- The World Bank has a Human Rights problem: it does not respect them enough; a pity, because it should harness the inspirational power human rights (HR) bring with them and thus rekindle the HR hopes of literally billions of people. (S. Ebadi, editorial page, International Herald Tribune, 17/6/2004) The Bank also disregards the central issue of income-distribution and does not adhere to the-principles-of-sustainable-development. It still seems to believe that technological progress somehow automatically leads to a more effective use of the huge resources it invests. [This, perhaps because most of its analyses cover the short term?] (N. Michaelis, D+C 31:4, April 2004, pp.162-163) Ideologically motivated, it believes that to promote growth, to privatize, to deregulate and to liberalize are necessary.
- Bottom line: For the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) (of which the Bank is one), what remains an uncontestable truth is that discrepancies clearly persist between their vision, their pronouncements and the realities on the ground.
- On the other hand, the IMF (the IFI par-excellence) never pays much attention to income-taxes and property-taxes and to the need-to-combat-tax-evasion; it focuses too heavily on cutting-public-employment or capping-public-sector-wages; furthermore, having resorted to apply excessively-detailed-conditionality has clearly not been effective. The IMF’s tight policies have rather promoted ‘salvation through suffering’ –and this is not very much in the spirit of human (people’s) rights… [All this, the careful reader can find recognized in F&D, the Journal of the IMF itself, e.g., 41:1, March 2004, pp.43, 44, 49].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City