Vol. III, Bulletin No. 14. July 22, 1998
The IMF/World Bank Story in Indonesia and Beyond
Fake Figures + Faulty Assumptions = Failure
Take a look at page 33 of The East Asian Miracle, published
by the World Bank in 1993 . There the Bank lists a spectacular drop in
the number of Indonesians with a standard of living below the poverty line:
from 67.9 million to 30 million in a single decade. That dramatic
decrease was a major reason why the World Bank hailed Indonesia as a "high-performing
Asian economy," one that achieved an "Asian economic miracle."
Trouble is, the figure of 30 million is fake. Many were skeptical at the time. Now, at long last, comes a story in the Wall Street Journal (7/14, p.1) that exposes the fakery:
Jeffrey Winters, a Northwestern University professor who was a U.S. Agency for International Development in Jakarta in 1989, recalls an incident he says shows that Indonesian poverty numbers were "pulled completely out of thin air." He recalls President Suharto insisting in public that poverty had dropped to 30 million, even though the World Bank was in the middle of a three-year study that showed 60 million poor. He says AID officials tried to forge a compromise between the World Bank and the Indonesian government. In the end, the bank report put the number at 30 million.Revelations That Spare Some Guilty Parties"It was a huge collusive effort," says Mr. Winters. "The number has been reported over and over, but it's a lie."
The Journal sketches the causes behind what it calls "a historic setback" in Indonesia. The article indicts the World Bank for "subsidizing corruption" (in the words of a former UN official stationed in Jakarta) and also for helping to sustain the doomed Suharto regime. That's interesting news coming from the Journal, but old news to those who years ago learned what was rotten in Indonesia.
Welcome though it is, the article's criticism ignores some important realities:
- The heavy involvement of the United States government in determining World Bank policy toward Indonesia. Why should U.S. officials escape blame? Some remain in high government posts, and are still functioning under the same faulty assumptions that helped lead to the disaster in Indonesia and elsewhere.
- The flawed theoretical assumptions that guide much international policy. The major error is an obsession with evaluating a country's health almost completely by measuring its Gross Domestic Product. Another is the belief that idolizes freedom for the "market," to the exclusion of freedom for human beings.
Getting the Fundamentals Terribly Wrong
The first appeared in the Washington Post on Dec. 31, 1997, well before Suharto fell from power. Titled "One-Dimensional Bailout," it criticized the huge rescue package that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S., and other governments mobilized for Indonesia and other East Asian governments. A key part of Levinson's criticism:
The financial mismanagement in Indonesia is a direct consequence of the absence of such democratic institutions as a free press, free trade unions, an independent judiciary, and an effective political party opposition. Without such institutions, there was no one to demand accountability of the Suharto government.In their defense, World Bank and IMF officials say they are bound by the charters of their respective institutions to be guided by "economic decisions" alone. The charters do not define "economic decisions," except to distinguish them from those based on the "political character" of the regime involved.The result has been a crony-capitalism that has enabled President Suharto's family and a clique of close associates to loot the banking system abetted by the same international banks that are the primary beneficiaries of the rescue plan. The IMF rescue plan does not address this issue.
Would They Have Given 'Economic' Support to Nazi Germany?
The Bank and IMF have chosen to define these general guidelines narrowly. Their interpretation is "unnecessarily restrictive," Professor Levinson writes in a subsequent (6/15) article in the Post. The charters were written in 1944, before the end of World War II, by men "whose democratic credentials were impeccable," Levinson points out, and so it "defies reason and common sense" that they intended the World Bank and the IMF "to provide financing in the future for governments that, like the Nazis, if on a lesser scale, were egregious abuses of human rights." (Unfortunately neither of Levinson's important articles is available on the Web.)
A frightening thought: the charter rules as interpreted by the IMF and World Bank today would have permitted loans to Adolph Hitler in the mid-1930s. After all, under the World Bank/IMF's present myopia, it would be wrong to make loan decisions based on the "political character" or the human rights practices of the Nazi regime.
Thus far, the U.S. administration has not challenged this myopic policy, because many of its officials are indoctrinated with the same deleterious value system. Congress should step in to clean house. The choice today is either to revise the charter to clarify its original intent, or to boot out the officials who insist on misinterpreting it.
At last we're learning much about the evils of "crony capitalism" in Indonesia and elsewhere. But what about its American counterpart--the cozy relationship between the U.S. Treasury Department and Wall Street? For an economist's perspective on this conflict of interest, see Jagdish Bhagwati's comments, summarized in "Wall Street's Self-Interest in IMF Bailouts."
Focusing on World Trade and Women Workers
More and more, the global economy depends on women workers for its growth. It thereby creates a new dimension of gender issues--a dimension fraught with both problems and opportunities.A small non-governmental organization based in the United Kingdom, Women Working Worldwide, has a global network of women worker organizations that focus on those issues. The group's purpose is to support the rights of women workers in an international environment that uses women primarily as a source of cheap and "flexible" labor.
The organization started in 1983 when a group of researchers and activists came together to organize a conference on women and the international division of labor. Its Website at http://www.poptel.org.uk/women-ww contains information on the organization's projects, partners, publications, and campaigns, as well as background information on codes of conduct and "social clauses" for trade agreements. It's a good source for anyone, male or female, concerned about social justice in the modern world.
(A new section of Human Rights for Workers lists past Bulletins with articles on women workers, as well as other sources of information on the same subject. I'm working on a China index.)Worker, Worker's, or Workers' Rights--Which?
You'll find three slightly different terms covering the same idea: worker rights, worker's rights, and workers' rights. Which one is grammatically correct? All of them, of course. And all have precedents in usage.
In the constitution of the International Labor Organization, representatives of workers and of employers are called workers' delegates and employers' delegates. That traditional usage makes some people comfortable with the possessive form: workers' rights. Often, however, that apostrophe slips to the left, from plural into the singular.
I was converted to the expression worker rights long ago. That happened while I was working with an AFL-CIO international institute, and Tom Kahn, then head of the AFL-CIO international department, one day opted for consistency. He choose the simplest formulation. And it's still the one that, at least to my ears, sounds the best. Simply worker rights. Without sticking in an extra, tongue-tripping S.
Diary: Root Canals and Roots of Human Rights
What is the basis for human rights? I've been wondering. The question is especially timely now that we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I thought about its roots this month during an hour-and-a-half session in a dentist's chair. I was there for two root canal procedures.
Between waiting for the Novocain to take hold, X-rays to be developed, and drillings to be refined, I jotted down some ideas in the Notes & Memo pages of my July Day-Timer booklet. Here's a transcription of my scribblings:
- God creates human beings in his own image and likeness, thus bestowing on them a unique kind of dignity.
- From early on in human history, humans violate that dignity.
- Laws, regulations, and rules of various types (ranging from the Ten Commandments to corporate codes of conduct) are written to counter the wrong-doings committed by humans.
- People gradually expand their recognition of the wrongs committed against human dignity (e.g., eventual recognition of the moral evil of slavery and compulsory racial segregation).
- Human ingenuity, however, is ever at work in devising new forms of evil (e.g., causing people to be "disappeared," which is not listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
- Globalization adds a vast new dimension to human existence, one which expands opportunities both for violating human dignity and for respecting it.
In a real sense, everyone favors human rights, at least within a limited scope: for yourself and those close to you. Controversies flare up when you go beyond that: over your responsibilities for respecting the human rights of others, especially the weakest members of the human family.
Human Rights for Workers: Bulletin No. III-14, July 22, 1998
http://www.senser.com
Robert A. Senser, editor
Copyright 1998
hrfw@senser.com. (Send e-mail)