The 4th Annual International Conference on An Inter-faith Perspective on Globalisation will be held in Nairobi, Kericho and Mombasa, Kenya, from 18-28 April, 2005. Papers, panels, and roundtable submissions are invited from observers, commentators, academics and NGOs to address issues related to globalisation within identified themes of the conference by 15 November 2004. Please also note that the Conference is not only on Africa, but it is fully inclusive of other regions.

Developed countries are failing to live up to their commitments to fund sexual and reproductive health care, leaving poorer countries to provide around 40 percent of the bill. This funding shortfall is undermining efforts to provide family planning services, reduce maternal deaths, prevent HIV/AIDS and meet the needs of young people and the poor.

The African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) has initiated Opportunity Africa, a project to provide a gateway to Africa-related careers, training & education for young people of African descent in the UK. Opportunity Africa’s purpose is to enhance the skills base and job preparedness of young Africans in London for the world of international/Africa-related work.

Proposals by the US government to re-divert aid funding to pay for the debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries have been criticized by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD). It is understood that the US Treasury Department is going to call for 100% debt cancellation for highly indebted poor countries. However the American proposal calls for the debt relief to be offset against new aid funding for the poverty-stricken countries. Henry Northover, Public Policy Analyst, CAFOD, said: "It's not so much a 100% debt cancellation as a 100% debt makeover. Debt cancellation for the worlds poorest must be paid for by the world's richest."

Mining always seems to have had an exploitative nature, representing massive wealth for some and grinding poverty for others. Take the case of gold mining in South Africa, where under apartheid enormous profits were made by wealthy mineowners while their workers toiled underground for low wages, only to be sent home to die when they developed occupational diseases. The World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review (EIR) was supposed to change all of this, but any hope that it would fizzled out last month with a few outraged NGO press releases. Bank management had met and failed to adopt the recommendations that would have placed people over profit.

This year marks what many activists have dubbed the unhappy birthday of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It is 60 years since the creation of these institutions in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and in that time period both have come to have a profound and controversial influence on the world. Pambazuka News is profiling a series of articles that aim to examine the role of these institutions in the context of Africa. This week in our Comment and Analysis section we carry the fifth article in this series which looks at Extractive Industries Review of the World Bank. Abdulai Darimani from Third World Network Africa explains some of the political machinations that conspired against the adoption of the review’s recommendations.

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The Extractive Industries Review (EIR) final report was particularly critical of the World Bank’s role in policy reforms in the extractive industry sector which have led to negative impacts on communities, the environment and human rights abuses and recommended that the bank radically change its approach to funding such projects and even stop supporting some.

The President of the World Bank Group Mr. James Wolfenson set up the extractive industries review (EIR) secretariat under the Chairmanship of Dr. Emil Salim, former Environment Minister of Indonesia. The EIR secretariat was tasked to assess the impacts of the World Bank Group’s intervention in the extractive industries, and to recommend its future role in the oil, gas and mining industries. The secretariat was specifically tasked to identify the negative impacts of the Bank’s operations in extractive industries; assess whether the Bank’s activities in these sectors can advance its mandate of poverty reduction through sustainable development; and recommend whether, or under what circumstances, the Bank should continue to support extractive projects.

The review, a consultative process that included regional workshops, research projects, visits to four project sites, attendance at international conferences and informal consultations with a range of rights holders, released its final report following the final consultative meeting in Mid-December 2003. The report affirmed the criticisms and concerns long expressed by African civil society and many other groups across the world.

The recommendations demanded that the Bank adopt significant reforms including doing more to reduce poverty; immediately ceasing funding for coal projects worldwide and phasing out its support for oil production by 2008; enhancing human rights protection; prior informed consent for indigenous peoples and communities affected by extractive sector activity; and an end to support for destructive mining technologies.

The report also recommended that the Bank should prepare and publish net-benefit analyses; update and fully implement the Natural Habitat Policy as a basis for clear No-Go-Zones, and should not finance any oil, gas or mining projects or activities (including through policy lending and technical assistance) that might affect existing World Heritage properties, current official protected areas, or critical natural habitats or areas planned in the future to be designated by national or local officials as protected.

Some African governments and mining industry representatives and their associations viewed these recommendations with scepticism, calling them anti-development indicators for mineral-endowed African countries. During the consultative process some governments and industry tried to water down many of the progressive recommendations. However, facts could not be beaten and African civil society and their global colleagues worked hard to retain them in the report.

In the past years, the World Bank Group (WBG) have promoted extractive sector reforms in Africa through support in trade and investment liberalisation; privatisation of state-owned companies; institution and capacity building; apparently to improve conditions for foreign direct investment in the extractive sector; and direct finances of private sector extractive industry projects through equity investments, loans and guarantees.

The World Bank affiliates have helped fund major but highly controversial private sector extractive projects in Africa. In the oil/gas sector the Bank supported the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project. In the mining sector, the Bank has supported highly-controversial projects in Zambia, and Tanzania. Former artisanal and small-scale miners from Tanzania claimed that a Canadian company and the Tanzanian authorities forced tens of thousands of villagers away from the site of the Kahama Mines in the Bulyanhulu gold tract in 1996. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a private guarantee arm of the World Bank Group, supported this project three years later.

Early this year, a group of African Ministers of Mines meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, expressed misgivings about the recommendations of the EIR final report. They called on the World Bank not to adopt all the recommendations of the EIR final report, which they believed could spell disaster for mineral endowed poor countries banking on mining projects in these sectors for development.

The Ministers were reported to have indicated that the EIR final report had not given sufficient consideration to the fact that the extractive industries are essential to economic growth and poverty reduction, and that for some countries the extractive industries represent a very important means of creating revenue for government programmes. The ministers also expressed concern about the precondition of WBG investment in countries that have robust and transparent governance criteria in place. They believed that a country's inability to meet WBG governance criteria should not prevent that country from gaining access to the support, both financial and structural, that is required in order to develop such governance mechanisms. Otherwise, countries that are most in need of such developmental assistance could be excluded and would either remain mired in poverty or find less desirable paths to develop their extractive potential.

Two reasons could have influenced the ministers to present this view. The first is a response in self-defence. The second is the apparent influence from industry and their home governments. For a very long time, the extractive sector in Africa has been one of the areas for endemic corruption and abuse of power. The endemic corruption in the sector benefits those in power and the rich while marginalising the poor and local communities.

The unequal distribution of benefits also explains why many governments in Africa continue to supervise the abuse of community and citizens rights, lowering of standards and net benefits of mining, oil and gas extraction on the continent. The EIR recommendations were a signal not just to the World Bank but also to all major players in extractive industries to put an end to the corruption and abuse of power. Even more so implementation of the recommendations would have set the stage for up-scaling similar recommendations for governments, which would have meant ripping governments of their dictatorial powers and minimising corruption in the sector.

The view of the African ministers was echoed by mining companies and mining industry associations, in particular the London-based International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) and the Mining Industry Associations of Southern Africa (MIASA), which groups chambers of mines from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

These bodies argued that many of the recommendations in the EIR final report were not based on sound research and would, in fact, inhibit poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Mark Moody-Stuart, who served as a member of the EIR advisory group during the second half of last year, expressed the view that the net effect of the EIR final report’s recommendations would be a virtual disengagement of the World Bank from mining, oil and gas.

The ICMM expressed concerns at the proposed governance prerequisites for World Bank investment, which included the quality of the rule of law and the absence – or even risk–of conflict. The Council believed that these could be too demanding even for developed countries. The South African Chamber of Mines CEO Mzolisi Diliza shared the ICMM’s concerns. Writing to the World Bank President, James Wölfensohn, on behalf of MIASA, he noted that much of the content of the EIR report undermined the legitimate role of governments.

They all concluded that adopting the EIR report’s recommendations in their entirety would result in a massive reduction in foreign direct investment going to emerging markets, for which extractive-industries projects are sometimes their only available path to development. This is all industry rhetoric and manipulative tactics rooted in the narrow conception that the only path to economic development is foreign direct investment in the extractive sector. The current paradigm of mineral resource extraction does not benefit mineral endowed African countries. While foreign direct investment in extractive industries in Africa has increased over the last two decades poverty has not reduced, if at all poverty has increased in those countries.

Southern Africa is noted for its mineral potentials and its long historical association with mineral extraction, yet the region’s human development record has not improved. According to the 2003 edition of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report, an estimated 20-million people – or 19% – of the total population of the six MIASA countries live on less than a dollar a day, while 47-million people – or 44% – live on less than two dollars a day. The current paradigm of mineral resource extraction in Africa is therefore exploitative.

Why was industry so concerned about the World Bank pulling out of extractive industries when the Bank provides less than 5% of the financing required for projects in the mining, oil and gas industries? It sounds amazing how when threatened the industry suddenly became the greatest advocate of the poor when ICMM's Kathryn McPhail (who used to research for the Bank) said: “What worries us most are not the implications for the mining industry as such, but the implications for development in emerging markets”. This argument was carried on by a letter from the Equator Banks, an investment group to the World Bank that says: “We believe that the EIR has not given sufficient consideration to the fact that the extractive industries are essential to global economic growth and poverty reduction.”

Two reasons explain why industry was concerned about the EIR final report’s recommendations. First, the decision could be emulated by other financial institutions’ withdrawal from the sector, which would drastically shrink lending to industry. Secondly, and even more important, was the fear of diminishing influence of the Breton Woods institutions on host governments’ policies and practices which are critical to ensuring low standards for industry. The World Bank influences the development strategies and practices of developing countries by making them compromise their economic policies, investment regulations, and projects that benefit large transnational corporations.

The United States government is by far the most influential force in establishing the priorities of the World Bank. It can veto any significant shifts in policy and by custom appoints its president, who is usually a product of the financial sector. Given the new American imperialist offensive, under the so-called war on terror, the US has thrust Africa’s extractive resources forward as a prize to be controlled as it seeks alternative sources of oil. Along the Gulf of Guinea now referred to as the “New Persian Gulf” the United States aggressively seeks military bases. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that some African governments worked with the World Bank to roll back the progressive recommendations of the report.

Despite support for the recommendations made by the EIR gaining momentum worldwide, the Bank’s board decided in August to act on very few of the recommendations made in the report. It thus failed to change the way the Bank does business in Africa, missing an opportunity to show a genuine commitment to respecting human rights and the needs of communities affected by extractive industries. Considering the World Bank’s own vested interests, the opposition of powerful industry players, the complicity of African governments and the existing global political climate, the decision came as no great surprise.

* Abdulai Darimani is Programme Officer, Environment Unit, Third World Network-Africa. This is an edited and updated version of an article that was published in African Agenda, Issue volume 7 No.3, 2004.

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The 60th birthday of the Bretton Woods Institutions - the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) - will be formally celebrated early next month, amidst the distraction of the US presidential campaign. Finance ministers and bankers will gather in Washington for the terrible twins' annual meeting, and the DC-based Mobilization for Global Justice and 50 Years is Enough! Network will host some small-scale events. The two major International Financial Institutions (IFIs) continue to show their disdain for societies and environments. Around the world, civil society groups, especially those associated with the "IFI's -OUT!" movement have declared 1-12 October an international protest period.

Comic Relief has launched an exciting new grants programme to support organisations in Africa to play an active role in the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005. 2005 promises to be a year when international public attention on global poverty and injustice will increase dramatically, providing a huge opportunity for people in Africa to have their voices heard on the world stage.

Global efforts to control rising levels of tuberculosis are not working and more needs to be done to reduce infections from the deadly airborne disease, public health experts said on Tuesday. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a strategy in 1993 aimed at halving deaths over the next decade from the contagious illness that kills about 2 million people each year. But researchers at Harvard University in the United States said a decade after the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) plan was introduced, the global burden of TB continues to rise.

South Africa's largest mining company, Anglo American, is seeking to defuse a row after remarks by its chief executive angered President Thabo Mbeki. Tony Trahar said last week that the political risk of investing in South Africa is diminishing, but not gone. President Mbeki reacted accusing the company of paying black workers badly during apartheid and of withholding investment in South Africa. This row has its roots in the political path adopted by the African National Congress after it came to power 10 years ago. It abandoned much of its socialist rhetoric and embraced business friendly, market orientated policies.

Sghaira Mint Tesh does not remember the long-ago day she became the property of Arab slave owners. She does not know her exact age, or that of the infant daughter she cradles in her arms. The northwest African country of Mauritania outlawed slavery in 1981, but, despite government denials it still exists and anti-slavery groups say the practice remains widespread.

A youth writing contest, Voices of Youth, requested youth of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) countries to write about their vision of an ICT-enabled future in the rural areas of ACP countries. An international jury selected 3 “Grand Prize” winners, 7 “runners-up” and 10 honourable mentions from 178 submissions.

The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience works to build the capacity of historic sites around the world to foster dialogue on pressing social issues and promote democratic and humanitarian values. It seeks to change the role of historic sites in civic life from places of passive learning to centres for active citizen engagement. It develops sites of conscience as places for communities to have ongoing dialogues about the meaning of their past and the shape of their future - as places to build a lasting culture of human rights. You can find out more or join a discussion on this issue by clicking on the URL provided.

"The resistance against corporate globalization is global in scope and is dedicated to international cooperation to achieve economic justice for every person on the planet," according to a paper by Barbara Kalima presented at the conference “Women’s voices on Alternative Globalisation Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE): A consultation of Southern Women on Alternatives to Economic Globalisation" held recently in Manila, Philippines. Kalima, from the organisation African Forum on Debt and Development, says in the paper: "The World Bank has recently responded to grassroots demands to allocate funds to restore environmental damage, and we see the emergence of community banks. These are promising trends, but the world economic philosophy needs to be reversed at its core, not just on the fringe."

A Mauritanian human rights committee, after a three-year delay, finally has been able to report on the progress in the fight against slavery, female genital mutilation (FGM) and racial discrimination in the country. While the Committee mapped grave problems, authorities in Mauritania keep denying there are any matters of concern.

The world has changed dramatically since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA. A progressive and development-oriented global agenda which was beginning to define the post-Cold War era, in the form particularly of the United Nations Millennium Summit and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), has since then receded.

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Donors have flocked to support Tanzania's pastoralist land rights movement. However, well-intentioned desires to promote democracy, indigenous rights, participatory development and community conservation have had perverse consequences. Leaders of pastoral non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have become less and less accountable to their communities. The pastoralist movement has lost momentum as its energies have been diverted into activities to please donors.

States that have ratified the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court must provide the necessary financial and political support for the court as it begins its first field investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch says. The ICC's annual Assembly of States Parties is set to meet in The Hague from September 6 to 10. "Now that the ICC is beginning to reach out to witnesses and victims, we expect these states to step up to the plate and provide the appropriate funds for the court to do its job," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice program. "It's not about giving the court a blank check, but making sure that the ICC has the necessary financial and political backing for this critical phase of its work."

Recent increases in global oil prices will have an impact on economies in the region, although it will be softened by the weaker US dollar, analysts told IRIN. John Loos, a noted economist with one of South Africa's largest commercial banks, ABSA, told IRIN that because oil prices had peaked at almost US $50 a barrel before gradually easing off this week, a "gradual uptick in inflation" could be expected in the region. Brent crude oil was trading at US $40.77 a barrel on Tuesday afternoon.

This paper produced by the International Council on Human Rights Policy argues that human rights NGOs, unlike development and humanitarian organisations, have not developed formal accountability procedures. It argues that it will be necessary to do so in order to defend their reputations against scepticism, as well as to strengthen the sector's ability to promote respect for human rights. It examines the contributions that donors, governments and other organisations can play to enable human rights NGOs to strengthen their accountability mechanisms and thereby their effectiveness.