GCAP representatives debate with IMF and World Bank at the World Social Forum

Officials from the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN, were confronted with some difficult questions as the faced representatives from the GCAP coalition at the World Social Forum in Brazil.

On 29 January GCAP representatives held a controversy table at the WSF with officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN. Thomas Deve (MWENGO); Cecilia Lopez (REPEM) and Ted Van Hees (Oxfam Novib) - representing GCAP - debated robustly with John Garrison (World Bank); Simonetta Nardin (IMF) and Jose Antonio Ocampo (UN). GCAP representatives talked about the incidence of poverty and posed challenging questions around the IMF's and World Bank's policies of forced liberalization, structural adjustment policies and conditionalities imposed on, for example, debt relief. Indeed, officials were not able to give a single example of a country with a weak economy, forced to open up its markets, and then manage to successfully develop its economy and provide adequate social services.