Past campaign

The World Development Movement has an honourable and proud record in leading the way - fighting for debt relief and the reduction of poverty around the world

Gordon Brown September 1998.

Something criminal is being done to the world's poorest countries. The World Development Movement's (WDM) debt campaign revealed evidence that leaders of rich countries collude to give developing countries an unfair deal. They force policies such as trade liberalisation, investment deregulation and privatisation onto the poor, in return for minuscule debt relief.

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.

There is almost certainly consensus on the importance of tackling the global water crisis in order to achieve the MDGs. There is almost certainly consensus that the public sector has not succeeded in improving water and sanitation in many parts of the world. There is almost certainly consensus on the need for major investments in water and sanitation if the situation is to be changed. And there is almost certainly consensus on the need for donor govern- ments to give water and sanitation a high priority.

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.

WDM explains in depth the decision to call for an end to the ‘Development Round’ of trade talks. This is not a report in the traditional sense; it is predominantly the story of the past six year’s of trade negotiations. It aims to give a sense of how the talks ‘progressed’ and how the main players acted on the international stage.

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?

This report is concerned with democracy; a complex issue at the best of
times, made even more complex not only by the many local, regional and
national struggles for self-determination across the globe but also by the
development of supra-national decision-making bodies that are many
times removed from individual citizens. It is this latter complexity, and in
particular the actions of the two principal International Financial
Institutions (IFIs) – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
– that provides the focus for this report.

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.

Despite the disadvantage of being land-locked, Zambia was once one of
the wealthiest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This began to change in
the early 1970s. After the oil crisis (increasing the price of imports) and
relative commodity price collapse (reducing the revenue from exports),
Zambia had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank for assistance. So began some thirty years of Bank and Fund
intervention in the Zambian economy. In return for loans, Zambia was
required to implement Bank and Fund endorsed economic policies over

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.