Women’s Eyes on the Multilaterals Campaign

Contribution to the Women’s Strategy Session
for the FfD Preparatory Committee, October, 2001

The Women’s Eyes on the Multilaterals Campaign monitors the commitments by the multilaterals, particularly the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter American Development Bank[1], made in the Beijing’s World Conference on Women’s Platform for Action. It is comprised of more than 300 NGOs, including five national and one regional network. We are currently working in nine countries of Latin America: Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Dominican Republic and Argentina.

Background: How do we view this Conference?

Since the beginning of this process, the Women’s Eyes on the Multilaterals Campaign had the hypothesis that the Financing for Development Conference was not really looking for financing for development.  Rather, the main goal of this Conference, as we see it, is to question the power relations between and among countries, and the relations built between the different multilaterals due to voting shares or due to TNCs investments, as it is done at the WTO despite the “one country one vote structure”.

If the goal were really to look for concrete measures to finance development, the current economic model would be questioned, but as a representative of the IMF told us a while ago, “This Conference is about carrying on incremental steps to further on the current economic model”.

From the Women’s Eyes point of view, our hypothesis was also proven first by the initial document report by the Secretary General Kofi Anan and second, by the different positions of the governments. On the one hand, the G-77 was questioning all of the different G’s (G-7, G-10, G-20, etc.) and the decision-making processes at the WB, IMF and other entities.  It was also frequently making reference to “ownership is the most important issue to build up the proper environment.”  And on the other hand, we found the US asking to take out Chapter VI out of the agenda, as it is the only one that really changes any aspect of global economic governance and relations within and among countries. However, none of them had ever explicitly said that the real objective behind the scenario was to establish a different position for the UN at the economic arena.  The only indicators we had were: i) the need for a Global Tax Institute which will take power from the IMF, and ii) the need of the UN to be part of the economic discussion, an issue that started with an ECOSOC dialogue between the World Bank and the IMF during the last FfD PrepCom.

However, our hypothesis was bolstered after the September 11^th terrorist attacks of the Twin Towers. At the beginning, it was thought that the Conference was going to be stopped, however, it continues. Then the US paid the UN the $584 billion dollars owed as part of its debt commitments, assuring by this action the UN’s support of US retaliation against the terrorists. For the first time, the Unites States needed the UN, and for the first time the UN had a stronger position than ever before with which to negotiate with the US. What followed was the UN developing the Terrorism Declaration in which the main commitment by governments is to close off the “financial aid and accounts of all terrorists” (which connects terrorism to financing for development and, of course, the role of the UN and the financial world).  And finally, the Facilitator’s paper appears with a new, never spoken before paragraph:

“To address decisively the global economic governance deficit, we decide to launch open-ended consultations of the General Assembly, with the support of all relevant stakeholders, to explore how to set up, under the aegis of the UN, a world economic body at the highest political level. The role of such a body would be to provide a long-term strategic policy framework to promote economic and social development, to secure consistency in the policy goals of the major international organizations, and to provide political leadership to enhance the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial, and trading systems in support of development. The body should be large enough to be representative but small enough to be efficient”.

Worst of all, in our opinion, the UN has not uttered a word about the so-called new war, but rather just complained about refugees and terrorism.

This paragraph and all the facts described above demonstrate that while the UN had the intention of being part of the global economic decision-making arena, the new juncture provided it with new power, which in turn has accelerated its original plans.

But, is this a good idea? What does it mean for the future world? Is it good that the UN pays the price of accepting the current economic model as it has been described in all the documents and processes of FfD in exchange for some power in the economic decision making arena? Is it worth it? Does this mean that it will rebuild each country’s sovereignty, as the UN is a more democratic forum?

Lets face the facts:

1. Sovereignty does not exist any more as before.  First of all, the national state does not intervene as before in the economy as it has privatized all its productive and strategic enterprises and also it’s role in lending services, as these are in the hand of markets.  Second, the economic decision-making is a internationalized process that has been done by the Multilaterals, such as the IMF or the WB. This means that the macroeconomic policies of each country depend on the decision of all state members of the IMF and the WB. One example is the case of El Salvador where even though that the military and indigenous movement took the presidency of El Salvador based on the promise that they were against using dollars as currency, the new president changed the currency to dollars as a result of the IMF conditionality.
2. The process of collective decision-making in which rich countries have a stronger vote than the rest, but in which the rest still have a decision is inequitable.  We would like to highlight the fact that governments do not respond to conditionality in just one direction; they also participate in the negotiating processes, and we have studies that suggest that some governments do better than others. This interactive process between the governments and the IMF, WB, WTO, OECD, and its member states its called: internationalization of the state government. However,  the main point of this process is still the state government represented by the Ministers of Finance of Trade as they participate in more than one forum.
3. TNCs have greater power than one state alone, and ,of course, they would like to have more, more than governments and more than multilaterals, as was stated in the Meltzer Report.
4. The UN is already receiving extra resources from the private sector, particularly TNCs.

By looking at these facts the challenge then becomes: Will the UN be a better forum for the global economic decisions, taking into consideration its history on certain wars, and on supporting some kind of authoritarian governments?

The answer to this question will most likely be no, but we really think that from a framework of a democratic state, in which it has the rule of law as its base, the possibilities of getting the control of the economic decision making at the level of state governments will be better than at the level of ministers of finance in a direct unequal relationship with the rest of the governments at the Multilaterals. This will imply the reconstruction of the state government at the national level, task that we all have in our homes.

In other words:  Is it better to have an internalization of the state process carried out at the UN Forum than at the IMF, the WB or the WTO. It does have some advantages.

But how are gender issues impacted at this juncture, and what about the possibility that these are taken on at FfD?

In looking at the performance of the main actors, we see that there will be many obstacles in our way, One important observation is that the G-77 has its leadership within the Arab and/or Muslim countries (Iraq, Iran, India, etc.).  Also, until September 11, the US was it’s greatest opposition.  It is quite understandable right now that the initial agreement at the UN was not to deal with controversial issues, in essence relegating gender, labor, human rights and environmental issues as “the issues dealt in other Conferences”. By doing this the UN was trying to smooth its own way to achieve the greater objective which was to be seated at the table with the principal actors at the economic decision-making arena.

After September 11, it will be very interesting to see if the a new agreement between the US and the United Nations is going to positively or negatively affect the gender scenario and the absent issues mentioned above.   It is interesting to note that the Facilitator’s new document mentions some of these absent issues, however, not in the way we prefer.  At least the most feasible issues are taken, for example gender budgets, as an initial step. However gender is still an absent issue in the rest of the document, most notably in Systemic Issues, which is viewed by us as a main issue of the Conference.  It appears to be the only chapter that includes different, whereas the rest is more of the same neoliberal strategies.  

In sum, the Women’s Eyes on the World Bank Campaign views this conference as the beginning of a longer process with a concrete objective in which governments are trying to built a new way to relate to each other. Therefore, our goal must be to include the gender agenda in this process and in that we call “global economic governance”. This means that we want to be very strategic in order to be very effective and get concrete results.

What are we planning to do in this new juncture?

Based on this analysis, we believe that while we will always denounce the current economic model as having a negative impact upon women, the FfD Conference has a strategic agenda that we can use in our own interest. In other words, we want to prepare very strategic, concrete lobbying points that could promote the women’s agenda while at the same time break out the model by using its own contradictions (For example: transparency is needed to predict investments and to eradicate government corruption from the market’s point of view.  From our view, it can reveal to the public what governments are doing behind peoples’ backs.  This is the first step to rebuild deep and real democracy in every country).

Having said this, we propose the following plans:

1)      During the last 4 months, we have been giving workshops and conferences about the role of Multilaterals and the FfD process in several countries of the Region and Europe: Mexico, Monterrey, El Salvador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Rome, Brussels, and Madrid, and we will go to: Chile, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. The main goal of this activity is to urge women and NGOs in all these countries to participate in the FfD process with a different strategy:  not only to come to New York to work at the national state level with the Finance and Trade ministers, but to take the gender agenda promoted at FfD and to monitor its performance before, during and after the PrepCom. 

2)      To continue to work with the women’s caucus and WEDO on language issues, particularly on Systemic Issues. During this PrepCom, we shall focuse on analyzing and understanding the new political landscape in this new juncture: How will the Arab and/or Muslim countries be playing? Will their leadership going to be strengthened? Will the implicit agreement be not to speak about the so-called war, establishing as a rule that terrorist issues must be dealt with at the Security Council or the General Assembly so they can then negotiate the FfD agenda? Is the US taking a less controversial position? Is the European Union taking the opposition leadership because the US cannot break its new alliances? All these questions will be answered at the PrepCom. One thing we will have to discuss is how important is to put language on the government agenda without fully knowing what the political layout is. We think that is it very important to observe each one of the FfD actors before designing strategies that instead of helping overcome a challenge will perhaps  over load it. So, while we can distribute our document widely, we can also focus on getting information about how gender issues are being received in this new juncture. Then, during the next PrepCom, we can propose more firm steps towards this goal.

3)      To guarantee that the NGO Forum will be designed with a gender perspective in every aspect of planning:  issues, gender balance at workshops and seminaries, etc. It is worthwhile to say that 80% of the participants in the Mexican Steering Committee are women, and 4 of the 6 networks are comprised by feminist networks and of those 2 from the 6 networks are in charge of the design of two issue tents: Debt and ODA, and Systemic Issues. In addition, the Secretariat of Monterrey is comprised of feminist women.

4)      To launch an International Campaign to support the Gender Platform for International Conference on Financing for Development proposing a platform that includes 5 to 10 non-negotiable points which women agreed upon as minimum. This platform will be disseminated widely with the hope of getting at least one NGO per country that goes directly to the finance minister and trade minister of that country to watch for its support. We will be distributing radio tapes to each country in conjunction to launching the Campaign.  We will also have a logo, buttons, and all other appropriate propaganda. There will be a signature campaign component that supports the Gender Platform. The main idea is that the day the closing day of the Forum, we will present the Signatures and the Platform to the Secretary General Kofi Anan, or someone in the IMF General Director, the World Bank president, or other. It will be fed to the media. From that day to the end of the Conference, we will set up a vigil outside the Conference or in place nearby. The women of Monterrey are ready to support us.

5)      We will also present a report on women and their participation at the Conference and at the Forum with the goal of demonstrating a gender perspective in the policies and projects promoted by the World Bank, IMF and IADB

Laura Frade
Regional Coordinator
For a Feminist Millennium
Women’s Eyes on the World Bank
Mexico, 2001

Back to FfD-Documents