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INT’L WOMEN’S DAY: Major Lenders Urged to Enforce Gender Rights

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Mar 8 2007 (IPS) - Dozens of international civil society groups have endorsed a call to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to require enforceable gender protections and equality for women as conditions for project financing in developing nations.

“It is no surprise that these mega-development projects tend to have major negative impacts on women and children,” said Ruth Castel-Branco of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, one of the groups who made the appeal on Wednesday to mark International Women’s Day, celebrated on Mar. 8.

Elaine Zuckerman of Gender Action, the main force behind the appeal, says the two institutions, which lend billions of dollars every year to poor nations, do not lack gender-related policies, but rather fail to implement them.

“As recently as 2003, the heads of these institutions vowed to promote gender equality – many of them have had a gender policy since the 1980s,” Zuckerman said. “As yet, these commitments are largely unmet.”

The groups say the so-called international financial institutions (IFIs), particularly the IMF, World Bank and the regional development banks – have pushed projects that lead to discrimination against women, especially among already marginalised groups like indigenous peoples.

This has been done mostly through policies that emphasise corporate-led growth, debt repayment and reduced public spending, which often aggravate existing biases against women.

They pointed to the example of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, a flagship project of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation. Although local communities were told that the pipeline would bring economic development and decent job opportunities, recent reports by NGOs show a negative impact on women.

“Many women and girls have been forced into prostitution, that links to a subsequent rise in STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), sexual harassment and violence against women,” said Manana Kochladze of CEE Bankwatch Network.

A recent report on the project found that it had created considerably fewer employment opportunities for local women than originally promised, with food service and cleaning accounting for most jobs.

Working conditions in these fields are often viewed by local women as unacceptable as they entail very long hours, which decrease the time for family responsibilities and personal activities.

The groups also noted that the IMF’s so-called “austerity programmes” have often forced countries to make deep budget cuts in social spending in areas like education and healthcare.

“For national public health systems, funding cuts have resulted in a scarcity of doctors and nurses, inadequate provision of medication, especially anti-retroviral drugs, as well as services. Women, as the primary caretakers, bear the increased burden,” said Castel-Branco.

The appeal says that major increases in government spending on health and education necessary to lift women and girls out of poverty, combat HIV/AIDS, and meet the Millennium Development Goals, which include cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015, are nearly impossible under the tight fiscal and monetary policy framework required by the IMF.

Groups that signed the appeal include the Bank Information Centre, Friends of the Earth International, EarthRights International, the Global AIDS Alliance and the Halifax Initiative Coalition.

The statement, endorsed by more than 100 groups and individuals, says that many IFI investments “intensify poverty, human displacement, trafficking in and violence against women, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.”

Two-thirds of the 876 million illiterate adults worldwide are women, while more than three-quarters of the world’s 27 million refugees are women and children.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said that women and girls confront an alarming array of threats to their safety, including physical and sexual violence in schools, places of work, and in detention facilities.

But the two Washington-based public lenders say they already have special programmes to promote gender equality and that they are making an impact.

The World Bank itself has prepared a special section on its web site with information on how gender equality contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction in South Asia.

During last September’s annual meetings in Singapore, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz launched a Gender Action Plan to boost the productivity and income of working women and their access to formal financial services.

The plan is designed to benefit women in some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania.

The World Bank says that interest-free loans and grants to the poorest nations through the International Development Association (IDA) have helped boost economic growth, “reduce inequalities and improve living conditions.”