“The policies of these institutions have led to widespread human rights violations.”
IN A world wracked by multiple crises, two leading financial institutions — the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — stand out for their key roles in driving inequality, impoverishment and deprivation over the last 80 years.
They find cause to celebrate in their forthcoming annual meetings in Washington, DC.
But not for millions in the Global South who have borne the brunt of the impacts of their lending and the neoliberal policies they have been aggressively promoting.
Often denied justice in formal legal spaces, people’s movements and grassroots organizations from different parts of the world will gather in an International Peoples’ Tribunal process to indict the IMF and the World Bank for their alleged transgressions, and seek accountability and reparations.
Initiated by the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, along with co-organizers from various regions, the IPT process is supposed to kick off and hold its first hearing today Oct. 26 at the University of the Philippines Film Center in Quezon City.
This is the first of its kind to be launched in the country.
Succeeding sessions will be held in the tribunals in Nepal, India, Africa and Latin America, with a final verdict timed for public release during the IMF and World Bank’s Spring Meetings in April 2025.
The IMF and the World Bank bear part of the responsibilities for the crises people and communities worldwide due to their active roles in pushing loans and increasing indebtedness in the Global South.
One of the most flagrant acts by the IMF and the World Bank is the creation of unsustainable and illegitimate debt that traps nations in the Global South in a vicious cycle of poverty.
From the World Bank’s own data, debt stocks from 2012 to 2022 of low-income and middle-income countries rose by 109 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
Debt service on public and publicly guaranteed debt service payments reached $443.5 billion in 2022, the highest level thus far and projected to increase.
Countries forced to take loans must often divert their limited resources to debt servicing rather than investing in healthcare, education or social welfare.
The IMF and the World Bank are key promoters of neoliberal policies that are based on profit-driven and extractivist economic and development paradigms.
These policies are imposed as part of loan conditionalities, or as economic prescriptions in exchange for getting a good rating from the IMF, or as part of conditionalities for debt relief measures.
The impacts of these policies are harsh and heavy, falling hardest on impoverished countries, including the Philippines.
It is high time we put a stop to the harms inflicted by the IMF and the World Bank.
The rigid austerity or belt-tightening conditionalities tied to loans compel borrowing governments to slash public services in favor of private providers, often leading to unemployment, reduced wages, and increased poverty.
Neoliberal trade conditionalities to produce cash crops for the global market devastated local food systems and the production of food staples.
The devastating consequences of these conditionalities
Women are pushed into unpaid labor and are often the first to suffer when public services are cut.
The tribunal seeks to hold these institutions accountable for privatizing essential services and riding on women’s unpaid care work to fill up the gaps.
The policies of these institutions have led to widespread human rights violations.
The IPT challenges the dominant notion that the IMF and the World Bank remain relevant today when their actions in the last 80 years have only contributed to crises and the misery of millions.
The Tribunal gives voice to those most adversely affected by the IMF and the World Bank’s prescriptions, and the strongest indictment of their illegitimacy.
The author is the coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development. Its secretariat is in Manila.
