*partie=titre Building Mobilizations  *partie=nil 


After the cancellation of the June World Bank meeting in Barcelona, mobilizations are on their way for at least two important events. Thanks to the work of Spanish organizations and movements in preparing protests in Barcelona, the World Bank withdrew itself from the city. Officially it said it was for security reasons and blamed the citizens comparing them to hooligans, in fact it could face controversy and alternative proposals. Around the debt and more broadly corporate globalization, the G8 is targeted in July on the 19th, 20th and 21st in Genoa, Italia. Thousands, even tens of thousand or more, people are awaited in the Italian city. Organizations from England, Germany, Greece, Spain, and France are announcing more people than for Prague or Nice. Nearly all the Italian movements are reunited under the Genoa Social Forum to prepare these events. Russian, as Mr Poutine will play the 8th of the Gs, delegates will come by bus from Moscow. In fact nearly all Europe will come to Genoa.On the other side of the Atlantic, the US movements are starting to prepare a week of actions around the next IMF World Bank meeting in Washington DC the last week of September. With workshops and symbolic actions all week and mass protest on the 19th and the 20th this new event will be another cornerstone of the alternate propositions we have to make facing globalization as it is working. Once again the cancellation of the debt  without conditionalities and the development, a fair relation between North and South, will be at the center of our proposals.

 *{ First quarter 2001 
May 2001 Synthesis of published documents  on www.attac.org Debt & Development 

contents 
1 > What Now ? page 2 
2 > Nation State, Nationalism, Globalization, Internationalism page 6 
3 > US Policy toward ADB and ADF  page 9 
4 > Globalization versus the Citizens' Movement page 13 
5 > The Citizens' Pressure must Civilize Globalization page 16 
6 > WB, IMF self critiques of conditionality page 18 
7 > Genoa Social Forum page 20                                
attac association pour une taxation des transactions financières pour l'aide aux citoyens
 
6, rue Pinel ­ 75013 Paris ­ FRANCE / attac@attac.org / http://attac.org/ Tel : + 33.(0)1.53.60.92.40 Fax : + 33.(0)1.53.60.40.72  }


The worldwide social movement fighting against corporate globalisation and for a more just, more  democratic and more ecologically sustainable world has travelled a long way in the past three years. We have won significant victories: we killed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment although they are trying to raise it from the dead. The World Bank, the IMF and the WTO are all in crisis and the new Bush presidency may make it worse. Consumers everywhere are revolting against genetically modified organisms. Dozens, hundreds of battles are taking place in dozens, hundreds of places across the globe. Because of our actions, because of the protests and popular refusal to accept neo-liberal globalisation, more and more people recognise that this is not the "end of history". Porto Alegre means we can plan for a different future in a realistic and hopeful way. As we say in ATTAC, "another world is possible".


These are no small achievements and we should rejoice in them. But we should also recognise that the road from here will be long and hard. Yes, the World Bank, the Fund and the WTO have been hit hard, but they are still very much standing and they have not given up their power. World wealth distribution is still obscenely skewed and more people are thrust into poverty every  day. The debt burden in the South continues to grow and to destroy countless lives. The planet is still undergoing relentless, perhaps fatal environmental assault.


Furthermore, the real forces behind globalisation have barely been touched: I mean of course the industrial and financial transnational corporations for which the Bank, the Fund, the WTO, the OECD, etc. are merely fronts and servants. These mega-corporations and the financial markets are the ultimate incarnation of world capitalism, they are the real danger and their leaders are meeting in Davos as we speak. So long as we have not placed them under democratic, binding, legal control, we cannot say we have won.


For these reasons I want to talk about the steps we need to take together if we are to move forward towards our goal. I would broadly define that goal as "democratic, equitable and ecological globalisation". Some of the necessary steps are intellectual or ideological, others have more to do with organising, tactics and strategy. I think we need to trace a new path and the first step is to replace the dominant ideology which has convinced so many people that there is no alternative to neo-liberal globalisation. Let's start by restoring the truth of language and the credibility of scholarship. I believe this is vital if we are to convince everyone, including governments, that the present world is not inevitable, that globalisation is not a force of nature like gravity or the result of divine law, that the market cannot be the judge of all things.


The French writer André Breton said, "Intellectuals are the guardians of our vocabulary". But guarding the language isn't a task for intellectuals alone: the whole movement represented in Porto Alegre has to learn to use words that are understood by everyone yet expose the lies embedded in the everyday usage forged by our opponents. Here are a few examples of the way language has been colonised by neo-liberal ideology:  

We say "globalisation" as though all nations and all peoples could be included in a march to some future Promised Land, whereas we know this is a myth. "Globalisation" is really "corporate-driven economic integration" or just plain "21st century capitalism". It feeds on the planet, makes the rich richer, increases inequalities, denies democracy and excludes hundreds of millions of people.


We say "globalisation" as though all nations and all peoples could be included in a march to some future Promised Land, whereas we know this is a myth. "Globalisation" is really "corporate-driven economic integration" or just plain "21st century capitalism". It feeds on the planet, makes the rich richer, increases inequalities, denies democracy and excludes hundreds of millions of people.

 
By Susan George
 *{ The complete original document with footnotes can be found at: http://attac.org/fra/list/doc/george2en.htm }

We say "privatisation" when we should say "alienation" or "give-aways" of valuable enterprises and the results of decades of work by thousands of people which are handed over to Northern and Southern élites. We say "structural adjustment" when we mean wrenching economic austerity and brutal assault against the poor. We say "deregulation" when we know that new rules are being made every day by opaque, unaccountable international institutions. This is "re-regulation".


We even refer to George Bush as the "democratically elected President of the United States" when it's perfectly clear that the US has undergone a quasi-coup d'état. If the same election irregularities had occured in a thirdworld country, the United States would probably have sent troops or imposed sanctions.

It's also profoundly irritating and just plain wrong that the press has labeled us the "anti-globalisation movement". Let's make clear that we are "pro-globalisation". We are in favour of sharing friendship, culture, cuisine, travel, solidarity, wealth and resources worldwide. We are above all "pro-democracy" and "pro-planet" which our adversaries most clearly are not.


To cut through the ideological undergrowth we must also expose the shoddy, self-serving so-called "scholarship" with which  the international institutions try to justify their failed policies. The Bank, the Fund, the WTO and the rest of the institutional servant class employ tame, well-paid intellectuals to convince the media and the world that globalisation is improving life for the poor; that free trade benefits everyone and a rising tide is lifting all boats; that structural adjustment leads to growth, prosperity and redistribution of wealth, that the market is the best allocator of financial, material and human resources and other, similar fairy-tales. This unmasking of this ideology passing for scholarship may be primarily a task for researchers but it's everyone's job to help defeat these official, institutional lies.

The final step in clearing a path is to rid ourselves of the illusions we may still have and help others get rid of them as well. People in the better-off North are more likely to hold certain illusions about power and wealth than those in the South, but decent people everywhere hate to recognise that reality can be as ugly as it is. Here are some of the illusions I often hear expressed in one form or another: 

--Surely Bill Gates and the other 400 some billionaires are rich enough. They already control assets equivalent to those owned by fully half the world's population. Don't they realise that being a billionnaire on the Titanic isn't a viable prospect? Won't they decide to use their enormous wealth to improve the state of the world in fundamental ways? I'm afraid not. There are no upper limits to the accumulation of wealth and power although the lower limits-destitution and death--are very clearly defined.


--Another popular belief holds that southern hemisphere debt will be spontaneously cancelled if decision-makers can be convinced beyond a doubt that it is causing unbearable hardship and destroying countless lives. Not so. Hundreds of studies have already proven irrefutably the ravages of debt and we must regretfully admit that there is no level of human suffering which, in and of itself, will cause the creditors' policies to change. --Many Northern citizens seem to think that everyone has accepted the social gains of the past 100 years or so. They may think it's still possible for poorer countries to catch up eventually and build their own Welfare States through growth and the process known as "development". This belief is suicidal. National and international elites would happily and without hesitation transport us all back to the 19th century if they could get away with it. They constantly seek ways to employ fewer people, lower wages, cut benefits, hand over public services to the market, stop paying taxes, and so on. Since the end of the Cold War, "development" is not on the radar screens of Western elites and funding for North-South cooperation has dropped precipitously.

--A further illusion is to assume that corporations and rich countries will at least change their behaviour when they see they are demolishing the life of the planet on which we all have to live. This is perhaps the most pernicious of all fallacies because it would seem so clearly in the interests of everyone, including elites, to preserve our ecological base. Personally, I don't think they can stop even if they want to, even for their own children. Capitalism is like that famous bicycle that has to keep moving forward or topple over--and corporations are all competing to see who can pedal fastest, straight into the brick wall.

You see my point! Capital never willingly gives up anything to labour, the dominant classes never relinquish their privileges and power without a fight and are always avid to acquire more, the environment will not be protected merely because it would be rational to do so and it would be folly to believe that the democratic gains of earlier struggles have been won once and for all. While it's true that we need to think long and hard about who our allies are now or could be in future because the nature of social classes has obviously changed in the past 150 years, still the old notions of rapport de forces and class struggle have lost none of their relevance.

To sum up, we will have won half the battle if we can effectively re-establish the truth of language and the legitimacy of our own scholarship; if we can successfully combat the illusions that millions of well-meaning people still harbour. Then the road will lie open before us.

To move forward, we should simultaneously pursue other strategies. Clearly, we must continue to protest. As the first World Social Forum meets in Porto Alegre, hundreds, perhaps thousands of activists will be protesting at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This is an excellent symbol but it still seems to me that a year after Seattle we should decide on the following rule: "Wherever "They" are, some of "Us" will be also".

Some of us, but not all of us. Why not? Because, first, we must not let the adversary set our calendar. This is one of the many reasons Porto Alegre is so important--it's our own event.

Furthermore, not everyone can afford to travel far away or be away from jobs and family in order to attend protests. It's impossible to build a genuine social movement purely on the basis of a leftwing jet-set or a youth culture. We must get the press to stop comparing everything to "Seattle" in  terms of numbers because numbers are not the point or not the only point. Sometimes, infrequently, we should be out in force and fill the streets but not at every one of the opponent's gatherings. You can be in opposition while staying where you are and if we're creative we can also occupy the media's attention.  Wherever we are, in my view, we must declare ourselves unequivocally a non-violent movement and isolate politically and physically the violent elements who believe that breaking windows, setting fires or attacking cops can in some obscure way threaten capitalism. Yes, I know that the cops often start the violence; yes, I know that many people, especially young men, are desperate and enraged but I still maintain that "capitalism" is only too happy to watch us making stupid mistakes that can be blown up on television and gain sympathy for our adversaries while isolating us from people who might otherwise be our allies. Again, this is no way to build a broad movement. Remember, we will never bring older people, families with children, the handicapped and the less physically fit, minorities and others who can't afford to be arrested and many others to our side of the struggle and to our demonstrations if we can't guarantee peaceful protest.

Peaceful, however, doesn't mean "boring". We need to think much harder about using artistic expression in theatre, dance, music, cinema and painting to make our message more vivid, more colourful and compelling. We must learn how to make our adversaries look ridiculous because they are ridiculous. Anyone who cherishes the enemy's values is not just small-minded and despicable but also foolish. Making fun of them requires imagination, humour, derision. Remember those heros of the people who have thrown richly deserved cream pies at the likes of Michel Camdessus and Mike Moore. Just now, the WTO is asking for private donations in cash in order to, I quote, "instruct have-not nations in the complex rules of international commerce". What an admission of the nondemocratic functioning of this organisation! Their own members don't even know what they've signed on for. Should we take up a charity collection for the WTO? Should we transfer thousands of checks for 10 cents to its bank account? Let's learn to use such weaknesses to our own advantage.

As we protest, we must also propose. This is a  complex subject. All too often, the citizen movement is portrayed as a bunch of anarchists who don't agree on anything except that they don't want rules. You all know the refrain: "If you don't accept the rules of the WTO, you will take us back to the protectionist wars of the 1930s and maybe to war itself". "The WTO exists to protect the weak against the strong but you want the law of the jungle." "Trade is good for the poor, you are against trade, therefore you are against the poor". Similar justifications exist for the Fund, the Bank and the others. We have to make clear that we want rules and we know that no system, including Porto Alegre, can function without them. The really important question is who makes the rules and on whose behalf. We justifiably refuse the rules of unelected, opaque organizations, whether corporations, financial markets or international institutions.


We have already started working to put other rules in their place. Our proposals must have instantly recognised legitimacy, meaning they must be founded on the corpus of international law elaborated in the 20th century: human rights, environmental agreements, basic labour conventions and the like. This law must always precede and supersede more specialised legal systems like the dispute resolution mechanism of the WTO. Corporations and their executive officers should be made legally, personally responsible for the actions of the corporation anywhere in the world. Financial markets need to be controlled through taxation and, where warranted, through currency controls.

Just as our forebears fought for and won national taxation systems to alleviate inequalities and provide services nationally, so we have to fight for international taxation in a world where the real money--whether of corporations or of the richest individuals--can escape to tax havens or be hidden in dummy companies. In a world where official development aid is in free fall, where the real wealth flows from the poor South to the rich North; there is only one way to start reducing the indecent North-South gap. That is to tax international capital. The best targets for taxation are financial transactions and corporate mergers and acquisitions. We are always told that such taxes are not technically feasible. This is a lie. The world as a whole has never been so rich and the technology exists if governments want to use it. The real problem is that they do not.

As we make our proposals, let's refuse the attitude Ralph Nader has called "defeatist realism". If you start from the premise that it's impossible to get what you really want, then you won't even try. During the fight against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the trade unions in the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Committee--the TUAC-argued that the MAI was going to pass anyway, so they should try at best to obtain a social clause. Aside from the fact that a social clause in the MAI would have been meaningless, this attitude reflected the demoralisation of the labour movement. We actually did defeat the MAI, unfortunately with no input at all from those unions, though some dissident unions were immensely important. Let's always aim for the maximum. Sometimes "realism" means demanding what may at first glance seem impossible.

All victories may be temporary and partial, but there are no "small" victories. We had a famous case in the European Parliament where some left-wing MPs refused to vote for a feasibility study of the Tobin Tax on international currency transactions on the pretext that the Tobin Tax would merely amend capitalism whereas they meant to overthrow capitalism entirely. Their few negative votes caused the resolution to fail.

I'm sorry to admit it, but I haven't the slightest idea what "overthrowing capitalism" means in the early 21st century. Maybe we will witness what the philosopher Paul Virilio has called the "global accident" but it would surely be accompanied by enormous human suffering. If all the financial and stock markets suddenly collapsed, millions would be thrown out onto the pavement as large and small firms failed, bank closures would far outstrip the capacity of governments to prevent catastrophe, insecurity and crime would run rampant and we would find ourselves living in the Hobbesian hell of the war of all against all. Call me a reformist if you like--I want to avoid such a future. I also want to avoid the programmed neo-liberal future. If my analysis is correct, that means both stopping the adversary's programme and forcing through measures which can replace the present savage capitalist system with a cooperative one in which markets have their place but cannot dictate their law to the whole of society. In this perspective, there are no small victories and any victory we can win becomes the platform for future gains.

We know very well what we're fighting for. Unpayable debt, which has in any case been paid several times over, must be cancelled and restitution begun. The International Financial Institutions have to be placed under democratic control. If it is determined that they still have a role, then it must benefit the majority. We need an international trade regime but not that of the WTO. Some goods have to be placed firmly beyond the realm of commerce and market relations. Among these would be basic provisions of food and water for everyone [but people who want to fill their swimming pools should have to pay serious money]. Health, education and other social services are not merchandise but rights. Public transport and housing can be provided generously.

Once people have a basic level of material security, they become infinitely more productive and enrich their own societies. It is quite feasible, materially speaking, to establish a universal welfare threshold for everyone on earth-not as charity but as a right, simply by virtue of the fact of being  human. The world has never been so rich and we have all the organisational and technological skills needed, plus the capacity to monitor distribution in order to prevent corruption and waste. In other words, there are no excuses for not changing the world.


Probably everyone in Porto Alegre agrees that our struggles must be based on strong national coalitions, uniting farmers, workers, environmentalists, women, professionals, cultural workers and other intellectuals, the unemployed, the landless and the homeless, immigrants, human rights activists and many other forces. On that basis, we can link our struggles regionally and internationally. Both nationally and internationally, one needn't agree on everything to work together towards common goals.

Let me end by saying I honestly and deeply believe all this can be done. There is no reason to be pessimistic, there has never been such an upsurge of militant energy and activism since the Vietnam War. I think we can win. But only on the condition that we accept a painful reality: almost everything takes a much longer time to accomplish than we could have ever imagined. Perhaps the best, or the worst example is the debt issue on which many of us began fighting 15 years ago and whose consequences have become worse with every passing year. So perhaps the hardest lesson of all we need to learn is to lose, but to lose without becoming discouraged.

True, our adversaries may be ahead of us. They got together earlier, they have the money, the power, most of the media and much of the organisation on their side. But we should never  forget that we have the numbers, we have the ideas and that everything we cherish today, all the gains of the past from which we now benefit were fought for by people who began by losing. They fought and lost, and fought and lost and then one day they won. We should try to be worthy of them by showing the same patience and determination. We are trying to do something no one has ever done before in history: No wonder it's hard! Meanwhile, remember that people on our side have more joy, they have more true comrades and more reasons to live. Let's rejoice in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and make it a huge success. Together, all of you there and all of us throughout the world who, like me, can't be there but share in the spirit; together we will make the words "Porto Alegre" stand for human dignity, solidarity and democracy.   I would like to start with a reference to the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, which contains a remarkable and prophetic diagnostic of capitalist globalization The capitalist system, insisted the two young authors, is embarking upon a process of cultural and economic unification of the world : « By exploiting the world market, the bourgeoisie has made production and consumption a cosmopolitan concern for every country. To the great regret of reactionaries, it has removed industry's national base (... ). The self-sufficiency and regional and national isolation of the old days have been replaced by a widespread circulation and a widespread interdependency between nations. This is as much the case for material production as for intellection production ».


It is not just a question of expansion, but also of domination : the bourgeoisie « compels all nations, if they do not want to head for their own undoing, to adopt the bourgeoisie's mode of production ; it compels them to introduce in their own countries what is considered to be civilization - that is to become bourgeois. In a word, it has created a world in its own image » (3).


In the discussion of the future of nation states there are two mistakes that must be avoided : the first is to consider nation states as institutions that are in decline or disappearing, or that they are losing all political or economic power as a consequence of the process of capitalist globalisation ; and the second is to believe that the defense of a nation and of national sovereignty is the only, or the principle, line of defence against the catastrophes brought on by the globalised market.


Let us start with the first point : contrary to what is often said, nation states continue to play a decisive role in political and economic fields. Nicos Poulantzas was correct in writing that in imperialist countries, « the national state...  is undergoing important modifications in order to take over the internationalization of capital. On the other hand, the current phase of imperialism and this internationalization removes nothing (we often wrongly think this however) of the pertinence of the role of the national state in this process » (4).


Let us remind ourselves that it is the governments of dominant capitalist countries that, through their representatives, determine the neoliberal politics of the G-7, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. It is these same states that, through the use of their military instruments such as in particular NATO, impose their order on a world scale, as demonstrated by the wars of imperial intervention in the Gulf and in Yugoslavia. Finally, the North American nation state, unique super-power in today's world, practices an undoubted economic, political and military hegemony (5) 

As far as southern hemisphere countries are concerned, nation states have never stopped playing an important role : allowing for exceptions, they tend to function as a driving belt for the system of imperial domination. They submit themselves unhesitatingly to the demands of financial capital and to the dictates of the IMF, make the payment of the exterior debt a priority for the national budget, and put into practice - with zeal - the neoliberal policies of `structural adjustment'.

 *partie=titre Nation state, nationalism, globalization, internationalism  *partie=nil 


How are we to put up a resistance against capitalist globalization, with its neoliberal policies that produce brutal social inequalities, ecological disasters, social regression, `economic horror', and an aggravation of debt and dependency for third world countries ? It is obvious that the nation state has a role to play in this resistance, and the first requirement for any anti-systemic movement ­ to use the pertinent terminology of Immanuel Wallerstein  ­ is that a country's government should break away from the orientations imposed upon it by the IMF, declare a moratorium on its external debt, and re-direct production towards the needs of the interior market. However it would be a dangerous illusion to believe that salvation lies in purely `national' resistance.

 
By Michael Löwy 
*{  
The complete original document with footnotes can be found at: http://attac.org/fra/list/doc/lowyen.htm 
 }


 How are we to put up a resistance against capitalist globalization, with its neoliberal policies that produce brutal social inequalities, ecological disasters, social regression, `economic horror', and an aggravation of debt and dependency for third world countries ? It is obvious that the nation state has a role to play in this resistance, and the first requirement for any anti-systemic movement ­ to use the pertinent terminology of Immanuel Wallerstein ­ is that a country's government should break away from the orientations imposed upon it by the IMF, declare a moratorium on its external debt, and re-direct production towards the needs of the interior market. However it would be a dangerous illusion to believe that salvation lies in purely `national' resistance. It is, insists Nicos Poulantzas, above all important not to fall into the trap of «the line of defence of one's `own' national state against `cosmopolitan institutions' » (6). An efficient combat against the empire of multi-national capital cannot limit itself to the nation state, and this for several reasons : 

1) Victories obtained on a national level are limited, precarious and constantly menaced by the powers of the world capital market and its institutions.


2) A narrow national perspective does not allow for the formation of alliances or for the constitution of an alternative world focus of attention. Only a coalition of international forces is capable of affronting and forcing a retreat upon global capital and its instruments such as the IMFand the WTO.


3) The nation state is not a homogenous social space. Class contradictions, social conflicts and the fracture between an oligarchy and the working masses, between the privileged élite and the multitude of the poor and excluded, cut across national barriers.


4) The legitimacy of progressive and emancipating national movements such as those of the Kurds, the Palestinians and the inhabitants of East Timor cannot be denied, neither can it be denied that nationalism, in today's world, tends to  take on essentially supremacist forms. Intercommunity massacres, national or religious wars, `ethnic purification' and even genocides, have become characteristic of the last decade of the 20th century.


5) The most urgent problems of our era are international. The third world debt, the imminent threat of ecological disaster, the necessity of controling financial speculation and suppressing tax havens, are all global problems that demand global solutions.


In order to fight the system efficiently, it is necessary to act simultaneously upon three levels : local, national and global. The Zapatist movement is a good example of this dialectic : deeply rooted within the indigenous communities of the Chiapas and in their demand for autonomy, it is at the same time fighting the world hegemony of neoliberalism. This is also the case for the peasants' land rights movement (MST) in Brazil, which has its social base in a local mobilization and land occupation, and offers a project for alternative development for their country, but without neglecting to participate in all the international mobilizations that exist against liberal globalization.


It is not a question of fighting `globalization' as such, in the name of some retrograde defence of `national sovereignty', of the nation state, or of (capitalist) national industry, but more a question of opposing the imperialist globalization that `really exists' with another global project of emancipation, democracy, equality and freedom. This does not mean that the movement for radical social change should not begin on the level of one or several nations, nor that movements for national liberation are not legitimate. But contemporary struggles are, to a degree without precedent, interdependent and linked from one end of the planet to the other. In reaction to the ravages of globalization, we observe here and there the appearance of the first seeds of a new internationalism, independent of states and of particularized groups of interest. These are the bases of what will one day become the `Resistance Internationale' against the neoliberal capitalist offensive.


This renewal of internationalism has not just come to be through the most radical trade union and political forces of the socialist and workers' movement (grouping all constituents from marxists to libertarians). New internationalist leanings also appear in the social movements that have a planetary vocation such as feminism and ecology, in antiracist movements, in the theology of liberation, in the associations for the defence of human rights or for solidarity with third world countries, and, more recently, in the teeming network of movements fighting the `merchandizing of the world' Not to speak of well-known intellectuals such as Pierre Bourdieu or Jacques Derrida, who consider the foundation of a Resistance Internationale as today's most urgent tasks.


If certain international NGO's function simply as `lobbies', adapting themselves to the dominant neoliberal framework and limiting themselves to giving `advice' to the IMF and to the World Bank, others such as the committee for the abolition of the third world debt (Comité pour l'Abolition de la Dette du Tiers-Monde), in Brussels ; the alternative economic Forum launched on an initiative taken out by Samir Amin ; the People's Conference against freeexchange and the WTO, in Geneva ; or the international association ATTAC (association pour la taxation des transactions financières et l'aide aux citoyens : the association for the taxation of financial transactions for aid towards citizens), have a clearly anti-imperialist vocation.


Radical christians are an essential component, be it those making up third world social movements ­ often inspired, notably in Latin America, by the theology of liberation ­ be it European associations aiming at solidarity with the struggles of poor countries. Inspired by a humanist and ecumenical christian ethic, they offer an important contribution to the elaboration of a new internationalist culture.


The new movement of farming communities, organized on a world scale in the case of the association Via Campesina, also occupies a strategic position in the process of international resistance in the sense that it is the hinge between agrarian struggles, ecological struggles and the battle against the WTO. The organizations such as the landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil and the Confédération Paysanne in France are at the avant-garde of the resistance against the huge capitalist agricultural industry that threatens the planet with its pesticides and its genetically modified organisms, and destroys forests ­ the guardians of the planet's ecological equilibrium ­ with its policy of `profitability'.


A selection of the most active representatives of these various tendencies, from both the north and the south of the planet, from the radical left or from modern social movements, joined in a united and fraternal spirit in July 1996 in order to attend the Intergalactic Conference for Humanity and against Neoliberalism in the Chiapas mountains of Mexico, called together by the Zapatist National Liberation Army. It was a first step, modest, but in the right direction : towards the reconstruction of an international solidarity.


The events in Seattle in 1999 saw an impressive rallying of trade union, ecological and anti-capitalist forces that succeeded in thwarting the plans of the World Trade Organization ­ the number one instrument of neoliberal globalization  ­ and revealed the potential in North America for fighting against the merchandization of the planet. In Europe, also, the movements of resistance to neoliberalism are far from negligible, as demonstrated by the recent mobilizations in Millau in the year 2000, in which 100,000 people assembled in solidarity with José Bové and his combat against the WTO ; or in Prague during the meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The International Meeting in Paris, in December 2000, and the World  Social Forum which took place in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, are the most recent high points of this planetary mobilization which  ­ above and beyond necessary protest ­ is searching for radical alternatives to the existing order.


Three constituents participate in the construction of this `Resistance Internationale' : I) the renovation of the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist tradition of proletarian internationalism, rid of the authoritarian scoria of the past (the Stalinist inheritance of blind submission to a state or a `camp') ; II) the humanist, libertarian, ecological, feminist and democratic aspirations of the new social movements and III) the new networks fighting neoliberal globalization, which mobilize not only critical researchers but young people who wish to do battle with the institutions of the international commercial and financial system.


In the mobilizations of the last few years we are witness to a joining of these forces. This is not just a question of a juxtapostion of social actors with very different traditions and political cultures, but of the beginning of a reciprocal apprenticeship in the face of a whole series of questions. We see, for example, trade unionists beginning to take an interest in ecology, and the defenders of the environment taking into consideration workers' struggles ; Marxists who learn from the feminists, and vice-versa. It is from the convergence of and the interaction between these different positions that a universalist and liberating internationalism will spring in the 21st century.

Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade of the House Committee on Financial Services 
Hearing on U.S. Policy toward  the African Development Bank and African Development Fund  
April 25, 2001 
Testimony by Njoki Njoroge Njehû 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade of the House Committee on Financial Services as it examines U.S. policy toward and participation in the activities of the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund.


As an African, a Kenyan woman and Director of the 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, I welcome both the privilege and the responsibility that comes with this invitation. The 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice is a coalition of over 200 U.S. grassroots, women's, solidarity, faith-based, policy, social  - and economic- justice, youth, labor and development organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the  International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Network works in solidarity with over 185 international partner organizations in more than 65 countries. Through education and action, the Network is committed to transforming the international financial institutions' policies and practices, to ending the outside imposition of neo-liberal economic programs, and to making the development process democratic and accountable. We were founded in 1994, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the World Bank and IMF. We focus on action-oriented economic literacy training, public mobilization, and policy advocacy.

Your letter of invitation, Mr. Chairman, asked me to address a number of specific issues and questions: the issues facing the new administration relative to U.S. interests and participation in the African Development Bank and Fund; a comparison between the role of the African Development Bank in addressing economic development in Africa with the role of the World Bank, IMF, and other major bilateral assistance donors;  the debate on grants vs. loans and lending for poverty alleviation vs. physical infrastructure; and if the African Development Bank is playing a significant role in promoting free market reforms and private enterprise, debt relief for highly indebted poor countries, and the challenge of HIV/AIDS to economic development in sub-Saharan Africa.

These are important questions which are at the heart of the future of the African continent, not only from the perspective of the role of the African Development Bank and Fund, but also of the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions and countries that lend and provide donor assistance in Africa. I believe that in looking at these questions one of the key distinctions to make must be between intent and outcome. While the intentions of those lending and providing donor assistance to African countries are often clearly articulated  - poverty alleviation, debt relief, structural and policy reforms, etc. - the question that we must ask over and over is whether the outcome matches the stated intent of policies and projects of the multilateral financial institutions.

When one looks at the realities that are experienced by 3     >     US Policy toward ADB and ADF 

U.S. Policy toward the African Development Bank and African Development Fund 
I strongly believe that the role of African institutions is to work to effectively address the challenges that face Africa. Instead of more reforms, what is needed is clinics stocked with drugs and workers; schools with textbooks and trained teachers; safe water for all instead of privatization contracts for multinational corporations; free public education for African children just like for children in the U.S. states; policies that put people before profits. There is a proven track record of investment and political will in the campaigns against polio, smallpox, and the campaign to immunize the world's children against the major vaccine preventable diseases (measles, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, etc.) We went from covering about 5% of the world's children in 1980 to 80% in 1990, and have saved about three million children a year. Not only do we know what needs to be done, we know how to do it, and we have done it in a number of instances. The same can be true for Africa.

 
By Njoki Njoroge Njehû 
*{ Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network 
The complete original document with footnotes can be found at: http://attac.org/fra/toil/doc/50years.htm 
Published in collaboration with the authors, 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice http://
www.50years.org/ } 
 *partie=titre  US Policy toward ADB and ADF  *partie=nil 

Africans, as well as the peoples in other regions of the Global South (Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean), it is undeniable that the outcomes of implementation of structural adjustment programs, free market reforms, debt relief and privatization have failed. The fact is that aspects of these policies and programs --such as cuts in food subsidies, cuts in credit to farmers, non-food cash crop farming, user fees for health and education and water privatization  -- condemn millions to hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and death.

Africans work hard and survive against many challenges. Life in rural Africa today, for the majority of people, is very similar to what I knew growing up: raising a wide range of crops, both to sell at local market and for family consumption; raising chickens or selling the family cow when extra income was needed for school fees; no electricity; dirt roads that cover you with dust in the dry season and mud in the rainy season; planting trees to fight desertification; pooling your resources with neighbors to bring piped water, a clinic, or a school to your village in the spirit of Harambee or "pulling together". And above all never losing hope: in my mother tongue we say, Gûtirî ûtukû ûtakîa ­ "there is no dark night that is not followed by daybreak." This is why people never lose hope, but keep fighting and struggling for lives and livelihoods of dignity even when everything seems to be working against them. African parents, like parents everywhere, work hard to provide the basics for their families  -- food, shelter, education, safe drinking water, and health care -- and hope that their children will do better than they have.

There are many questions about why Africa remains impoverished. There have been so many development projects, yet the quality of life of the majority of people seems to get worse instead of better, and the projects fall apart so quickly? The Kenya I left in 1986 to attend college in the United States was, like the rest of Africa, better off than today's Kenya. At the time the talk was about how much worse things had gotten  -- higher prices, worse roads, fewer jobs, lower-quality health care and education -- in the previous few years. Sometimes economists or social commentators say a country has "hit bottom." In Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia, and the other countries of Africa, we keep finding new bottoms, or to be more precise, that there is no bottom that can't get worse. The external debts grow even as we pay more and more to service the debt.

When I return to Kenya now to visit my family, I find that prices have continued to soar and people  -- people I always thought of as "not poor"-- are unable to buy the things they thought of as necessities. People are being laid off or getting the "golden handshake" (early retirement), and university graduates routinely find no hopes for employment. New religious sects spring up to offer people some hope that all the old ways seem unable to deliver; farmers are unable to afford fertilizers, and coffee farmers choose to dump their coffee rather than accept the belowcost prices being offered them. Today my widowed grandmother cannot support herself selling coffee from her 1,500 bushes that once supported her and her ten children. In the meantime a cup of coffee costs over a dollar at Starbucks, and Kenya AA coffee sells for 10 - 12 dollars a pound! Public hospitals sleep two patients to a bed, require families to go to pharmacies to buy the medication administered to patients, as well as provide all the food for in-patients. Most families cannot afford the school fees (user fees) imposed on education from nursery school to university, which often result in girl children not being educated because they are not a priority. In this context of a continent faced with tremendous challenges that seem almost insurmountable, we must ask some questions about the role of the African Development Bank African Development Bank, now over three decades old, , an institution that was founded to finance projects that would provide the basis for employment, technology, and a way out of poverty. Instead of an Africa where promises have been kept, we see an Africa that has been in a rapid and a long decline  -- an Africa that has endured worsening economic circumstances since the time of the Bank's founding. This subcommittee can help begin to chart a new direction for the African Development Bank one that would provide the basis for employment, technology, and a way out of poverty in support of African peoples' initiatives.

Sub-Saharan Africa is rich in human and natural resources, but faces many challenges: an almost unimaginable AIDS crisis, with 17 million already dead, and 25 million more infected; a lack of formal job opportunities, with government budget cuts constantly terminating more and more of the best-paying jobs; a crisis of food security, with so much of the best land devoted to export crops at the insistence of policies from the World Bank and the IMF, , leaving people vulnerable to even short disruptions in rainfall; environmental destruction that exacerbates already existing serious problems; illiteracy; conflicts and civil wars; high levels of maternal and infant mortality; and a huge debt burden.

The African Development Bank has many historical shortcomings which I will not dwell on because unlike my copanelists I am neither an economist nor someone with experience at the Bank itself. I would just point out that the original institution now lends to very few sub-Saharan countries; its "soft-loan" affiliate, the African Development Fund, has a wider reach. This is so because most of the continent's countries don't qualify for  the Bank's marketrate loans. The Bank itself, even as it recovers from its management crisis of the 1990s, is losing relevance  to most of the people of the continent.

I want, then, to focus today on what I believe most Africans themselves would say about development and economic recovery on our continent. In a nutshell it's this: it isn't working. The way development is done now, and has been done since the beginning of Africa's economic decline, has harmed Africa more than it has helped it. Our access to services, our employment prospects, our nutritional standards, our overall standard of living have all been declining since 1980.

What changed around 1980? Certainly there was  the oil price crises of the 1970s, which hit many African countries very hard. And the worldwide bump in interest rates as the U.S. Federal Reserve fought inflation here also had a negative impact on Africa countries' debt burdens. The debt crisis that swept Latin America in the early 1980s also hit Africa. The differences were, first, that the amounts our countries owed were not so large as Mexico's or Argentina's debts, so we didn't make headlines, and second, that the crisis, which despite the lower numbers was just as serious for us in proportion to the size of our economies, has never stopped.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to pay back more to the World Bank and the IMF than it gets from those institutions. And despite this tremendous diversion of resources, and in several cases despite even a country's acceptance into the IMF/World Bank "debt relief" program, our debt levels continue to rise. Social services continue to be cut, people continue to be laid off, prices continue to rise.

Indeed, it is obvious that development is not working for Africa. And while African governments and even the African Development Bank have made many mistakes that have contributed to the failures of development, I believe we have to look deeper. We have to recognize that since around 1980, most of the governments on the continent have been attempting to implement programs designed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They have had little choice in the matter: to get any access at all to capital and international markets, they have had to accept the recommendations of those institutions. The African Development Bank Group itself defers to, accepts, and enforces the policies of the IMF and World Bank.

The governments haven't always implemented these "structural adjustment" programs completely, but the core of the economic policies of these countries has been the IMF/World Bank vision of "sound economic reform": polices that liberalize trade laws, abolish subsidies, make labor "flexible" (meaning easier layoffs and lower minimum wages), privatize government-owned companies and industries, open up economies to multinational corporations, provide incentives like high interest rates for international investment (even when those same rates exclude small farmers and businesses from accessing capital), slash public services, and re-orient entire economies away from subsistence and toward exports.

I am less interested in talking about economic ideology or intentions here than I am in talking about actual results. The results of these programs have been devastating. Attached to my testimony is a chart prepared by a World Bank staff economist which demonstrates quite graphically the almost perfectly inverse relationship between structural adjustment programs and growth. The point here is not whether different incentives are needed, whether governments are to blame for not adhering to the programs, or how some changes in emphasis might produce better results. We have in fact spent years arguing with the institutions and government officials about precisely these questions. What is important here is creating change. How do we end the user fees that these programs have mandated for health care and education, which prevent girls from going to school and the sick from getting medicine? How do we get reasonable credit for farmers so they don't have to sell their land to large agricultural businesses and move into the cities? How do we build an Africa where people have enough to eat, with rising levels of literacy, decent health care, access to water, and environmentally sustainable practices? 
It is not going to happen through more of the same. Structural adjustment conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank are no less harmful when imposed by the African Development Bank or African Development Fund. Loans for development to already severely-indebted countries do not add less to that debt burden if they come from Abidjan instead of Washington.

The market plan has not worked for Africa. We need a Marshall Plan. When Europe was devastated by World War II, the U.S. recognized that lending to devastated economies was an illogical way to develop, since the debt would continue to burden the fragile beginnings of new industry. Instead, recognizing its interest in a healthy European economy, it implemented the Marshall Plan, moving about two percent of the U.S. GNP to Europe for free. Africans and other peoples of the Global South need nothing less and  nothing more than what was accorded Europe. Africa, which was brutalized by colonialism, with its borders re-drawn, its peoples  sold as slaves, and its resources exploited for the profit of foreign interests, became "independent" in the 1950s and 1960s and told to develop itself. As assistance it was given some grants and a lot of loans. When these countries, which had never been part of the global economy on an equal footing, got into debt, they were given more  loans  -- like taking out one credit card to pay off another. As that debt treadmill continued, more and more conditions were put on the countries. They were told they could be just like the U.S. or South Korea by following those countries' policies. The trouble was that those countries developed with the aid of protectionist or isolationist policies. Africa was thrown to the mercies of the markets after a few years of independence. The debt we incurred was used as a coercive weapon to force us to accept policies representative governments would never have independently decided to implement. And predictably the policies have failed.

The much-vaunted Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC ) initiative has fallen short of the goals of relieving Africa's debts. Some beneficiaries of the HIPC Initiative will pay as much, if not more, in debt  service after "graduating" from the program. After World War II, as the Marshall Plan was providing the kickstart for European economies, Germany negotiated terms that allowed it to pay no more than 3.5% of its annual export income on its foreign debt, and nothing at all if it did not have a trade surplus. In Africa, countries have found themselves paying 40, 50, or 60 percent of their annual export income on debt. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative of the IMF and World Bank, when it accepts countries into its scheme, and when it works as it promises to do, aims to reduce those payments to between 10 and 15 percent of annual export income, with no provision for years when a trade surplus cannot be achieved.

People in Africa think the system is fixed. They see new economic programs that welcome more foreign companies into their countries and offer incentives to grow more cash crops or work in assembly plants, but they still see their standard of living decline. They hear that the African Development Bank will be rescued from its morass by wealthy governments, but they aren't surprised to find that it operates as a mini-World Bank, imposing the same conditions for the same kind of projects.

Africa needs debt cancellation -- one hundred percent of the debts owed by these countries to their multilateral creditors. The IMF and World Bank have tremendous resources. Given that the people of Africa are slipping, and its children are dying, we fail to see why those institutions continue to plow their money into private sector "investments" in Asia and Latin America, all the while declaring that Africa and the end of poverty are their overriding concerns. They say they cannot "afford" to cancel the debts owed them, but their spending elsewhere suggests otherwise, as did an independent audit released last week by the Drop the Debt campaign in the U.K. We believe that they can not only drop the debt owed them, but that they can make a sizable contribution to wiping out the debts owed the African Development Bank Group.

If Africa is to move forward and overcome the present challenges, bilateral and multilateral funders must move from loans to grants. Loans create more debt in the midst of trying to address existing debt problems. It does not make sense to be creating debt with one hand while trying to eliminate it with the other hand.

Africa needs freedom from structural adjustment conditions, which have failed for over twenty years but keep being revised, renamed, and expanded by the multilateral institutions.

Finally, Africa needs its Development Bank to be something other than a surrogate or junior partner to the World Bank. I am not suggesting that it become a charitable foundation. I know that it will not have unlimited resources. What I am suggesting is this: that the intractable economic crisis of Africa be recognized as such, and that the African Development Bank be given a mission to design and implement creative solutions. These programs should be designed independently with the particular circumstances of a specific country, or specific part of a country, taken fully into account. And these programs should put in place bold new ideas, breaking out of the failed economic models recommended for so long by the IMF and World Bank. Rather than finding new ways to privatize or liberalize, pick a province or district in Mozambique, say, and provide the government there the resources to attract dedicated and intelligent individuals who know the area well, and see if a government-owned cashew processing facility can provide employment and make a reasonable profit.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of alternative development models that have not been implemented for lack of resources and expertise. There are community level initiatives throughout Africa that are struggling and have not seen widespread implementation because of lack of resources. Africans are not looking for handout, all they want is the chance and the support to enable them to succeed.

I am not here to propose a new model to replace the old one because I believe that there can be no single model of development that will work for all. I believe that geography, culture, size, climate, amount of available resources, and political system affect the success or failure of a development or economic model. What we do see is that the current system does not work, and until we find a better one the people of Africa will be living in increasing poverty. The only way to change that is to allow the people of Africa to experiment with new approaches to development. Some will fail, certainly. But how much worse than today's failures will those be? When we find the ones that succeed, we will surely be on the way to finding solutions that can be applied to more and more of Africa.

The African Development Bank Group, which today does little that is unique to it, is uniquely positioned to do this work. It is the only major development bank on the continent, and it is staffed by nearly a thousand African experts. So long as it exists, it is surely a waste to have it duplicate the kind of work the World Bank does on a larger scale in Africa. I hope that this subcommittee, in considering future U.S. involvement at the African Development Bank Group, will consider recommending that this institution take advantage of its unique capacities and adopt a mandate to innovate and experiment in addressing the economic crisis that deprives so many Africans of hope, opportunity, and even life itself.

In the meantime, while Africans struggle and seek out their future and the future of their continent, it would serve them well to have the support of the rest of the human family. We need opportunities for people and countries to determine their own future, not more hoops like the new Poverty Reduction Strategy Process (PRSP) of the IMF and World Bank. We need grants to allow Africans to follow dreams of development and get a fair chance to succeed without mortgaging our grandchildren's future to more loans and therefore more debt. We need credit for farmers growing food crops, not more land reform programs designed by bureaucrats who have never visited a small rural farm, let alone been a farmer. We need access to basic health care, not more user fees which result in many children  dying because their parents cannot afford three cents for immunization. We just need a chance to succeed and to live with dignity.

I strongly believe that the role of African institutions is to work to effectively address the challenges that face Africa. Instead of more reforms, what is needed is clinics stocked with drugs and workers; schools with textbooks and trained teachers; safe water for all instead of privatization contracts for multinational corporations; free public education for African children just like for children in the U.S. states; policies that put people before profits. There is a proven track record of investment and political will in the campaigns against polio, smallpox, and the campaign to immunize the world's children against the major vaccine preventable diseases (measles, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, etc.) We went from covering about 5% of the world's children in 1980 to 80% in 1990, and have saved about three million children a year. Not only do we know what needs to be done, we know how to do it, and we have done it in a number of instances. The same can be true for Africa. Again I urge you to act in solidarity with African peoples and watch them succeed! 
An introduction to and summary of a workshop on European citizen campaigns against globalisation, which took place in Paris on 6 January 2001.

A vast citizen's movement has been mobilised to challenge globalisation and to call into question its everprogressing ascendancy. This movement  finds the inspiration for its structure and ideas in former campaigns, to which it gives in return a new lease of life.

This movement is currently made up of four active international campaigns consisting of the campaign for debt cancellation, the campaign opposing the WTO, the campaign for the reform of international financial institutions (otherwise known as the Bretton Woods Project), and the campaign to counter the financial markets by a tax on financial transactions, better known as ATTAC.

The convergence of these campaigns has brought about a change of face on the international scene. since 1995 .
From Madrid ,on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Bretton Woods,met with demonstrations  and the cry "Fifty years is enough!" , to Seattle, Washington, Prague, Nice and Porto Alegre,the opposition has forced the great and powerful of this world to wipe the self satisfied look from their faces.

 
How the different campaigns converge whilst preserving their individuality.

There is a clear convergence with respect to the shape and form that these mobilisations take, as well as in the way they operate, and this can be witnessed at every level; international, national and regional. In this way, the same movements, the same pressure groups and the same people are all participating in each of the different campaigns.

Each campaign maintains its own specific identity, which is detectable both in its slogans and in the nature of the movements and the coalitions that rally round it. In this way then, support for the debt campaign has widened to encompass different churches as well as trade unions. The campaign for the reform of financial institutions mainly involves the international solidarity movements and environmental groups. United around the campaign against financial speculation and market supremacy are trade unions, political movements and movements engaged in the struggle against poverty. The campaign to implicate the WTO is a new development in as much as it unites the green lobby, consumers and workers associations, as well as producer groups, most notably peasant farmers.

 *partie=titre Bringing accountability to the fore.  *partie=nil 


The citizen's movement has already obtained its first results by making it possible for the nature of globalisation to be clearly explained. In the first instance, it has accentuated the harmful effects and has put those who flatter themselves with being the standard bearers of this new phenomenon on the defensive. Secondly, it has devoted itself, through some rather prickly debates, to sorting through the current process of globalisation, and separating out that which derives from a laborious and contradictory evolutionary tendency, and that which characterises this current phase of the process and is a consequence of the prevailing neo-liberal and discriminatory ideology.  Finally, it has attempted to submit to public scrutiny and debate at an international level. The systems and mechanisms which structure the world on economic and social, political and military, and cultural and ideological grounds.


 *partie=titre Globalization versus the citizen's movement.  *partie=nil 


It will be the international, if not the global level, which will end up being the determinate one. It is so already in the economic and military sphere. The job falls to us to build up the international public opinion indispensable to political progress that does not give way to inter-state institutions and representatives of the economic power. It is at this level that the major contradiction between North and South is formalised. It is at that level also that it is possible to fix an independent calendar of major events, relying on national mobilisations.

 By Gus Massiah 
*{
Published in the Newsletter 74 
Translation: Karen Newby & Prudence Dwyer, volunteer translators. Philippe Agard coorditrad@atttac.org }  
This extensive movement of opposition and resistance  can be credited with having overcome the widespread sense of fatalism and with having made accountability a prime issue. It has put the decision making centres and their respective decision makers under the spotlight: international financial institutions, and their leaders and advisors, who design and impose the policies and regulatory procedures; the Northern countries, and in particular the governments of the ruling G7 countries and members of the OECD, who direct and control the international institutions in line with the interests of their own ruling classes; those who govern the Southern countries who maintain power through oppressive regimes, who participate in world wide corruption and who share the convictions of their elders in the North; the financial markets and their operators who have succeeded in imposing their profiteering logic on current ways of thinking; multinational companies who try to reduce the role of the state to nothing more than the maintenance of order and the protection of their own interests alone..


 *partie=titre A breeding ground for ideas.  *partie=nil 


By stressing accountability, this mobilisation has given rise to a surge of hope. It has revived the idea that a better world is possible. This is reflected in the flourishing crop of ideas and proposals resulting from the accumulation of citizen's expertise which is becoming rooted in the different movements, such as the ATTAC scientific council, the Globalisation Observatory, working on the WTO, the guidance committee of the IFI (international financial institutions) campaign and the committee working with the Southern countries in the debt campaign. This movement is creating social and political demand for research that is beginning to weigh  on  research bodies and  universities and on intellectual deabate in the media.

The proposals proffered by each campaign contribute to the public debate and their adoption by other campaigns allows them  to be fully developed. The debt campaign proposes partial or total cancellation of third world debt, acknowledgement of unlawfulness and co-responsibility, limiting its servicing to a proportion of total exports, subsequent use under citizen's control.. ATTAC's campaign is calling for the introduction of a tax on speculative financial transactions, on the use of this tax to access basic services, on the banning of tax havens and on the prevention of financial criminality, etc. The campaign against the international financial institutions is demanding democratic regulation and transparency, independent evaluation of all IFI intervention to be entrusted to the United Nations,no structural adjustment programmes or enforced antipoverty strategies , no tied or conditional aid and no external imposition from above of economic and social policies and the finally radical reform of IFIs.. The campaign against the WTO gives priority to the denial of  the primacy of the markets, to the predominance of the Declaration of Human Rights over commercial rights, to the refusal to accept the role of the Dispute Settlement Body, and to the need for an appeal body  available to all citizens.

 
Converting proposals into alternatives. The range of these proposals shows the scale of the movement, the extent of its inventiveness and its intellectual, civic, and social and political dimensions. But, a plethora of proposals does not make a programme ; it does not even serve to outline a draft  alternative. This is the perspective for viewing the passage  from Seattle to Porto Alegre  The linkage of movements and their development  took place on the international stage, and it is for us ,in view of this engagement, to question ourselves on the importance  of the European role.

It is obviously appropriate to review the individual campaigns in relation to the movement as a whole. Antiglobalisation campaigns are part of a much wider world movement. ATTAC, for  instance, is concerned with as pension funds, retirement benefits, health, and in general, the whole gamut of social and cultural themes. There is a reason for this; since globalisation is to be viewed as a general tendency, each problem can be referred back to it and every important issue provides an opportunity for challenge  and for showing that its development can be to some extent affected. Certain social groups, notably women, the young and peasants farmers are particularly active in this type of movement.

This list of possible campaigns is not exhaustive, as other movements may come to the fore , championing international law, for example, and opposing immunity,  promoting freedom of movement for all , sexual equality, the fight against AIDS, peaceful resolution of world conflicts,
opposing human rights abuses and promoting  democracy, etc.

In the two years to come,  several occasions on the international scene  will provide an opportunity for these proposals and to be more fully developed  and their coherence reinforced.  The Conference on Development Funding to be held in June 2002  will provide a forum for all the central questions in the debate to be fully discussed :    the impossibility of financing development under the burden of debt, the connection between international trade and finance, the role of the financial institutions, the dominant force of the financial markets, the role of multinational companies in investment, the debate on public aid for development, the need for  taxes  on financial transactions and for ecotaxes, the place of fiscal policies in equality of rights,the affects of corruption, tax havens and financial criminality. Similarly, the Rio+10 conference scheduled for September 2002, known now as the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development will present an appropriate forum for an international debate on the nature of development and development policies.

 
 *partie=titre The importance of the European contribution  *partie=nil 


On a national level, organised resistance is doubly significant. Firstly, it makes the formation of direct links between campaigns and different social movements possible, and secondly, it allows for more effective questioning of the responsibility of national governments. >From this standpoint, new forms of individual discussion by associated like-minded organisations, trade unions and pressure groups, in addition to discussions in the various media and parliamentary debate give new life to the political discussion.

It will be the international, if not the global level, which will end up being the determinate one. It is so already in the economic and military sphere. The job falls to us to build up the international public opinion indispensable to political progress that does not give way to inter-state institutions and representatives of the economic power. It is at this level that the major contradiction between North and South is formalised. It is at that level also that it is possible to fix an independent calendar of major events, relying on national mobilisations.

The international movement can rely for legitimacy on tenets, which provide the principles for an alternative view and lend coherence to the propositions. These tenets are: the international redistribution of wealth, international law and the possibility of access by individuals, democratic control of regulatory authorities, equal authority for North and South and subordination of the logic of the markets to respect for Human Rights.

Discussions held at the end of campaigns have confirmed the importance of the European contribution. Between the national level and the world level, the great geopolitical regions occupy an ambivalent position. They are in many ways the vectors of globalisation in its dominant neoliberal form, but they also provide the support for a countertendency, bearing feasible alternatives. The European Union, the most advanced of all the great geocultural regions as regards political integration, shows this ambivalence particularly clearly; hence the special interest for the mobilisations in the European contribution.

 
 *partie=titre European mobilisations *partie=nil 

 
The meeting between the campaigns has shown where they converge. This is even more marked because the same militants are often to be found in different campaigns. In several countries, the same groups who lead several campaigns. A task common to all at European level is required as  an earnest of good intentions. This consists in giving a lead at national level to mobilising social forces and public opinion, pressurising national parliaments to a certain extent and calling governments to account. It also involves approaching the various European authorities: Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission 
  *partie=titre The common work programme could be organised around several elements.  *partie=nil 


Projects common to the campaigns especially: opposition to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiated by the WTO and the non acceptance of the Dispute Settlement Body, control of international financial institutions, assessment of their activities by UN bodies and a court of international appeal with access available to citizens, recognition that the creation of debt is the responsibility of both parties, its character when unlawful and the cancellation of the debts of the poor countries, the prohibition of tax havens and a tax  on speculative financial transactions and ecotaxes.

A movement which would provide greater transparency regarding the differences between North and  South and which would be more closely linked to the movements of the South, relying on partnerships with social and political movements of the South and the other regions of the world.

The establishment in the European area of certain international claims which are within the control of the European institutions. Thus, for example, the banning of tax havens and a so-called Tobin tax could be envisaged at European level, without waiting for hypothetical and difficult world-wide application. The European economy is set to resist the effects of foreseeable distortion involving further partners, for example Canada, whose Parliament has already voted, in principle, in favour of such a tax. On the other hand,  the present European institutions might well use such a tax for providing individuals with access to basic services, which in principle does away with some of the criticisms of such a tax.

A European conference to draw up a European Development Scheme as a model. This could be carried out when the European positions are to be discussed in June 2002, at the Conference on Financing for Development and in September 2002 at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. An appeal to European researchers and universities, and to the scientific and intellectual community is needed to mastermind an intellectual battle, making  it possible to resist the wish entertained by the international financial institutions for the ascendancy of a prevailing line of thought.

An appeal for a European policy which refuses to be subordinated to the prevailing ideas of international institutions. Control over European representatives in these institutions. Refusal of any funding for projects and policies which would not conform to international law based on the universal declaration of human rights, to international accords and treaties and to the European agreements.

A discussion of positions defended, including divergences between participants in different campaigns, to define the real meaning of globalisation and projects and alternatives regarding the WTO, debt, the IFIs, the financial markets.

The joint task will take the form of exchange of information, a working party, and regular meetings in different European countries.

Two events are already in view; the G7 Meeting in Genoa in July 2001 and the European Council meeting in Belgium in December 2001.

The Porto Alegre World Social Forum affirmed the tenets behind the European events of 6 January 2001. It agreed that they should form part of a new perspective, a new phase for anti-globalisation movements - a stage marking the passage from mere resistance to the production of schemes and alternatives.

Since capitalism has become the ruling form of organization in economic life, employees included, the institutional forms, its development has created, have been influenced by two types of actors: The States-Nations whose legitimity grew with their capacity to match economic development with social cohesion. The working class movement which by his political and trade-unionist act made companies redistribute a part of the profits and the state to become more democratic and work towards the common interest.The liberal forms under which globalization operates today are upsetting this equilibrium. The exchange space, the investment space, the financial flows has spread worldwide whereas the ability to produce norms and have them being respected remains, for the most, the state's prerogative. As far as dialogue is concerned, between social partners, it remains equally nestled within each country's borders. Facing these difficulties, the action of citizens' movements, and especially ATTAC, take part into easing the birth of new regulations in capitalism. Economic Alternatives, a magazine whose aim goes to help all those who wish to better understand what is at sake in this economic and social debate, could do nothing but support such a movement.

 *partie=titre NEW FORMS OF SOCIAL INTERVENTION ARE NECESSARY  *partie=nil 


The rising of an international citizens' movement is all the more needed than it doesn't exist any actor who would or could produce satisfactory norms on a world scale. The United States, ruling power, possesses a structural capacity which would enable them to act towards it. But those governments' strategy has been since the 70's to spread their market field as long as  their financial and industrial firms get profit from it. The most operational International institutions, ruled by the biggest industrialized countriesIMF? World Bank, WTO (world trade org.) play only a limited part only on the economic field and lead to its similar wayOn the employees' organization side, trade-unions meet difficulties in getting organized on an international basis, in order to counteract the firms' power. Despite efforts led by organizations, such as CISL, or the CES, in Europe, the birth, of an international trade-unionism evolves in tiny, tiny steps compared to the rhythm with which an international capitalism is getting structured. Differences in standards of living, in traditions, in negotiations, make the establishing of solidarities quite difficult, and firms take advantage, very often of those differences in order to have employees concur in the diverse countries in which they are operating. Moreover, democratic liberties and the employees' elementary rights are not respected in many a developing country.Must we, all the same feel down? No, since that difficulty in framing the globalized capitalism goes on par with the development of the democratic debate, on the part played by economy in a good amount of countries. Nothing too surprising about that, the average cultural level of the population has never been as high, and everyone's access to news-in spite of its insufficiencies- eases the spreading of common representations. An increasing part of the world population copes with these problems and wishes to find solutions in their direct neighbourhood, nearly ninety percent of the population is employed in all the most industrialized countries, and this percentage goes bigger in Southern countries. As far as ecological limitations are concerned in a non defined accumulation of capital, the whole humanity is targeted.

 *partie=titre The Citizens' Pressure Must Civilize Globalization  *partie=nil 


We say "globalisation" as though all nations and all peoples could be included in a march to some future Promised Land, whereas we know this is a myth. "Globalisation" is really "corporate-driven economic integration" or just plain "21st century capitalism". It feeds on the planet, makes the rich richer, increases inequalities, denies democracy and excludes hundreds of millions of people.

 By Philippe Fremeaux *{ Editor of the Alternatives Economiques magazine, founding member of ATTAC France. Article published in collaboration with ATTAC Liege liege@attac.org First published in Courriel d'information 226 journal@attac.org 
Published in the Newsletter 77 
Translation: Philippe Manet volunteer translator coorditrad@attac.org }


 *partie=titre WHICH START TO SEE DAYLIGHT  *partie=nil 


Hence the arising of new forms of contestation in the globalize economy which strive to think problems on a pertinent level, and act on all. The States' or trade-union movement's loss of powers leads to contest the firms' action by other ways. The development of placed ethical funds, especially in the United States of America, is an example among others: they require from firms of which they've become shareholders that they respect a certain number of environmental and social rules. Similarly, the birth of consumers' movement who not only argue on the quality of given products but on the social conditions within which those were produced, goes on the same way. In an other way, organizations of fair trade or fighting for the South's debt to be cancelled contribute to promote an other vision of globalization. Finally, an association like ATTAC, offers a well-marked 'radical reformism' way: so as to frame the markets' running, in the financial field for instance, and cut down on the North-South inequalities and give back to democratic options their position. She does act on the pertinent level by pressuring both international organizations and also national governments so as to have them modify mandates given to our representatives in these affairs.

  *partie=titre TO ACT ON ALL LEVELS  *partie=nil 


This new international citizen's consciousness was mainly born in the most developed countries, even if the recent Porto Alegre summit built a bridge with organizations of developing countries. Still, it contributes to keep globalization' spirits up as it fights the most extreme forms of exploitation of the working class in these countries. It also produces an uplifting move. By putting the focus on the illegitimacy of  children' work, or serfdom, by asking for liberty of trade-unionism to be respected, it contributes to helping local movement to develop oneself and to pressurize their own governments so that they could act as well;

For a less unequal running of the economy it doesn't only start with the rising of pressure groups, themselves being globalize. Take for instance South Korea. This country, although the pressure of social fights of the 70's and the 80's, has succeeded in democratizing herself progressively while employees would obtain massive pay rises and a better social cover. Far from being passive victims of an uncontrollable globalization, Korean employees showed that they, too, could within a few decades change and walk on the historical path which had been a century before their Northern neighbour'sAction on national ground remains essential. Many a question call nonetheless for global solutions. Each territory's capacity to define one's own rule in fiscality and finances while capital flows freely circulate, eases speculation, and more important, the cleaning of mafias' profits. Hence the obligation to regulate world finance, as here again, ATTAC is begging for. Even, plurality of sanitary norms, and the absence of a European authority of control in a context of free circulation of products helped to the ESB epidemy' spreading the cow's disease by easying re-exportations of suspicious animal flour. One could multiply examples of fields calling for global action. In front of the pandemic AIDS or the upsurge of tuberculosis or paludism, only a well-coordinated world action can be efficient, whereas the big pharmaceutical laboratories (and their money making logic) limit access to drugs only to solvent markets. Even in agricultural matters, access to natural heritage, constituted by the various varieties of seeds should soon become a global public good for everyone' sake.

The problem here is the definition of "work."  Clearly the institutions define success as getting governments to adopt and adhere to neo-liberal policies.  They are not defining success as more jobs, less hunger, more education, etc.  In fact, while these reports are being portrayed by some as self-flagellation by the WB and IMF, they are in the final analysis an affirmation of their commitment to imposing neo-liberal policies (privatization, liberalization, export orientation, etc.) as thoroughly as possible and as widely as possible.  The question the institions' reports raise is only: how can we do that more efficiently?  If beating governments over the head with detailed conditions doesn't force their hand enough, what will? A carrot instead of a stick? 

One or two articles on the WB's report have suggested that the institutions are considering not attaching conditions to loans, but rather only loaning to countries that are already exhibiting "good" behavior.  That change would mean that governments would have to guess what policies would get them money further down the line.  That might indeed be a more subtle and effective way of getting governments to adopt policies that please the G7 and the IMF/WB: in the absence of clear requirements, selfenforcement and paranoia would hold governments in line.  And the IMF and World Bank could say "but we don't impose conditions any more." 

The point is to remove these institutions, and any agencies with a cloistered view of economic "soundness," from controlling access to all sources of credit and the global economy as a whole.

Soren Ambrose - 50 Years Is Enough Network - Washington, DC  USA 
  *partie=titre DEVELOPMENT: New World Bank Study Says Aid Cannot Buy Economic Reforms By Gumisai Mutume  *partie=nil 



WASHINGTON, Mar 27 (IPS) - Aid cannot buy economic reforms the World Bank concedes in a new study on Africa which shows that imposing conditions to force developing countries to adopt unpopular reforms has in many cases been ineffective.

The report: 'Aid and Reform in Africa: Lessons from 10 Case Studies', released Tuesday, reflects a growing realisation, at least rhetorically, within the Bretton Woods institution, that decades of ever-increasing and more complex loan conditions have not borne the intended results.

''The report shows that aid cannot buy reform in poor countries that are flatly opposed to it,'' says Shanta Devarajan, chief economist of the Bank's Human Development Network who edited the study. ''Without 'country- ownership' of a national development strategy, even the most generous and well-intentioned aid packages will have little or no impact in improving the quality of people's lives.'' 

The study, which examined how development aid has influenced economic policy in Africa, studied Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. It provides additional ammunition to those calling for a revamp of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending practices.

 *partie=titre WB, IMF self-critiques of conditionality  *partie=nil 


As this article notes at the end, the WB's report issued this week in some respects mirrors a report from the IMF recently.  The short version is: the institutions say they recognize that attaching dozens of conditions on countries doesn't "work," and so they might sharply reduce the number of conditions.

 
By Soren Ambrose 
*{ Policy Analyst 50 Years is Enough soren@igc.org Published in the Newsletter 75 }

*{ semble manquer un bout de texte fluenced economic policy in Africa, studied Cote d'Ivoire, }

Influenced economic policy in Africa, studied Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. It provides additional ammunition to those calling for a revamp of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending practices.

Kenya received massive amounts of aid in return for policy reforms ¡ 3 billion dollars between 1976 and 1996, but many of its reform programmes were hatched at a time when government was desperately in need of financial support. It quickly agreed to far-reaching reforms but these were subsequently not implemented.

''Sometimes the probability of successful implementation was low from the outset,'' notes the report, in an indictment of one of the cornerstones of IMF and Bank lending conditionalities. ''Other times the lenders or donors may have aligned themselves with well intentioned technocrats ... who lacked the political support to do so.'' 
To give a semblance of country ownership to their economic reforms, the Bretton Woods institutions came out with Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in 1999, which guide lending to the poorest countries.

PRSPs theoretically allow poor countries to devise their own social and economic priorities through consultations between governments, business and civil society with the international financial institutions playing a supportive role.

However, even this strategy continues to depend on strict conditions and rewards countries that achieve certain benchmarks in economic reforms with further loans while punishing non-performers with cuts in funding.

''Real national ownership of poverty reduction frameworks can only happen if the threat of 'conditionality' is removed by the IMF and the World Bank from the backs of vulnerable governments,'' notes Fantu Cheru a professor at the American University in Washington.

In a recent report to the UN Human Rights Commission on the rights implications of the PRSPs, Cheru says linking debt relief to PRSPs, removes the ability of governments to consult broad sectors of their populations, as they are forced into pleasing policy-makers in Washington rather than seeking viable, national poverty reduction measures.

Many African governments toe the line partly because their only source of cheap finance comes from the Bank, through its  concessional lending arm, the International Development Association.

And while the Bank's rhetoric is that the process around adjustment loans is being transformed to become participatory, the reality on the ground is different.

''Experience in numerous PRSP countries shows that structural adjustment programmes are not being transformed and that, in many ways, participation in PRSPs is engineering consent for structural adjustment policies,'' says Cheru who recently studied the processes around eight interim PRSPs in Benin, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia and one full PRSP in Uganda.

The average number of World Bank conditions per subSaharan African country rose from 32 between 1980 and 1983 to 56 by the end of that decade according to independent studies sanctioned by the Bank.

In 1999, the Bank and IMF imposed an average of 114 conditions on 13 sub-Saharan African nations implementing structural adjustment programmes. Tanzania, with 150 conditions had the biggest share of these, notes the Globalisation Challenge Initiative, a non-governmental organisation that monitors the Bank and IMF.

Some of these conditions are as detailed as pointing out budgetary items and recommending precise numbers for lay-offs in particular sectors.

Loan conditions have greatly multiplied since the early 1980s, when they were used mainly to ensure that loans are repaid. Now they are part of a new form of social reengineering, requiring governments to comply more and more with free-market related and governance demands.

Some involve capital account liberalisation, trade and market reforms and privatisation. In one case, the introduction of a value-added tax programme involved 19 benchmarks.

''I have always said to my colleagues that if you have 67 conditions then you have no conditions,'' David Dollar of the Bank's Development Research Group, who was part of the report's research team, told IPS. ''Why not trim it down to three or so important ones?'' 

''We are not saying the Bank should disengage, but we need new approaches, even the more successful reformers (Ghana and Uganda) prefer a modest amount of conditionality.'' 

Apart from being required for continued loan assistance from the Bank and IMF, sticking to the loan conditions is also a prerequisite for governments to obtain assistance from bilateral donors and for debt relief.

The proliferation of conditions from Washington comes at a time when Overseas Development Assistance to subSaharan Africa has been shrinking. >From 32 dollars per head in 1990 it dropped to 19 dollars per head by 1998, forcing these countries to depend more on IMF and Bank loans.

Whether the new Bank report will influence any major changes in its and the  IMF's lending policies toward the continent remains to be seen.

The report comes on the heels of the release of a series of discussion papers by the IMF, set to guide debate on conditionality at the annual Spring meetings of the boards of the Bank and IMF set for next month.

One of the papers, prepared by research staff at the IMF, notes that the increase in conditions imposed on borrowing countries has ''prompted legitimate concerns, in particular, that the fund is overstepping its mandate and core area of expertise, using its financial leverage to promote an extensive policy agenda and short-circuiting national decision-making processes.

''Conditionality that is too pervasive may galvanise domestic opposition to the programme as well as blur the authorities' focus on what is essential.'' 
The papers suggest that IMF directors consider limiting the number of conditions to only those that are critical to the main macro- economic objectives of an IMF programme. *{ (END/IPS/IP/DV/gm/da/01) }

To Associations NGOs International Networks Unions Political organisations 
We are writing you on behalf of many Genoese and Italian organisations working together to build a co-ordinate framework for the protest against the G8 Summit, which will be held in Genoa on 20 - 22 July 2001.

We have signed the enclosed document, and in the past few months we have been negotiating with the local and national authorities in order to find areas and sites for the activities and events to be held on those days.

We are willing to make an international call for a strong mobilitation and a large participation.

We know that many organization all over Europe and the world are already planning to come to Genoa to demonstrate, on the basis of the final Porto Alegre  social movements declaration.

In order to organize and co-ordinate international efforts in the best way, we are organizing an international meeting to be held in Genoa on 4 and 5 May.

The official language of the meeting will be English.

Details on the already planned activities will follow ASAP together with all information about the meeting (schedule, time, venue, etc.).

Please circulate this letter among all those who may be concerned.

To join us, to make suggestions, or to get information, please e-mail to genoasocialforum@libero.it 
Further information are also available at www.genoa-g8.
org (under construction). If you are interested, we  invite your organization to subscribe our document "A different world is possible".

 
GENOA SOCIAL FORUM Genoa, 20-22 July 2001 
A different world is possible 
Introduction 
The world in which the Genoa G8 Summit is to be held is one full of striking injustices. 20% of the world population - in countries with advanced capitalism - wastes 83% of the resources of our planet; 11 million children die every year of malnutrition and 1.3 billion children live on less than one dollar per day.

This situation does not improve: on the contrary, it is getting worse and worse.

Thanks to its international relevance, this summit is a challenge to all those organisations that for a long time have undertaken to assert  - with different methods and priorities- principles of social justice and solidarity, as well as fair and sustainable development.

The challenge must be met! We must contribute all together to make the different projects known, which deal with such matters as international co-operation, environmental protection, citizens' and workers' rights, promotion of ethical and solidaristic economic models, and development of multiethnic communities, support peace and fight against injustice.

These experiences must help society to grow, spurring it to develop, by July 2001, initiatives aimed at increasing the public awareness of this unacceptable situation and at denouncing it. It is necessary to develop a new way of thinking in order to respond to the dominant cultural models that - through growing social disruption - hinder even the dream of a better society. Yet, a different world is possible! 

This is the meaning of the challenge for the citizens to accept. The international organisations, upon which the attention of a growing global movement is focussing, should be forced to take into account the demands of an ever more attentive population, determined to ask for real democracy and new social and economical justice.

  *partie=titre Work Agreement  *partie=nil 


For aforesaid reasons, the signatory organisations commit themselves to a work agreement whose objectives are as follows: 
1. raising the citizens' awareness of the different themes each association focuses on, respecting their individual methods and procedures; 
2. asking the local and national authorities to grant everybody wide spaces for activities, projects and demonstrations to be organised before and during the Summit; above all, demanding that the right to demonstrate not be subjected to arbitrary restrictions; 
3. acting in a co-ordinate way in order to favour a smooth flowing of information and to foster all the initiatives in the program; 
4. respecting all open and transparent forms of expression, protest and direct and non-violent action.

Through this document the signatory organisations invite all interested organisations and networks as well as those who are already working against the G8 Summit, to meet soon in order to better co-ordinate their energies and purposes, to start a dialogue with the scientific and political circles, to pursue the above mentioned goals as effectively as possible.

*{ Local Signatories:  ACLI  - Altrimondi  - ARCI Nuova Associazione  - Arciragazzi  - ASSEFA  - Associazione Agire Politicamente  - Associazione Città Aperta  - Associazione Medici per l'Ambiente - SDE  - Associazione per il Rinnovamento della Sinistra  - Bambini Vittime  - Banca Etica - Circoscrizione Locale di Genova e Imperia - CEDRITT  - Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo  - Centro Sociale Talpa e Orologio  - Centro Sociale Terra di Nessuno  - Centro Sociale apata  - Circolo ARCI Mascherona 16  - COGEDE  - Consorzio Sociale Agorà  - COSPE  - Federazione Chiese Evangeliche Liguria   - Federazione Giovani Socialisti   - Federazione Regionale Solidarietà e Lavoro   - ICS  - Consorzio Italiano di Solidarietà  - Il Ce.sto  - ISCOS CISL Liguria  - La Rete per il Partito Democratico Liguria  - Lavoratori della Libreria Feltrinelli  - Legacoop Liguria - Comparto Cooperative Sociali  - Legambiente Regionale Liguria  - LOC - Lega Obiettori di Coscienza  - Mani Tese  - Marea  - Movimento Federalista Europeo  - Partito Rifondazione Comunista  - Planet  - Progetto Continenti  - Rete ControG8  - Rete Lilliput  - Sinistra Giovanile  - Sondagenova  - UISP  - Ya Basta!  - 
First National Signatories:  Altrimondi  - ARCI Nuova Associazione   - Arciragazzi   - Associazione Botteghe del Mondo  - Associazione Coordinamento Pace   - Associazione Italiana Amici di Raoul ollereau  - Associazione per la Pace  - Associazione Tatavasco   - ATLHA - Associazione Tempo Libero Handicappati   - AYUSYA   - Beati i costruttori di pace   - Bilanci di Giustizia   - Campagna Chiama L'Africa  - Campagna Dire mai al MAI - Stop Millennium Round  - Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale   - Campagna Sdebitarsi  - Carta - Cantieri Sociali  - Centro Nuovo Modello di Sviluppo  - Centro Sociale Leoncavallo  - CGD - Coordinamento Genitori Democratici - Coalizione Italiana Contro la Pena di Morte  - COCORICO  - COnsumatori COnsapevoli RIciclanti COmpatibili   - Comitato per la Globalizzazione dei Diritti (TO)  - Consorzio CTM Altomercato  - Cooperativa Roba dell'Altro Mondo  - COSPE  - Democrazia Popolare  - Federazione Chiese Evangeliche  - Federazione dei Verdi  - Federazione Giovani ocialisti  - Giovani Comuniste e Comunisti  - ICEI - Istituto Cooperazione Internazionale  - ICS - Consorzio Italiano di olidarietà  - IRED Nord  - Lega Missionaria Studenti  - Legambiente  - LILA  - Lunaria - Mani Tese  - Nigrizia  - Partito Rifondazione Comunista  - Pax Christi   -  Rete ControG8   - Rete delle Marce uropee   - Rete Lilliput  - Rete Lilliput (SV) - Rete Radie Resch  - S.
in.COBAS   - Tavola della Pace   - Sinistra Giovanile   - UISP  - Unione degli Studenti  - WWF  - Ya Basta! 
First International Signatories: Casa da Mulher Oito de Março (BR) - Forum Nord Sud (BE) - Marches européennes contre le chomage, la précarité et les exclusions (FR)  - MNC  - Mouvement National des Consommateurs (CM) - National Coordination in Greece  - Campaign Genoa 2001 (GR) 21 
}