Ireland should use its influence to help stop the World Bank - which meets in Dublin on Monday - attaching economic policy conditions to loans to Third World countries, argues Nessa Ní Chasaide.
On Monday, Ireland will host negotiations that will affect the lives of millions of poor people. A conference in Malahide in Co Dublin is a gathering of the richest members of one of the most influential global aid institutions - the World Bank.
The meeting represents a crucial stage of negotiations on how much money the World Bank's richest members will give over the next three years to the arm of the World Bank that lends to the poorest countries in the world.
As Ireland's representative to the World Bank, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen will decide whether Ireland will provide funds to this concessional lending arm, and if so, how much.
We in Debt and Development Coalition Ireland believe that he should not provide funding to the arm of the World Bank under negotiation. This is because of the practice of the World Bank of attaching economic policy conditions to the loans and grants that it provides to impoverished countries. Instead this money should be redirected to aid mechanisms which do not attach economic conditions.
The practice of the World Bank of linking conditions to its funding means that when an aid package is finalised between the World Bank and an impoverished country, a set of policy recommendations is included as conditions of the loan contract. Many of these relate to economic policies and the implementation of these policies is often legally required before the World Bank will disburse its funding.
Attaching such conditions to World Bank funding is entirely unacceptable as it takes out of the hands of governments and parliaments their right to make decisions about their own future and puts it in the hands of an unaccountable global institution. This undermines the right of impoverished nations to ultimately determine their own routes out of the dire economic situations they are in.
Take the example of Mali, where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund made aid conditional on the privatisation of the electricity sector and liberalisation and privatisation of the cotton sector.
Liberalisation of the cotton sector has seen three million Malian farmers experience a 20 per cent drop in the price they received for their cotton in 2005. And private ownership of the Malian electricity company has resulted in minimal expansion in electricity coverage and dramatic price increases for consumers.
Decades of protest by people in rich and poor countries, coupled with evidence of the disastrous effects of World Bank economic conditions, have resulted in it acknowledging that it must change its approach to attaching conditions to its aid. However, progress has been far too slow.
This represents just one serious institutional problem at the bank. Others include the archaic leadership selection process that ensures US government control over the presidency of the institution; the lack of influence of impoverished country governments over the bank's governance structures; and the disastrous social and environmental effects of many World Bank funded projects.
Brian Cowen should stop paying for poverty by ensuring that the World Bank ends its practice of attaching economic conditions to its aid. If he fails to do this, any hopes that Ireland will tackle the many failures of the World Bank will fade even further, in addition to placing into question Ireland's commitment to ending global poverty and inequality.
Nessa Ní Chasaide is co-ordinator of Debt and Development Coalition Ireland www.debtireland.org