This Article will use the Chad/Cameroon project to illustrate why the World Bank should adopt a realistic and pro-active approach to human rights problems. Part II will examine the evolving interpretation of the Bank’s mandate and the historical inconsistencies in its policy toward human rights issues. This examination will show that there are no theoretical obstacles preventing the Bank from interpreting its mandate liberally to include human rights considerations. Part III will draw on the development of the Chad/Cameroon pipeline controversy in order to highlight the importance of human rights considerations for the project’s success. Part IV will argue in favor of the adoption of a more open and consistent human rights policy as an essential condition to improving the credibility of the Bank’s operations. This reformulation is essential if the Bank aims to serve as the guardian of fairness in private investment and to improve the economic well-being of countries like Chad.

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, human, rights, harvard, international, development, world, bank, industry on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Facilitating whose power? WB and IMF policy influence in Nigeria's energy sector (Bretton Woods Project)

Though the volume of donor financing to Nigeria is much less than to other sub-Saharan African countries, at a policy level the World Bank, the IMF and DFID are highly influential in the country's macro-economy.

Tags: international, development, world, bank, nigeria, africa, petroleum, industry, electricity, obasanjo, PSI, paris, club, privatization, nedp on 2008-07-15 -All Annotations (0) -About

in list: IMF policy approaches

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Nigeria was the first country to "benefit" from the IMF's policy support instrument (PSI) (a non-lending instrument which began in mid-2005, see Update 48), to which reform of the power sector is central. The PSI was central to the cancellation of Nigeria's foreign debt with the Paris Club in 2005, which needed IMF endorsement for the deal to go ahead. Former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, now managing director of the World Bank played a key role in the agreement.
key ingredients of the IMF's PSI were controversially passed during president Obasanjo's last few days in office, leading to a national strike in June 2007. These included the sale of the Kaduna and Port Harcourt oil refineries; the sale of the Egbin power station and other national assets; an increase in the cost of petroleum products; an increase in value added tax; and the non-implementation of the 15 per cent increase in civil service salaries.
The sale of the Eleme Petrochemicals plant, in Port Harcourt, was a structural reform of the PSI in October 2005. The plant is the largest of its kind on the continent. National newspapers report that it was sold for approximately $225 million to the Nigerian subsidiary of the Indonesian firm, Indorama Group. The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers described this amount as "not worth the spare parts available at the plant".⁴
The World Bank funded the implementation of the bill for the implementation of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). NEITI is central to the energy question in Nigeria, particularly in light of the failure to channel massive oil and gas revenues to for the benefit of national development. NEITI was developed together with the procurement bill and the freedom of information bill. However, in the event only NEITI was approved by both the Senate of the National Assembly and the House of Representatives, and with a significant amendment. This appeared without explanation, at the last minute and allows much greater leeway to oil companies over the issue of disclosure. To the provision on the power of NEITI to obtain information from companies' volume of sales of oil, gas and other minerals extracted was added the caveat that "provided that such information shall not be used in any manner prejudicial to the contractual obligation of proprietary interests of the extractive industry company". According to the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, these clauses have the potential "to defeat the entire essence of the transparency campaign in the extractive industry". Despite this blatant violation of both due process and disclosure, the IMF praised the NEITI bill as "good progress in efforts to improve governance and reduce corruption". The bill was passed by the Nigerian Senate in May 2007, days before the end of Obasanjo's tenure.

War in Chad: World Bank-backed oil project hasn’t created promised “model” of development—By Ken Silverstein (Harper's Magazine)

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, world, bank, industry, news, international, development on 2008-07-13 -All Annotations (0) -About

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EITI – Extracting transparency

Despite good intentions, no country has been formally validated as EITI-compliant. The risk now is that the initiative will allow countries to ride free, using the EITI label to continue business as usual. As a result, Publish What You Pay has called on companies and governments to deliver concrete results. The good news is that the EITI board is beginning to flex its muscles. If countries do not become validated within two years they risk losing their status. So far Chad, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bolivia have been disqualified.

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, industry, eiti, world, business, council, sustainable, development, multinational, corporations, international on 2008-07-13 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Poverty Reduction Strategies - Macroeconomic Issues

The fact that solutions to poverty therefore cannot be based exclusively on economic policies, but require a comprehensive set of coordinated measures lies at the heart of the rationale underlying comprehensive poverty reduction strategies. Economic growth, however, remains the single most important factor influencing poverty, and macroeconomic stability is essential for high and sustainable rates of growth. Macroeconomic stability must therefore be a key component of any poverty reduction strategy.

Tags: world, bank, cdf, prsps, poverty, reduction, strategy, papers, ownership, participation, empowerment on 2008-07-08 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Africa's Unnatural Disaster

The strategies of the World Bank and IMF have successfully applied shock doctrine methods to plunder the globe, causing widespread hardship and suffering, for the benefit of the few and creating millions of victims. They are the embodiment of psychopathy on a global scale, and from that perspective, they are not 'failed', but actually a devastating and horrific success.

Tags: agriculture, economics, africa, world, bank, imf, international, development on 2008-07-06 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (7) -About

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Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis | Environment | The Guardian

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants. "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

Tags: biofuel, food, security, crisis, international, development, world, bank on 2008-07-06 and saved by10 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Pambazuka News

the unprecedented success of Obama’s campaign and the ground it has broke as it relates to a “Black” candidate appealing to white voters on a national level revels that something qualitative has changed in this country. The question is what is it? I argue that the source of the qualitative change lies in the changing composition of class throughout the US settler-colonial project. The advance of global capital and its transformation of production and accumulation throughout the capitalist world-system generated this compositional shift. I posit that the process of transformation popularly called “globalization” has created a trans-national bourgeoisie and growing multi-national or “cosmopolitan” trans-national service and working classes. It is my position that Barack Obama is a member of and represents the political and economic interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and the social interests of the growing trans-national classes. More specifically, Barack Obama is a product of the New Afrikan trans-national bourgeoisie, which emerged in the main from the comprador or neo-colonial sector of the New Afrikan bourgeois class between the 1970’s to the present.

Tags: obama, barack, us, globalization, capitalism, structural, world, systems, pambazuka, malcolm, x on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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the unprecedented success of Obama’s campaign and the ground it has broke as it relates to a “Black” candidate appealing to white voters on a national level revels that something qualitative has changed in this country. The question is what is it?

I argue that the source of the qualitative change lies in the changing composition of class throughout the US settler-colonial project. The advance of global capital and its transformation of production and accumulation throughout the capitalist world-system generated this compositional shift. I posit that the process of transformation popularly called “globalization” has created a trans-national bourgeoisie and growing multi-national or “cosmopolitan” trans-national service and working classes. It is my position that Barack Obama is a member of and represents the political and economic interests of the trans-national bourgeoisie and the social interests of the growing trans-national classes. More specifically, Barack Obama is a product of the New Afrikan trans-national bourgeoisie, which emerged in the main from the comprador or neo-colonial sector of the New Afrikan bourgeois class between the 1970’s to the present.
What I think progressives and revolutionaries have to be clear on in relating to these popular forces is that a clamoring for a change of management does not equate to a clamoring for a fundamental change of program. It is on the question of program that I would argue that the national question strongly reenters the fry and could perhaps fracture the broad multi-national, multi-class alliance thus far mobilized by the Obama campaign.
This is an extremely unique moment in human history, one that should not be slept on by progressives and revolutionaries anywhere, let alone in the US.

There are three general things that make this moment particularly unique:

- The rapid collapse of the ecological systems that support human civilization as a direct consequence of the capitalist world-systems need for constant growth and expansion and its dependence on a petro-chemical driven system of mass industrial production to stimulate and sustain this growth.

- The declining hegemony (in both its geo-political and Gramscian connotations) of the US imperial state and the shift to a multi-polar geo-political world order.

- The comparative weakening of the US national economy and the deepening of trans-national production and accumulation.
One of the first priorities of engagement is theoretical development. One of the principle things the New Afrikan and multi-national left movements must figure out is how to engage to the trans-national bourgeoisie. As stated earlier, as of now, our movements do not have a general, let alone united, perspective on this question. In fact, I would argue that most of our forces are still utilizing the traditional united or national liberation front theory to determine their positions and courses of action.
I argue that thinking strategically, these forces should concentrate their energy on building autonomous political movements and institutions (like the Reconstruction Party) within the US national-state that seek to build a broad multi-national united front of oppressed peoples and workers that makes a principle of building strategic links and alliances with the autonomous national liberation, international working class, global justice, and environmental movements throughout the world. As the trans-national bourgeoisie thinks and acts globally, we must also think and act globally to advance our own interests.
To these ends, a hard-pressed counter campaign against Obama I would argue is not the most effective or productive way to engage these popular forces from this point forward. Rather, I think the multi-national left must seek to highlight the contradictions of Obama’s campaign and program through a combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left. Again, I think the formation of an autonomous “outside” political force should be primary. However, what is perhaps most tactically critical is that both the “outside” and “inside” forces aggressively promote and propagate these common demands; vigorously dialogue and debate in a principled, non-sectarian manner; and openly communicate and collaborate whenever and wherever possible.

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Colin Bruce named to #2 post in World Bank's Africa department | Bank Information Center: Monitoring the projects and policies of the World Bank, IMF and other international financial institutions

Bruce came under fire from critics of the Kenyan government during his tenure for presiding over a nearly twofold increase in Bank disbursements to the country despite what the FT termed "persistent evidence of high-level graft." In March 2008, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) made available on its website a leaked report by the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) on evidence of corruption in Bank-funded projects in Kenya.

Tags: kenya, bicusa, colin, bruce, world, bank, kibake, development, africa, organizations, international, news on 2008-07-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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csr assignment - Halifax initiative

Tags: world, bank, imf, csr, international, business, development on 2008-07-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

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