DEVELOPMENT: Anti-Poverty Funds Come With Strings Attached: "While this is welcome news to many countries, the new increase would still follow the traditional policy guidelines of the World Bank and the rich nations that dominate its board.
The money will be used in part to foster what industrialised nations call ``a better climate in poor countries for private investment,'' ``entrepreneurship'' and ``domestic private sector growth.'' These are the same targets that have attracted widespread criticism for the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Independent development groups and civil society organisations have said that conditions and policy directions from the two Washington-based institutions often serve the interests of the industrial nations and their corporations under the guise of poverty alleviation.
They charge that those policies force poor nations to cater to foreign private investors and allow access to their labour markets and resources at bargain basement prices.
Recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank have accused the institutions of consistently putting the interests of wealthy corporations in the developed world above the interests of the planet's poor majority. " Read More
The money will be used in part to foster what industrialised nations call ``a better climate in poor countries for private investment,'' ``entrepreneurship'' and ``domestic private sector growth.'' These are the same targets that have attracted widespread criticism for the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Independent development groups and civil society organisations have said that conditions and policy directions from the two Washington-based institutions often serve the interests of the industrial nations and their corporations under the guise of poverty alleviation.
They charge that those policies force poor nations to cater to foreign private investors and allow access to their labour markets and resources at bargain basement prices.
Recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank have accused the institutions of consistently putting the interests of wealthy corporations in the developed world above the interests of the planet's poor majority. " Read More
