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In this section are a series of issue briefs and policy briefs on different areas and institutions. The issue briefs provide readers with background information. Policy briefs go beyond backgrounders by adding the Halifax Initiative Coalition's stated policy position on the issue.
Introduction
A growing number of politicians, civil society organizations, economists and some financiers have become strong advocates of a global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). An FTT is a tiny tax on financial market transactions such as equity, bond, derivative or foreign exchange trades.
Political leaders, including the presidents of France and Germany and the prime minister of Britain, back an FTT as one of the best ways to fund programs to fight world poverty, pay for climate mitigation and adaptation costs and make financial institutions pay their fair share of the costs of the global crisis which, in large part, was created by their practices. Prominent economists advocate a Financial Transactions Tax as one way to cool down excessive speculation in financial markets, a principal cause of the economic crisis.
Rethinking the international financial system during a time of crisis
Introduction
On October 19 and 20, 2009, the Halifax Initiative held a conference, co-hosted by The North South Institute, the University of Ottawa and the School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS), entitled "What’s Missing in the Response to the Global Financial Crisis?" The meeting brought together experts from a range of backgrounds to analyze the challenges facing the global economy, discuss the ways in which the international community has responded to the current financial crisis, and identify shortcomings in these responses.
Introduction
The Official Development Assistance (ODA) Accountability Act (ODA Act) came into force on June 28, 2008. This now legally requires Canadian ODA to contribute to poverty reduction, take into account the perspectives of the poor, and be consistent with international human rights standards. Over the past year, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC), and Finance Canada have been developing plans on how to interpret and implement the Act. To date, only Finance Canada has held a consultation on the Act, with neither CIDA nor FAC disclosing its plans. Consultations must be held before September 30, 2009, when CIDA is expected to release the first annual report on the Act.
Introduction
When US financial powerhouse Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall, the world saw the start of an unprecedented collapse in global stock markets, bringing with it the loss of billions of dollars of investment around the world and severely shaking the foundations of the international banking system. Gloomy economic forecasts, a loss of investor confidence, and mass capital flight have all contributed to the worsening of the current global financial crisis. A decade ago, a similar situation unfolded in East Asia when market speculation sparked investors to pull out billions of dollars of capital, inflating debt and destabilizing markets in the region. In response, the Chiang Mai Initiative emerged in an effort to protect Asian markets from future crises. But has it stood up to today’s global economic collapse? And is an Asian Monetary Fund on the horizon? This brief explores these, and other, issues.
What is the Bank of the South?
On December 9th, 2007, representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to launch “el Banco del Sur” or the Bank of the South (BoS). With the creation of the Bank, the leaders of Latin America envisaged a new development institution to help promote growth and tackle poverty. The BoS was originally proposed in 2006 by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Chavez, along with other South American leaders, wanted a Bank that would allow them to assert their political and financial independence from traditional international financial institutions (IFIs), like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and put an end to decades of structural adjustment policies imposed by the IFIs on countries in Latin America.
The World Bank and Climate Change
The World Bank is one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. Created in 1944, the Bank has now become the world’s largest public “development” agency, influencing the policies of the majority of the world’s developing and emerging economies. In recent years, noting the significant impact that climate change is already having on developing countries and the gap in financing mechanisms available for addressing these impacts, the World Bank has increasingly staked a claim for itself as a key player on the issue – with widespread criticism from developing country governments and civil society around the world.
Introduction
In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference established the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Every year at the end of March, the Minister of Finance tables a “Report on Operations under the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act”. As of 2008, these annual reports provide a comprehensive introduction to the institutions and Canada’s place within them, an overview of Canadian priorities and actions in 2007, and Canadian medium- term priorities looking forward.
Since 1995, the Halifax Initiative Coalition (HI) has produced report cards on these annual reports to Parliament. These report cards drew attention to the perfunctory nature of the reports and the absence of any substantive content with respect to Canadian priorities, policies and positions on the various issues before the Bank and Fund. They evaluate the transparency and accountability of Finance Canada to parliamentarians for Canadian activities at the institutions, and propose a model, based on best practice, for enhancing the report.
Introduction
On May 29, Bill C-293 or the “better aid bill”, received royal assent. This now legally requires Canadian official development assistance (ODA) to contribute to poverty reduction, take into account the perspectives of the poor, and be consistent with international human rights standards. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC), among others, are in the process of developing plans on how to implement the Bill in practice. These comments are intended to help CIDA and FAC in their interpretation of the Bill for the various international financial institutions for which they are the lead agencies.
Introduction
On May 29, Bill C-293 or the “better aid bill”, received royal assent, now legally requiring Canadian official development assistance (ODA) to contribute to poverty reduction, take into account the perspectives of the poor, and be consistent with international human rights standards. Finance Canada, among others, is in the process of developing plans on how to implement the Bill in practice. These comments are intended to help Finance Canada in its interpretation of the Bill for the various international financial institutions (IFIs) for which it is the lead agency.
For pdf, click here
15th Replenishment of the International Development Association – Please sir, can I have some more?
What is IDA?
The International Development Association (IDA), along with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), constitute the World Bank. Formed in 1960, IDA was established to support economic growth, reduce poverty and improve living conditions. IDA loans support primary education, basic health services, clean water and sanitation, infrastructure and institutional reforms. Whereas IDA provides long-term interest-free loans and grants to 81 of the world’s poorest, or low-income, countries, the IBRD provides advice and investment to middle income countries. By the end of 2006, IDA had provided a total over the years of US$161 billion in concessional loans and grants to 108 countries .
For PDF, click here
This policy briefing from KAIROS - Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a member of the Halifax Initiative Coalition, looks at the case of Zambia, and how it represents a prime example of an impoverished country betrayed by the failure of the Group of Eight to deliver promises of more aid and effective debt relief. This report chronicles how G8 promises of debt cancellation have been of little benefit to the poor due to a decline in Official Development Assistance and the International Monetary Fund’s obsession with low inflation and restrictive fiscal policies.
For pdf, click here
Halifax Initiative policy demands with respect to the 15th replenishment of IDA:
The Halifax Initiative Coalition supports a full replenishment of the International Development Association, in addition to the debt cancellation commitments made by Canada at Gleneagles.
However, we also call on the Canadian government to work for the adoption at the World Bank of the following reforms by the end of IDA 14 in June 2008:
Click here for complete document in pdf
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group. Through the IFC, the World Bank provides financing to private corporations, for a variety of investments in lesser developed countries, such as pulp and paper mills, oil and gas pipelines, metal mines and chemical and industrial facilities. The IFC is an important global financier and influences other international financial entities. In 2005, the IFC's committed portfolio reached US$19.3 billion and it helped to syndicate a further US$5.3 billion in financing.
PDF versions are available in the below links.
Issue brief on IFC and MIGA: "Private Sector and Lending and the World Bank Group."
Issue brief on EIR: "World Bank and Extractive Industries Review - Lessons Learned (and promptly ignored)."
Issue brief on IFC Performance Standards: "The International Finance Corporation's Performance Standards - the new 'gold standard' or 'fool's gold'?"
Policy brief on EDC: "Export Development Canada and Human Rights - Risk or Rights?"
Background
In January 2004, the Belgian Socialist party introduced the “Proposition de Loi liant l’octroi d’aides publiques belges destinées à des investissements à l’étranger à des normes d’entreprise durable et responsable”, a bill that would provide some teeth to the issue of corporate social responsiblity[1].The proposed bill came in the wake of public and Parliamentary opposition to Ducroire, the Belgian export credit agency (ECA), providing financial support to a controversial oil and gas pipeline in Peru, and an arms factory in Tanzania. Prior to Ducroire’s involvement in these projects, the Belgian ECA had few provisions in place for taking account of the environmental and social impacts of the projects it supported, and even less transparency.
What does the bill call for? Who does it apply to?
To receive debt reduction through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), low- income countries must prepare of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) to show how money freed up from debt servicing will be used to alleviate poverty. PRSPs describe the country's macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programmes to promote growth and reduce poverty, as well as outline associated external financing needs and major sources of financing. The World Bank and the IMF Board of Directors approve the PRSP produced in each country.
KAIROS Analysis of the Outcome of the G-7 Finance Ministers’ and IMF & World Bank Annual Meetings, Oct. 1-3, 2004
This briefing provides an analysis of the outcome of the G7 Finance Ministers Meeting and the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in light of the four demands put forward by KAIROS and the Halifax Initiative.
For pdf, click here.
Overview
Informed public consultation is the foundation of good environmental impact assessment (EIA) and
review. Yet the EIA policies of Export Development Canada (EDC), a Crown Corporation mandated
to promote Canadian trade abroad, falls far short of both national and international standards.
For pdf, click here.
Overview
Export Development Canada (EDC), a Crown Corporation mandated to promote Canadian trade abroad, has developed policies on the environment, disclosure, human rights and corruption that still fall far short of ensuring appropriate due diligence and public accountability.
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Overview
Corruption has become a focus of national and international concern. Yet Export Development Canada (EDC), a Crown Corporation mandated to promote Canadian trade abroad, has anti-corruption procedures that despite recent improvement, still contain considerable loopholes, meaning that Canadian companies paying bribes abroad are unlikely to be detected and then properly sanctioned.
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Overview
Accountability is the cornerstone of democratic governance. Yet Export Development Canada (EDC), a Crown Corporation mandated to promote Canadian trade abroad, is still relatively unaccountable for the potentially environmentally devastating projects they finance.
The Role of the World Bank in Developing Country Water Privatization
Just as there is a global consensus on what constitutes a sound energy sector, so too is there a consensus on the central features of a sound water supply and sanitation sector. This consensus draws on the same principles of separating the roles of providers (increasingly private) and regulation and policy formulation and assessment (a public role), and of competition amongst providers.
Follow-up brief to MPs who attended a Parliament Hill discussion on privatization, hosted by the Honourable Larry Bagnell, MP for the Yukon Territory. Other MPs in attendance included: Peter Adams, Alexa McDonough, Peter Stoffer, Alan Tonks and Judy Wasylycia-Lies. Legislative staff also attended from the offices of the Honourable Charles Caccia, the Honourable Irwin Cotler, Libby Davies and Brian Masse.
Chile - Alumysa Aluminum Smelter[1]
The Aysén region of Chile is thought to be one of the three least contaminated areas on the planet. Residents of the region have declared Aysén a “Life Reserve”. Yet Noranda has proposed an aluminum smelter in the region that would produce more than 1.5 million tonnes of solid and gaseous waste per year.[i]
Wealthy countries and the World Bank are forcing the privatization of public services and natural resources in Africa and elsewhere as a condition for development assistance. Impoverished countries are required to turn their public services and natural resources over to private owners. If they want the aid money, they have to sell off their oil, gas, mining, electricity, telecommunications, transportation and water companies. Investors say privitization brings efficiency; opponents say it hurts the poor.
A growing chorus of critics from around the world have increasingly questioned the efficacy of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-promoted economic policy reforms. As a result, the two institutions renewed vows to fight poverty at their annual meetings in Prague 2000. Uganda is viewed as pivotal to the success of much-publicized efforts to reform the institutions and their policies. Over 41 countries are in the pipeline for the adoption of similar policies, but is Uganda a success?
Export credit agencies (ECAs) are public agencies that provide government backed loans and insurance to corporations. G7 governments all own export credit agencies, which support G7 companies to do business abroad.
Export credit agencies (ECAs) are public agencies that provide government backed loans and insurance to corporations. G7 governments all own export credit agencies, which support G7 companies to do business abroad.
KANANASKIS G7 SUMMIT ISSUE BRIEFS (June 2002):
What’s Shutout of the G7? – The Tobin tax and Mountains of Money for Development
The G7 drives the engine of neo-liberal globalization and controls the most powerful institutions of global finance and trade. It is impossible to speak of the impact of the G7 without discussing the impact of the Bretton Woods financial institutions: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
An information kit containing 11 factsheets discussing different issues related to the G8, including what is the G8 and he New Partnership for Africa's Development.
- Who we are [ 555 Kb ]
- Key Messages on NEPAD from Africa Canada Forum [ 1.9 Mb ]
- New Strategies, Old Loan Conditions: The Case of Uganda [ 1.4 Mb ]
- G7 Response to Financial Crises - Another Band-Aid [ 1.4 Mb ]
- What's shutout of the G7? - The Tobin tax and Mountains of Money for Development [ 2.6 Mb ]
KANANASKIS G7 SUMMIT ISSUE BRIEFS (June 2002): Extractive Industries and the Role of the World Bank
One of the most controversial areas of World Bank involvement is the financing of oil, gas and mining projects in developing nations. This brief describes World Bank involvement in these extractive industries, specifically the devastating effects of these projects on local people and the environment and the solutions put forward by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to correct these problems.
The Problem
The on-going debt crisis of developing countries is integral to the perpetuation of an unjust economic system, one that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few. EVERY SINGLE DAY in 1999, $128 million was transferred from the poorest countries to the richest in debt repayments. For every one dollar in aid to developing countries, more than seven dollars comes back to rich countries in the form of debt servicing.
Proposals for Bailing In the Private Sector: A briefing note
In 1999, Amnesty International raised alarms about the killing of four indigenous people protesting a hydroelectric dam in Colombia that has devastated their food source and, if completed, would flood most of their land.
In 1998, an accident at a mine in Kyrgystan resulted in two tons of cyanide entering a river. A lack of an emergency response plan worsened the disaster, leaving two people dead and over 600 hospitalized.
Debt aspects related to export credit agencies
The cancellation of Third World debt has been a rallying cry of social movements for years, gaining in volume and numbers in 2000 as a result of the global Jubilee movement. Much attention has been focused on the debts owed by poor countries to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, export credit agencies collectively own more debt of Third World countries than the World Bank and the IMF combined.
Currency transactions taxes such as the Tobin-type tax are often dismissed by critics before all the arguments have been heard. They view the tax as too difficult to adopt and too easy to avoid. Much criticism is ill-informed or designed to stifle debate. Here are the most common myths and our response to them:
A TOBIN-TYPE TAX WILL HIT THE POOR
The tax is a progressive one, designed to target only those profiting from destabilising currency speculation.** The poor don’t flip millions of dollars a day on currency and bond markets, the world’s biggest banks urrency and bond markets, the world’s biggest banks and investment firms do. This tax will hit them.
The world of international finance has become a global gambling casino, where investors seeking quick profits bet huge sums around the clock. They play with HOT MONEY. Unlike money invested directly in the production of goods or services which then make money over the long-term, HOT MONEY makes money from money alone and it does so very quickly.
(Document in English) (Document in French) (Document in Spanish)
Backgrounder (1999)
An international consortium consisting of Exxon, Shell and Elf, a French company, is sponsoring the project. The project includes the drilling of 300 wells in the Doba oilfields of southern Chad, the construction of a 1050 km long, 30 m wide buried pipeline through to an offshore marine export terminal facility 15 km off the coast of Cameroon.
...what the World Bank and IMF require, and how it hurts the poor
The World Bank and IMF adopted new rhetoric about reducing poverty, and linking debt relief primarily to poverty actions in the fall. But countries entering the debt relief process are still facing the same old conditions that have nothing to do with poverty reduction, and can actually increase the hardships of the poor.
Guinea - Conditions for debt relief include: privatization of energy, privatization of telecommunications, deregulation of petroleum prices, removal of subsidies for public transportation (December 1999).
Honduras - Conditions for debt relief include: privatization of telecommunications, liberalization of mining sector, implementation of bank service fees (November 1999).
Here is what these kinds of "structural adjustments" have done, and are still doing, to the poor:
FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS:
HOW WORLD BANK FINANCING OF FOSSIL FUELS
UNDERMINES THE
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT FACILITY (GEF)
INTRODUCTION
The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) mishandling of the Southeast Asian financial crisis has enraged mainstream economists, government officials and citizens alike. The "global economic doctor" ignored the early warning symptoms, misdiagnosed the problem, prescribed the wrong medicine and nearly killed the patient. Click here for pdf.
Factsheet
Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), were originally designed to stabilize developing country economies. Instead, they have imposed harsh economic measures which deepen poverty, undermine food security and self-reliance and lead to unsustainable resource exploitation, massive environmental destruction, and population dislocation and displacement. Given the mounting evidence, Northern countries must reconsider the appropriateness of using their lending and aid programmes to support the structural adjustment regimes of the World Bank and IMF.
What are SAPs?
