Past campaign

We campaigned against Europe’s unfair trade deals from April 2008 to December 2009.

We are not against trade, but we do want to stop the European pirates stealing our resources"
- Norma Maldonado, Guatemala

In 2006. the European Union announced a new trade strategy which targeted developing countries for trade deals. These trade deals were clearly stacked in favour of European companies, for example unrestricted access to raw materials from poor countries and demanding less regulation for European corporations. The trade strategy also tried to get poor countries to open up their markets to subsidised, imported European goods and produce, rather than allowing space for developing countries to build their own industries.

Campaign successes

The campaign got a quarter of all UK MEP candidates at the 2009 European parliamentary election to sign up to the TJM ‘trade pledge’. Candidates committed to take action if they were elected to get a review of EU trade policy and to promote coherence between trade and development issues. 

WDM groups and supporters took an active part in lobbying their MEPs...

Between 1994 and 1998, WDM worked on a number of arms trade issues.

Export credits and arms

In November 1994, we launched a campaign to stop the use of export credits to support arms sales.  This campaign alerted many other organisations to the issue.  The chancellor of the Exchequer announced a ban on the use of export credits for ‘unproductive’ expenditure (which includes arms sales) for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) in 1997.  This ban was extended to over 50 low income countries in January 2000.

For further information on on this issue contact:

• Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) http://www.caat.org.uk

For information on the current Ilisu Dam Campaign contact:

• http://www.ilisu.org.uk

EU Code of Conduct on Arms Sales

Together with Saferworld and the British and American Security Council (BASIC), WDM helped promote an EU Code which drew on all the voluntary agreements EU countries had signed up to.  The EU...

This report is a guide to the policies of UK political parties ahead of the UK general election to be held on 6 May 2010. It seeks to give a guide to the policies of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru in key areas relating to international justice: trade justice; more and better aid; making the economy work for poor people and repaying our climate debt.

As part of our evidence-based approach WDM produces reports to support our campaigning work.

Below is a list of all our old campaign reports available as pdf files. We do have a limited supply of paper copies available on request.

You can also use the site search to locate past campaign reports.

WDM campaigned on the rights of workers in toy factories between 1995 and 1996 and in 1998.

Background

Three out of every four toys bought in the UK have been made in Asia.  China alone produces over a third of the world’s toys.  Much of this work is subcontracted by the big toy companies to Asian factories.  Research undertaken in China by the Hong Kong Coalition for the Charter on the Safe Production of Toys revealed that workers are not being adequately protected and their health and safety continue to be undermined by long hours, low pay and at times perilous working conditions.

Campaign

Following major fires and deaths in toy factories in Thailand and China, WDM representatives visited Thailand to see factories and meet workers.  This led to the launch of a UK campaign in partnership with Asia Monitor Resource Centre in Hong Kong, Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR) and the TUC, to press for a code of conduct on the production of toys.

In January 1996, the British Toy and Hobbies Association (BTHA) agreed their own health and safety code.  This closely matched the code promoted by WDM and the Asian campaigners, except there was no recognition of trade union negotiating rights...

WDM campaigned on Tobacco multinationals in 1999.

Background

Tobacco multinationals are facing increasing restrictions on the marketing of tobacco in the west.  They are therefore seeking to expand markets in the south by using aggressive marketing methods, which are now banned in many industrialised countries, to target in particular children, young people and women.  If current trends continue, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that the number of smoking related deaths in the south will increase from 1 million to 7 million a year by 2020. 

Campaign

In May 1996 at the World Heath Assembly, governments adopted a resolution calling on the director general of the WHO to initiate a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but little else was done.  In Autumn 1998, the UK government was due to publish a white paper on Tobacco.  WDM supporters successfully persuaded the UK government to include a commitment to global regulation on tobacco marketing in the white paper.  The 1999 World Health Assembly authorised work on the Framework Convention which came into force in 2005.

WDM continues to ensure that the initiative is backed by the provision of funding and human resources, and that the...

WDM campaigned on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) between 1998 and 1999.

Background

Governments of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of 29 rich countries, started negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in May 1995. The MAI was to have been the world’s first investment treaty. It would have introduced new rights for foreign investors to invest wherever they saw opportunities, while restricting the powers of governments to prohibit access, attach conditions on investors or regulate in the public interest.

The MAI would have prevented developing country governments from adopting policies used by all OECD countries and the emerging economies during their development, such as South Korea’s requirements for foreign investors to form joint ventures, license technology and use local suppliers.

Campaign

Details of the MAI became publicly known in February 1997 when a draft of the text was leaked and posted on the Internet. WDM played a leading role in the campaign, undertaking research on the likely impact of the MAI on developing countries,...

WDM campaigned on People Before Profits between 1998 and 2000, seeking to control the power of multinational companies with strong international regulation and individual action.

In the campaign against world poverty, WDM believes that we need to challenge today’s leading global economic players in order to put the rights and demands of the worlds poor before those of multinational companies.

The size and power of multinational companies is increasing rapidly:

• Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).
• The Top 200 corporations’ combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries, minus the biggest 10.

These companies could potentially bring benefits, but governments are failing to get them under control. People across the world are speaking out against multinationals abusing their power in the pursuit of profits:

At the core of the People Before Profits campaign was the recognition that the increasing power of multinational companies is not accompanied by sufficient regulation. A realistic and considered look at the roles of both governments and international institutions in regulating...

Pergau Dam

1994

High court victory over the Pergau Dam

The UK government planned to spend £234 million of aid money on the Pergau Dam project in Malaysia. WDM believed that the benefits of the dam were dubious, and that the finance was essentially a sweetener to encourage future arms purchases from UK companies. Since the 1980 Overseas Development and Co-operation Act stated that aid can only be used for “promoting the development or maintaining the economy of a country….or the welfare of its people”, WDM was able to pursue a judicial review of the funding of the dam. It was a landmark case which ensured that future aid couldn’t be used as a political tool regardless of the development benefits or lack of them.

In 2012, we are once again campaigning to stop big business cashing in on aid.

Linking aid with arms

WDM exposed the linking of aid and arms in other countries, including Indonesia. In response the National Audit Office (NAO), the government’s own watchdog, conducted an inquiry into seven controversial...

WDM campaigned on the issue of water privatisation in poor countries between 2005 and 2008.

Water is a gift from Earth. We need to take care of it and preserve it so the next generation can live. If we don’t, the cost is the people, it is us

Oscar Olivera, water activist, Bolivia, 2006.

Background

Most of us take clean water for granted, but a sixth of the world’s population aren’t so lucky. Over a billion people worldwide cannot reach or afford clean water.

Nearly two million children die every year because they do not have regular, safe water to drink, while the lives of many more people are blighted by the illness and preventable diseases that result from unsafe water and poor sanitation.

WDM lobbied for the UK government to adopt policies that promote access to clean drinking water, rather than waste aid money on failed privatisation. WDM campaigned to limit the spread of coporate control over water resources, and against climate change that threatens water supplies worldwide.

Water campaign successes  

• In 2009,...

The World Development Movement (WDM) has been highlighting the impact of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) on democracy for many years. This toolkit can be seen as the latest step in the evolution of this work; an attempt to provide some ideas and examples concerning how legislators can take action to improve their oversight of policy-making in an environment where the IFIs have significant influence. This document is aimed at both legislators and those who work with them. In doing so, it attempts to span a range of issues meaning some sections will cover ground already familiar to some of this audience. As the name suggests however, the toolkit is designed so that sections can be picked out if they are relevant or useful to the reader without having to look at other parts of the document.

Where were you in July 2005?

Whether you sent a postcard, lobbied your MP, joined the march in Edinburgh or sat at home and watched a pop concert, it was hard not to know that 8 of the World’s most powerful leaders were meeting in Gleneagles and the public was demanding action on poverty. And the Group of 8 – Russia, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the UK – did respond. But was the response adequate and have these governments lived up to their promises?

The Make Poverty History (MPH) Campaign set a range of challenges to the G8 summit in Gleneagles on aid, debt and trade. Critically, the campaign was not confined to asking simply for more aid money to help the world’s poor but was challenging the economic agenda that keeps people poor; the free market and free trade policies that have crippled developing countries across the world.

What follows is an analysis of G8 commitments on the main MPH demands and a brief assessment of what has happened since. The conclusion we reach is that while the G8 summit produced a useful step on debt cancellation and small steps on aid, not only are these inadequate but also no action has been taken to change the economic policies that will undermine this aid provision in the long term.

In recent years the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
have adopted new ways of working and new rhetoric on ‘country
ownership’ and ‘participation’. At the start of the 1980s, the two
institutions began to make their loans and aid conditional on
implementing ‘structural adjustment’ policies. The set of structural
adjustment conditions, commonly referred to as the ‘Washington
Consensus’, have been widely criticised both for undermining national
political processes and causing widespread social and economic
damage.

In response to such criticism, the Bank and Fund have adopted new
ways of working and new rhetoric on ‘country ownership’ of policies and
‘participation’ in the development process. The centrepieces of this
supposedly new approach are Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PRSPs); medium-term development plans which poor countries are now
required to produce in order to receive aid, loans and debt relief. PRSPs
are meant to be developed within a country through a participative
process, thereby meaning that the policies in the PRSP are ‘owned’ by
the country.

This briefing investigates how far PRSPs have really departed from
structural adjustment policies pushed by the Bank and Fund, and...

From the early years of Senegal’s Independence up to the late 1980s the
State played a major role in economic and social development, due to the
dearth of an indigenous private sector and the necessity to meet some of
the most pressing needs of the population. The legitimacy and stability of
the post-Independence political system depended in large measure on its
ability to satisfy those needs. During the 1960s and 1970s, Senegal
achieved some significant results, thanks to the performance of the
agricultural sector and the strength of its exports.

This report, like its predecessors, is about people responding to the imposition of ‘economic restructuring’ by national governments at the behest of the IMF and World Bank. The willingness of ordinary people to take to the streets in large numbers in direct action reflects their anger and outrage at what they see as the breaking of an unwritten ‘social contract’ with their governments to provide basic protection for ordinary citizens at least as much as it does the undoubtedly very real hardship and threat to livelihoods posed by price increases, unemployment and other forms of austerity.

The three reports produced so far by WDM cover the period after ‘Seattle’ (November 1999). But such widespread, popular protest against austerity measures, undertaken as part of a process of ‘global adjustment’, is not new. Through the second half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, ordinary people took to the streets in their thousands – sometimes in their tens of thousands – to protest against economic liberalisation and the hardships it created, especially for the poor. What is significant is that, today, there is a greater awareness, not only of the globalisation project itself, but also of the possibility of protest and resistance. It is not too utopian to speak of an ‘anti-...