To ensure that there is full accountability and transparency of the IFIs to peoples and communities that are affected by IFI operations: It calls on the governments that are members of the World Bank and IMF Boards of Directors to keep these institutions fully accountable for their impacts on human rights, equity, and the sustainability of development. |