Dear Editor,
I read with utter shock the article in your edition of November 25, 2008, headlined ‘World Bank, IMF heads not going to key UN conference.’
While I am in no position to comment on the clash of schedules as the basis for preventing the participation of the heads, there are some pertinent issues on which light should be shed by the heads or their representatives: How long ago were the respective events/appointments known to the heads? What in their schedules takes precedence over a UN conference to discuss ways of financing development in poor countries and was it not at all possible to reschedule the event(s)/meeting(s) which clashed with such an important conference?
What struck me most, however, in the response of the heads is that it fits perfectly into the classic attitudinal mould of these institutions and most of their major shareholders dating back more than forty years ago.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as the name implies, was created to examine ways and means to promote the trade and development of member countries, with emphasis on developing countries. The issues then included ways of financing development in developing countries through investment, trade and aid, three of the four issues slated for the attention of the forthcoming Doha Conference.
I vividly recall the determined and, ultimately, successful efforts of most of the developed world to make UNCTAD an irrelevant forum with respect to decisions on financing development. Their point was that there were specialized institutions, viz the IMF and the World Bank, which dealt with such matters.
What this ensured was that the weighted system of voting in those institutions, rather than the much more democratic system for decision-making in UNCTAD, controlled the direction, quantum and use of the resources of those institutions.
In that context the IMF and World Bank played a peripheral role in the work of UNCTAD and over time UNCTAD came to be viewed as a talk shop for developing countries and little else.
I venture to suggest that there has been no significant, if any at all, change in attitude of most of the developed world. I interpret the proposed non-attendance of the heads of the IMF and World Bank at the forthcoming UN conference as evidence of the perpetuation of old attitudes. These heads must believe that their mere presence may be seen as endorsement for a changed approach.
The recent experience in negotiations with the Euro-pean Union (EU) for a Cariforum/EU/Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is a good example of this attitudinal rigidity.
When the Cariforum countries sought to have in-depth discussions with the EU on compensatory measures, mechanisms and, ultimately financing by the EU to ease the burden of adjustment by the Cariforum countries the EU advised that such matters could not be dealt with in the EPA negotiations but rather ultimately within the framework of the European Development Fund (EDF). So we signed an agreement without any knowledge of what, if any, compensation may be available to ameliorate adjustment difficulties.
I felt compelled to write this letter because, while the developed world has modernized its language and jargon to sound more oriented towards developing countries, in some regards not much may have changed in substance.
Yours faithfully,
Winston S Murray
