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Gender Action
1875 Connecticut Street NW
Suite 1012
Washington DC 20009 USA

Dear Friends,

I am excited to share the highlights of Gender Action’s accomplishments during 2007, our fifth and most active year of existence.

The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) promise to lift countries – and their people – from grinding poverty. Behind fine words, unseen by the general public, the IFIs instead have been imposing onerous loan conditions which hurt the poor more than the loans help. Gender Action, along with many civil society partners, scrutinizes the small print in IFI loan documents, exposes policies particularly detrimental to women and leads advocacy to improve IFI investments.

For example, when the World Bank proposed a new Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Strategy this year, which threatened to eliminate its 30-year long support of women's rights to reproductive health services, Gender Action mobilized to prevent this. We were among the leaders coordinating a strong emergency response from civil society. Our advocacy initiative convinced key World Bank Executive Directors to reject the draft and restore the Bank's commitment to family planning. However, the approved strategy reverses the Bank's promise to stop requiring low-income countries to impose health service fees which make healthcare unaffordable to the extreme poor. Gender Action is pressing to end such fees once and for all.

Perfectly timed with our HNP Strategy advocacy, Gender Action launched Mapping Multilateral Development Banks' Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Spending, the first report assessing the quantity and quality of Multilateral Development Banks' (MDBs'--a subset of the IFIs) spending for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Mapping demonstrates a decline in World Bank and few African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank loans and grants for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Mapping also charts unmet MDB commitments to reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, and harmful loan conditions such as restricting public spending which undermine poor countries' ability to address these key public health issues. Gender Action is expanding this first-cut report with deeper analysis and advocacy. We recently presented Mapping's findings at workshops at the Moriah Fund, Population Action International, and the Wallace Global Fund.

Gender Action, with our partner, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), recently released Gender Justice: A Citizen's Guide to Gender Accountability at International Financial Institutions. This Guide compares IFI gender policies and accountability mechanisms and provides tools so that victims of gender discrimination in IFI projects can seek redress. Recently Gender Action and CIEL presented our guide at a workshop at the Environmental Law Institute. We are planning further "consciousness raising" to inform victims of discrimination and inspire them to take their cases to IFI accountability mechanisms.

With our partners, we are taking advantage of the upcoming rich country funding appropriations to the IFIs in 2008, to press rich countries, especially the US, to demand that IFIs stop imposing damaging lending conditions which, for example, charge health fees to the most impoverished who cannot afford them. We are pushing for the cancellation of poor countries' illegitimate debt contracted by dictators who never used the IFI loans for their intended purposes and left the debt on the backs of the poor. Again this year, borrowing countries owe more to the World Bank than they receive in new loans, and countries are bankrupting their treasuries to meet their obligations. Gender Action is working to ensure that aid is truly aid and not debt squeezing vital social programs. During this fall's Global Week of Action Against Debt and IFIs, Gender Action's presentation on "The Gender Impacts of Debt and the IFIs" provided fodder for debt cancellation activists, showing how illegitimate IFI debt especially impacts women and girls.

This year we also launched our Gender Guide to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Policy-Based Lending. The Guide explains the system that perpetuates poor country debt and IFI policy-based lending and conditions in clear, user-friendly language. It provides tools to Southern and Northern citizen groups so they can conduct advocacy to prevent the negative gender impacts of World Bank and IMF policy-based loans. Partner groups worldwide report that the Guide is bolstering their advocacy.

We published our new report, The Gender Dimensions of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The World Bank Track Record, which assesses the extent of gender integration in World Bank investments in Post-Conflict Reconstruction (PCR) settings. Our report demonstrates that current World Bank-funded PCR programs largely ignore gender issues like violence against women and reinforce patriarchal patterns. As follow up, Gender Action is pressuring Bank investments to systematically address violations against women’s rights and promote gender equality to make peace work.

In 2007, Gender Action received a flood of requests from partners for assistance to strengthen the gender dimensions of their work. In response, we provided inputs into the work of ActionAid International, Environmental Law Institute, 50 Years Is Enough Network, and CEE Bankwatch Network. Both the Bank Information Center and Bretton Woods Project separately invited and published Gender Action critiques of the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan. This year we joined the Publish What You Pay Campaign to bring a gender focus into the campaign which holds governments, corporations and the IFIs accountable for the use of oil and gas revenues.

To learn more about Gender Action's programs promoting women's rights and gender equality, please visit our website http://www.genderaction.org. In addition, we have an awesome lineup of new projects in the pipeline for 2008.

Despite Gender Action’s increased visibility and effectiveness, we continue to face a severe funding crunch. We are optimistic that our finances will strengthen soon.

As always, every gift to Gender Action makes a difference. Your individual tax-deductible donation can go a long way to help Gender Action achieve its vision of a world free of poverty where poverty stops feminizing.

Please be generous and send your contribution today! By supporting Gender Action, you can make an enormous difference in the lives of women and girls around the world!

With great appreciation and warmest wishes,

Elaine Zuckerman,
President

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