*{ http://www.ffq.qc.ca/marche2000/en/commun-2000-09-26.html
24 aout 2002 
(September 25, 2000)

}


 *partie=titre The World March of Women joins in the World Day of Mobilization against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund *partie=nil 



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 *partie=titre FOR ANOTHER KIND OF GLOBALIZATION *partie=nil  
The 55th Annual Assembly of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is being held in Prague (Czech Republic) from September 19 to 28, 2000. On the one hand, more than 20,000 investors, CEOs, economists, managers and journalists from all over the world have been invited to the "high mass" of neo-liberal capitalist globalization. 

On the other, thousands of demonstrators have invited themselves to the event to demand another kind of globalization: one that is fair socially speaking, pluralistic from the cultural viewpoint, based on solidarity where the economy is concerned, and responsible with regard to the environment. 

After Seattle and Washington, it is now Prague's turn to be the site of confrontation between two world views and two conceptions of globalization. 

On the agenda for September 26 are: 

· a worldwide call for citizen resistance to World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies! 
· a worldwide call for citizen action in favour of another kind of globalization! 

 *partie=titre Financial institutions faced with their failures  *partie=nil 

For over 50 years the World Bank and the IMF (now backed by the more recent World Trade Organization) have championed the belief that only the market-provided it is free from constraints-can ensure boundless wealth and its equitable distribution. 

Their policies have failed miserably and the new millennium augurs even sharper upsets. Due to their foreign debt, countries in the South in particular are kept in a state of dependency recalling colonial times. Structural adjustment programs block development and are at the root of catastrophic situations where populations "benefiting" from the IMF's and World Bank's largesse are bled dry: drastic cuts in health care and education, soaring prices in basic foodstuffs, destruction of local cultures and so on. 

These programs bring about increases in poverty, especially for women and children; a more precarious status for fundamental human rights; and greater damage to the environment. At the same time, they cause a concentration of wealth in the hands of local elites, who are often corrupt and allied with multinational corporations. 

 *partie=titre Globalization of organized, active resistance  *partie=nil 

It is not surprising then to see the gradual building of resistance to this savage, totalitarian form of globalization. From the Zapatista movement in Mexico in the early 1990s to the World March of Women whose crowning activities will be held in October outside the World Bank-IMF and the United Nations; from the events in Seattle and Washington to those in Bangkok, Geneva and Tokyo, everywhere popular organizations, trade unions, NGOs, the women's movement, aboriginal people, young people, farmers, environmentalists, intellectuals and many others are raising their voices to assert that another world is possible. 

In the three Americas, the Continental Social Alliance, a broad coalition of the union movement, popular organizations and NGOs, is opposing the strictly economic project of a free trade zone for the Americas. It proposes instead solidarity-based alternatives in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres. In the summer of 1998, a joint movement of citizens in Europe and the Americas caused the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) to be shelved, at least for the time being. 

The mobilizations and actions staged have already changed things. Now international financial institutions are subject to close scrutiny and are called upon to be accountable to the world's population, particularly as regards: 

1. the total cancellation of the Third World countries' foreign debt;
2. an end to implementation of structural adjustment programs; 
3. respect for the environment; 
4. taking into account fundamental human rights; 
5. taking into account inequality between women and men. 

From Prague to Porto Alegre in Brazil, in January 2001, and in Quebec City in April 2001, the fight for the other kind of globalization will continue. This worldwide movement has different origins but is united in the same collective struggle: to advance a form of globalization completely opposite to the one we see today.