Inter Press Service - December 1, 2004
Emad Mekay

The groups rallied outside the Washington-based headquarters of the two organisations to protest policies they said undermine the health of millions of people across the world.

The protest marked the world's 17th AIDS Day. This year's theme is the disproportionate impact of the pandemic among women and girls.

The World Bank says 47 percent of people worldwide infected with the HI virus that causes AIDS are women and girls.

In some regions women and girls outnumber men in the ranks of the infected, according to the United Nations. In sub-Saharan Africa, close to 60 percent of adults living with HIV are women, while in the United States AIDS now ranks among the top causes of death for African-American women ages 35-44.

Groups here marked the day with protests, candlelight vigils and movie screenings on the plight of AIDS victims around the globe, and pointed a finger of blame at the neo-liberal economic policies championed by the World Bank and the IMF.

They blame the institutions' budget austerity measures, which borrowing nations must accept before obtaining much needed loans, for forcing governments to cut health spending.

Participants at the noon rally in downtown Washington also called for cancelling in full the debts of all impoverished nations, arguing that debt servicing also hinders those countries' abilities to spend on the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The groups included ActionAid USA, Africa Action, the 50 Years Is Enough Network, Global AIDS Alliance, Jubilee USA Network and the Religious Working Group on the IMF/World Bank.

The campaigners urged the two institutions to promote alternative strategies to address gender inequalities that leave women most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.

"Women in Africa are fighting not only a virus and systemic discrimination, but these powerful international financial institutions that define their economic realities," said Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action.

"While Africa faces the worst health crisis in human history, the World Bank and IMF continue to insist that African countries prioritise repayments of illegitimate debts over spending on HIV/AIDS programmes."

Fighting HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established by the world's governments and international institutions, with a deadline of 2015.

"If the World Bank and IMF are serious about defeating this pandemic and promoting women's rights, they must cancel the debt and end budget austerity policies that deepen poverty and perpetuate gender inequality," said 50 Years Is Enough.

But the sister economic powerhouses say they are doing their share, in part via the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), which partially reduces the debt of the world's poorest nations.

The World Bank also says it is now one of the largest long-term investors in the prevention and mitigation of HIV/AIDS in developing countries, and that its work spans all regions affected by the disease.

"We are doing a lot but of course the need is great and we can do more," said Stevan Jackson, a bank communications associate. "It's clear that there's more that needs to done worldwide so we are looking to scale up our efforts."

The bank, he said, has committed nearly 1.8 billion dollars through grants, loans and credits for programmes to fight HIV/AIDS "over the past few years." It is also a founding co-sponsor of the United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) and a trustee of the Global Fund dedicated to fighting the disease.

The bank also says its support for HIV/AIDS projects in the world's poorest countries can be financed fully by grants, rather than via loans.

Officials from the World Bank and IMF also denied they impose budget restrictions on health and education, but described the policies as "fiscal discipline" in order to stop waste and corruption.

"We have no authority to impose anything on the government," said Zita Lichtenberg, a communications officer with the bank's South Asia programme.

"The only thing that we can say is if you want to take a loan from the World Bank, a loan which your future generations of children will have to be repaying, our responsibility is to make sure that we are not throwing good money after bad and that we are not just throwing money down the hole," she added.

"Some people may get the impression that in requesting discipline before we would give a loan it might be to some politician's sort of interest to say something like, 'Oh the World Bank is not allowing us to spend money on health and education', but that would be incorrect, that would be inaccurate," said Lichtenberg.

The IMF says programmes to combat HIV/AIDS are important components of its many Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), which must be prepared by low-income countries' governments, and approved by the fund and bank, before nations can receive concessional loans as well as debt relief under the HIPC plan.

In a statement Tuesday, IMF Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato said IMF country teams have tried to take account of the epidemic's adverse effects in giving economic policy advice.

"More generally, the IMF and the World Bank have supported countries' poverty reduction strategies with financial assistance and technical advice," he added.

According to UNAIDS, an estimated 37.2 million adults and 2.2 million children worldwide are living with AIDS in 2004, the highest number ever.

More than 60 million people have been infected with the HI virus since it was first discovered more than 20 years ago and about 15,000 new infections occur every day.

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+World Bank (http://www1.worldbank.org/hiv_aids/)

+UNAIDS (http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)

+Africa Action (http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/release.php?op=read&documentid=708&type=2)

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