1world Endorses The World Bank Bonds Boycott Campaign
The World Bank Bonds Boycott is an international campaign using grassroots economic power to demand an end to structural adjustment lending and other environmentally and socially destructive World Bank policies.
The World Bank is a public institution which receives 80% of its financing from publicly-held bonds. Ordinary people, through their pension funds, labor unions, churches, municipalities, universities and private investments, can exert considerable pressure on the World Bank by refusing to buy its bonds. Activists can pass resolutions in their communities and institutions committing them not to buy World Bank bonds in the future and send a strong message to the Bank.
We aim to make the World Bank the target of a worldwide movement in the same way that the anti-apartheid movement brought about divestment from corporations doing business in South Africa in the ‘80's.
Petition from Southern Activists
The following petition from Southern activist organizations represents the opening salvo in a new campaign to de-commission the institutions that impose structural adjustment programs. This campaign, initiated by peoples’ movements in all parts of the world, calls for a boycott of World Bank bonds, the major vehicle through which that institution acquires its capital resources, until it ends its support of austerity policies and cancels debts owed it by impoverished countries. The letter has over 100 endorsers from 29 Southern countries.
Eighty percent of World Bank funding comes from bonds. Many of these bonds are held by public institutions. This means that we can have leverage over the World Bank by asking institutions such as universities and union pension funds to declare that they will not purchase those bonds.
The inspiration for this campaign comes from the successful campaigns targeting the financial supporters of South Africa’s apartheid regime. While we may not actually "de-fund" the Bank in the immediate future, the campaign can publicize the negative impacts the Bank has among college students and workers, and, through demonstrations and victories, also attract media coverage. Once the momentum starts to build, the Bank’s reputation among investors will become increasingly vulnerable.
Our intention is to turn the weapon of denial of funds — the same weapon the Bank uses so frequentlyand with such destructive effect — against the Bank. Already several "socially-responsible investment firms" have developed policies against buying World Bank bonds. As Citizens Advisers stated: "As socially responsible investors we do not invest or recommend investment in World Bank bonds because of the Bank’s record for financing projects and supporting policies that are documented financial, social and environmental failures." The Calvert World Values Fund determined that "the World Bank appears to fail to meet the spirit of the fund’s human dignity and environmental criteria." This campaign will put the weight of public pressure behind the moral findings of these firms in order to force larger investors to make the moral choice, even if only to appease public sentiment.
Signatures for a companion letter from Northern activists (saying simply that they support the letter below) are also being compiled. To sign-on, send an e-mail to signon@rtk.net or call one of the numbers below. For more information on the campaign, contact the following:
World Bank Bonds Boycott Campaign
Center for Economic Justice, 1830 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009 phone: (202) 299-0020 fax: (202) 299-0021 email: bankboycott@econjustice.net
AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE SOUTH TO THE WORLD BANK
Mr. James Wolfensohn - President, World Bank Group
Dear Mr. Wolfensohn:
As citizens of countries suffering from World Bank policies, we are writing to you because:
• 65% of World Bank lending today is for sectoral and structural adjustment loans;
• The conditions attached to these and other World Bank loans have crippled economic growth, hindered economic development, promoted dependency, and increased misery and poverty in developing countries;
• Adjustment is vastly increasing the socio-ecoanomic burden on women;
• Adjustment leads to the promotion of sweatshops, and the denial of workers’ rights to organize and to earn a decent living;
• Adjustment is destroying peasant-led agricultural production and the abilities of our countries to feed themselves;
• Adjustment has accelerated destruction of the natural environment;
• Adjustment has a very destructive impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population;
• Adjustment is degrading our cultural integrity, by changing our models of consumption and our relationship with nature;
• Adjustment has significantly added to the external debt burden of countries implementing such programs;
• Privatization under World Bank policies has led to increased corruption, private gain at the expense of the public, further concentration of wealth and power, greater unemployment and decreased access to public services;
•The World Bank in practice supports the macroeconomic policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund by making agreement with the IMF a condition of Bank lending, and by contributing money to IMF austerity packages, and is therefore responsible for the consequences of those policies;
• For sound and healthy economies, societies, and citizenry, economic policy in our countries must be formed in the interest of the pooand working people who compose the majority of the population; and
• National economic sovereignty is a prerequisite for the adoption of such policies. Since the majority of the Bank’s funds are raised in the private capital market, we call on all supporters of human rights and sustainable economic development to boycott the purchase of World Bank bonds, and encourage all public institutions to do so.
Moreover, we call on governments of all member nations of the World Bank, to cease further funding to the World Bank until all destructive World Bank lending has ended and the World Bank has cancelled all debts owed to it by Third World countries.
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