IMF policies thwart poverty goals: report

WASHINGTON: If US President George W. Bush is serious about his enthusiastic embrace last week at the United Nations of democracy and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to slash global poverty, he will press his treasury secretary and other members of the governing board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting here this week to stop imposing strict spending limits on poor-country governments.

That is the message of two new reports by ActionAid International (AAI), which charges that IMF anti-inflation policies and the World Bank, which is bound by them, are making it impossible for Third World governments to make much progress either in achieving MDG targets or in promoting democratic institutions. The MDGs include achieving universal primary education, cutting hunger and poverty in half, and sharply reducing maternal and infant mortality by 2015.

“What the IMF and World Bank are doing is effectively tearing the heart out of democracy,” said Rick Rowden, (AAI’s) senior policy analyst. “Holding periodic elections doesn’t mean much when a nation’s economic direction is hammered out between the IMF, the central banks, and the finance ministries behind doors that are closed to voters.” The two reports, based on case studies in 13 developing countries, conclude that the indirect control exercised by the IMF over recipient governments’ macroeconomic policies is straitjacketing their ability to deal with urgent social, health, and economic issues, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and likewise the ability of their electorates to influence those policies.

Voters in most transitional and democratic governments, according to AAI, strongly favour greater efforts to improve the health and welfare of their poor population, if only because the poor make up the vast majority of their constituents, particularly in Africa, South Asia, and much of Latin America. But even as democratically elected governments struggle to respond to these demands, they are effectively unable to do so given the IMF’s policies and power. This, indeed, has been noted by democratically elected developing country leaders themselves at various times. “We are caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of managing IMF requirements and then dealing with the demands of our electorate,” Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa said last year.

AAI also cited a Kenyan education official as complaining that, “The general feeling among the citizenry is that government decisions are subordinate to the IMF rules and directions, and that the country is held captive by these decisions without much recourse.” The first report, “Square Pegs, Round Holes”, notes a “fundamental contradiction between the need to greatly scale-up social spending to fight HIV/AIDS and what can actually be spent under the IMF’s current low-inflation monetary policy”, which traditionally aims to keep annual inflation rates to under five per cent. “How can significantly more money be spent in these economies without producing higher levels of inflation than the IMF’s low-inflation policy permits?”

Because donor governments and other financial agencies, including the World Bank, treat compliance with IMF targets as the Seal of Good Housekeeping, failure by borrowing governments to meet those targets risks a cut-off of external credit.

“The IMF can effectively ‘switch off’ foreign aid flows to any country that it feels is not satisfactorily adhering to the agreed macroeconomic framework,” according to AAI, citing recent examples of such actions in Zambia and Honduras. The second report, “Contradicting Commitments: How the Achievement of Education for All is Being Undermined by the International Monetary Fund”, argues that the MDG target of providing universal primary education by the year 2015 is also threatened by the IMF’s imposition of budget targets. To meet the MDG target, according to the report, poor countries must sharply increase their investment in building schools, training and employing teachers, and in making education more accessible to poor and other disadvantaged children by, for example, eliminating school fees.

But in most cases, they cannot do so without exceeding spending limits imposed by the IMF, thus making it effectively impossible for them to meet their MDG commitments and the demands of their electorates.

The problem described in the two reports is not new. Indeed, last year AAI and a number of other development and health non-governmental organisations (NGOs) published a major report, entitled “Blocking Progress”. It asserted that the IMF’s policies in southern Africa, which has the world’s highest HIV infection rates, were having a disastrous impact on the ability of governments there to both curb the spread of the disease and treat its victims. But the constraints faced by governments dependent on the IMF’s seal of approval have become even more obvious since the MDGs were first adopted at the millennium summit by global leaders in 2000 and now that they have been re-affirmed at last week’s world summit. —Dawn/Inter-Press News Service

Gaza fishermen start returning to sea

AL-MAWASI (Gaza Strip): Abdel-Jabar Qanan is hammering his dilapidated fishing trawler back into shape to put out to sea again now that his local waters are no longer off limits to Palestinians after Israel’s pullout from Gaza.

Dozens of smaller boats lie strewn nearby on the sand, their paint peeling and motors rusty from five years of disuse after Israel barred them from Mediterranean waters, citing security concerns, following the start of a Palestinian uprising.

Fishermen like Qanan, a father of eight who owns one of the largest fishing boats on al-Mawasi beach, have begun trickling back to the sea since Israel quit the Gaza Strip on Sept. 12 after 38 years of occupation.

But the southern Gaza fishermen who returned to al-Mawasi found their nets had withered under the sun, the wood on their boats cracked and dry, and their vessels not seaworthy.

“I have to replace all the wood from the deck and from the other side because the sun hit there. It is all zero. I am starting from scratch,” Qanan said.

“For five years I didn’t take a cent from the sea,” he added. “I thank God the Jews have gone from here.”

The splendid white sand beach that serves as a makeshift fishing port lies in the Palestinian agricultural and fishing enclave of al-Mawasi, previously surrounded and cut off from the rest of Gaza by a Jewish settlement bloc.

Its economy deteriorated after Israeli forces fighting Palestinian militants extended a security cordon around al- Mawasi, trapping it within the Gush Katif settlement area.

Travel to and from al-Mawasi was reduced to a single checkpoint, shut for long periods by security alerts in measures the Israeli army said aimed to prevent militant attacks.

Qanan and other fishermen said it would cost $20,000-$25,000 to mend each of the nine large fishing vessels sitting at al-Mawasi, which could each provide employment for dozens of workers. But none knew where the money would come from.

So far the southern Gaza catch has been small because fishermen are going out in small paddle boats that snare mainly small fish and crabs.

“I have nothing to sell,” said Nabil Abed Saleh al-Laham as he picked fish from his nets and put them in a plastic bag. “This is all just for the family.”

Other anglers like Zakaria Radi — fishing from a borrowed skiff — sold their boats to make ends meet during the uprising and hope to work as labourers during the coming tuna season.

Palestinian officials have promised assistance to Palestinians who lost homes and property near evacuated settlements. —Reuters

Japan wary of North Korean nuclear deal

TOKYO: A day-old nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea already threatens to come unstuck, with Japan joining other negotiating countries in disagreeing with a demand by Pyongyang for a light-water nuclear reactor for its civilian programme.

On Tuesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura criticized North Korea after Pyongyang released a statement saying it will not dismantle its nuclear programme unless given the light-water nuclear reactor first.

Machimura termed the demand by Pyongyang as ‘unacceptable’, and pointed out that Japan, and other countries at the negotiating table, had stressed that the subject of a new reactor would be discussed only ‘at an appropriate time’.

China, which hosted the difficult negotiations in Beijing, as well as the United States, which played a lead role, have already reacted to the new demand by saying Pyongyang must stick to Monday’s agreement by which North Korea was to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for economic aid and security guarantees.

The six parties, including Russia and South Korea, first began negotiations in 2003 after Pyongyang announced withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Monday’s agreement did not specify deadlines and the parties are scheduled to meet again in November to finalize modalities and time-frames.

South Korea, which is to provide electricity to the North under the deal, continued to be optimistic and President Roh Moo-hyun reportedly said that the chances for a resolution of the vexed nuclear issue were still brighter than ever before.

Analysts here contend the new sabre-rattling represents a typical ‘morning after’ while dealing with Stalinist North Korea, one of the world’s last bastions of communism.

“Distrust runs deep, especially in Japan where bilateral relations with North Korea have dipped even lower in the recent past after the abduction of Japanese nationals by the ruthless regime in that country. An agreement, however historic, will certainly not convince the Japanese that North Korea has changed,” said Katsumi Sato, director of Modern Korea, a leading and conservative think-tank in Japan.

Sato rejected the new agreement as a ruse on the part of Pyongyang and referred to similar promises in the past that were also broken by the totalitarian regime.

For instance, after North Korea quit the NPT, it went ahead and boosted its nuclear capabilities.

“North Korea is buying time to build up its nuclear weapons and strengthen the hold of the current murderous regime and we must not be duped,” insisted Sato.

Yet, some analysts pointed out that the joint-statement issued in Beijing is the first breakthrough in the six-party process, launched in August 2003, and will serve as a base for future negotiations on implementation.

“There is no doubt the agreement is a historic step in going ahead with the larger goal of achieving a nuclear weapon-free Korean peninsula. The situation would have been far worse if nothing came forward at Beijing,” points out Masanori Okonogi, a respected Korean expert at the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo.

According to Okonogi, the next crucial step would be to keep up the negotiations and make sure the new breakthrough and momentum is not lost again.

“Yes, the record with North Korea is patchy. But this time North Korea has shown more compromise, such as a separate agreement with Japan towards normalising bilateral relations. There is no excuse now to give up,” he says.

Okonogi also stressed the importance of the upcoming meeting in November as crucial to move ahead.

In the statement, the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea promised to provide energy assistance to North Korea as well as economic cooperation in the fields of trade and investment, bilaterally and multilaterally. —Dawn/IPS News Service

Preschoolers imitate parents’ bad habits

NEW YORK: Children 2 to 6 years of age pretending to shop for a party with their dolls are significantly more apt to choose cigarettes if their parents smoke and wine or beer if their parents drink, results of a study show. Children of this age who are allowed to watch PG-13 or R-rated movies are also more apt to choose wine or beer when shopping for a social occasion.

During a role-playing scenario with study investigators, one 6-year-old boy offered a Barbie doll the newspaper and cigarettes with the words: “Have some smokes. Do you like smokes? I like smokes.”

When buying Camel cigarettes in the pretend store, a 4-year-old girl said, “I need this for my man. A man needs cigarettes.”

Writing in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, investigators say the results of this study “demonstrate that preschoolers have already begun to develop behavioral expectations regarding the use of cigarettes and alcohol.”

These data, they add, clearly suggest that watching their parents drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes may lead even preschool-age children to view smoking and drinking as okay or normal in social situations.

And while it’s not clear whether these views will cause them to use alcohol and tobacco later on, the data provide “compelling evidence” that the process of imitation, which typically involves shifts in attitudes and expectations about the behavior, begins at a very young age.

Therefore, alcohol and tobacco prevention efforts, which currently target adolescent-age children, may need to be geared to younger children, perhaps as young as 3, and their parents, they conclude.

In the study, Dr. Madeline A. Dalton from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and others had 120 children, between the ages of 2 and 6, act out a social evening for adults. As part of the role playing, the children had to select items from a miniature grocery store stocked with 73 different products, including beer, wine and cigarettes.

According to the team, roughly 28 per cent of the children bought cigarettes and close to 62 per cent bought alcohol. Children were roughly four times as likely to buy “smokes” if their parents smoked and three times as likely to buy alcohol if their parents drank alcohol at least once a month. Children who watched PG-13 or R-rated movies were five times as likely to choose wine or beer.

This play behaviour, the researchers contend, suggests that even very young children are “highly attentive to the use and enjoyment of alcohol and tobacco.—Reuters