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As part of our ongoing advocacy work around World Bank, IMF,
and other IFI policy, Gender Action partners with other organizations
to ensure women’s rights and gender equality. Sign-on
letters are an effective way to convey messages to the IFIs,
governments, the public and other stakeholders, and to build
partnerships. Below are letters that Gender Action endorsed.
August, 2008
This open letter requests financial institutions to commence
an exit strategy to cease provision of all financial services
due to the gravity, range and proportions of human rights
abuses associated with the project.
July 7, 2008
This letter urges civil society and social and political movements
to reach out to the G8 governments to cancel debt, stop contributing
to climate change and respect the efforts of the Southern
countries to end the food crisis.
March, 2008
This letter urges Congress to insist that 1) there are IMF
policy reforms in developing countries and 2) there are conditions
for spending gold reserves, before the Bush administration
authorizes the selling of IMF gold reserves. More specifically
the demands are that a significant portion of the proceeds
should be devoted to alleviating global poverty and debt cancellation;
debt cancellation must be de-linked from harmful economic
policy conditions; and health and education spending must
be exempt from budget ceilings.
30 November, 2007
This letter, led by NGO Forum on ADB, urges the ADB Board
of Directors to deny funding for the Phulbari Coal Project
in Bangladesh. The letter echoes strong community resistance
to the project, and cites a number of ADB operational policy
violations.
1 October 2007
As Dominique Strauss-Kahn begins his appointment as Managing
Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), civil society
demands that the IMF: (1) Allow for increased poor-country
spending on health, HIV/AIDS and education; (2) Permit policy
makers in borrowing countries to explore and adopt more expansive
fiscal and monetary policy options; (3) Cease and desist with
demands for wage bill ceilings; and (4) Provide immediate
debt cancellation for all impoverished nations without harmful
and restrictive policy conditions attached.
October 2007
In October 2000, Bechtel Group signed a 30-year concession
contract to run the water and sanitation services in Guayaquil,
Ecuador, just months after the massive citizen protests that
threw Bechtel out of Bolivia. This letter supports residents
of Guayaquil who are demanding damages from the company for
water contamination, an end to water cut-offs, and a return
to local, public control.
Support for the Jubilee Act
6 September 2007
This letter endorsed by more than 60 organizations urges members
of the U.S. Congress to co-sponsor the Jubilee Act for Responsible
Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation of 2007 (H.R. 2634)
which safeguards the gains made by debt cancellation to date
and expands eligibility for cancellation to countries that
need it to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
2 August, 2007
In this letter to the UN Secretary General, WEDO leads women’s
rights groups in proposing a consultative selection process
for new Executive Director for UNIFEM.
July 2007
Gender Action is one of the official endorsers of the Tribunal
to provide a just and unbiased forum for Indian people who
have faced the impact of projects and policies funded or promoted
by the World Bank Group. The Tribunal is an opportunity to
express their grievances and propose alternatives.
27 June 2007
This call to Global Action Against Debt and IFIs during the
week of October 14 to 21, 2007 urges organizations to challenge
northern governments, international banks, transnational companies,
and multilateral institutions such as the IMF, World Bank,
and WTO to take responsibility for debt domination and illegitimate
debt; demand past and present governments and government officials
in the South to be accountable for their role in the debt
problem; declare readiness to stand in solidarity with those
who choose to repudiate illegitimate debt; and pursue alternative
and responsible financial relations, principles and standards
to stop the re-accumulation of illegitimate debt.
27 June 2007
As consultations towards the 2008 Financing for Development
Review Conference take place among governments, Gender Action
and other organizations and coalitions: (1) stress the need
for full civil society involvement in the consultations; (2)
signal the importance of establishing methods that give civil
society a specific place within the consultation process;
and (3) emphasize the need for a thorough preparatory process
involving Preparatory Committees and a negotiated Declaration
that reaffirms and builds on the Monterrey Consensus.
21 June 2007
This Open Letter to six presidents in South America who are
preparing to launch the South Bank, expresses the hopes of
global civil society that the new South Bank will not repeat
the policies of debt and conditionality practiced by the World
Bank and IMF.
20 June 2007
The signatories of this follow-up letter urge the United Kingdom
to take a strong leadership role implementing the United Nations’
Gender Equality Architecture recommendations.
5 June 2007
Every year U.S.-funded financial institutions including the
World Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)
and the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) provide billions of dollars
in subsidies to the oil and gas industry. This sign-on letter
endorsed by over 30 organizations calls on the U.S. Congress
to end U.S. funding for extractive industries through OPIC
and Ex-Im, and to make it U.S. policy to oppose oil and gas
projects financed by multilateral development banks such as
the World Bank.
27 April 2007
This global sign-on letter regarding the scandal with President
Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank demands not only Wolfowitz’s
resignation but fundamental reforms in the governance of the
institution itself.
April 12 to 20th, 2007
Gender Action was proud to take part in this emergency civil
society sign-on action that prevented the World Bank from
weakening its HNP Strategy by effectively omitting all commitments
to Bank funding for family planning and reproductive health.
- GADNetwork
letter to Hilary Benn
- Essential
Action-initiated letter to Eckhard Deutscher, German Executive
Director to World Bank
- Gender
Action-led letter to Samy Watson, Canadian Executive Director
to World Bank
- World
Bank Executive Directors’ letter rejecting HNP Strategy
April 15, 2007
This sign-on petition led by Blue Planet Project urges Louise
Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
to help establish mechanisms to implement the human right
to water and use a rights-based approach to deal with the
global water crisis. The letter was endorsed by 176 organizations
from 47 countries.
April 10, 2007
This open letter from members of the Gender and Development
Network (GAD Network) pushes for the United Kingdom to prioritize
gender equality for poverty reduction at the G8 Summit in
Germany.
March 8, 2007
Gender Action sponsored a call by 126 organizations and individuals
around the world in condemning International Financial Institution
(IFI) investments for intensifying poverty, human displacement,
trafficking in and violence against women, prostitution, sexually
transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, sexual harassment,
and sexual assault. The signatories insist that so long as
the IFIs continue operating, they must stop attaching harmful
policy prescriptions to their loans and meaningfully strengthen
their safeguards to protect women and members of vulnerable
groups. They also demand that the IFIs without any gender
policies or strategies—the International Monetary Fund,
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and European
Investment Bank—develop them, and the IFIs with gender
policies fully implement them.
March 8, 2007
Gender Action and other organizations led by the Quixote Center
expressed their solidarity with the women of Haiti who are
suffering from extreme physical, psychological and economic
violence as a result of the military occupation and financial
plunder of their country.
March 8, 2007
Gender Action and women's rights organizations around the
world endorsed the United Nation effort to strengthen its
gender equality architecture through the establishment of
a well-resourced, independent, women-specific entity led by
an Under-Secretary General.
October 26, 2006
Gender Action joined the global call to ensure that the IFIs
respect peoples’ right to access information through
endorsing the Global Transparency Charter, which elaborates
a set of standards upon which the access to information policies
of IFIs should be based.
September 15, 2006
Gender Action joined hundreds of organizations across the
world in the call for civil society organizations to boycott
of the official program of the World Bank and IMF 2006 annual
meetings in Singapore. The boycott was prompted by the World
Bank and IMF complicity in the Singapore government’s
denial of civil society’s fundamental right to freedom
of expression and association at the annual meetings.
July 24, 2006
Gender Action co-drafted the campaign strategy paper of the
first concerted anti-IMF campaign that citizens' groups launched
during the September 2006 annual World Bank-International
Monetary Fund meetings. Key campaign elements include disempowering
the IMF, eliminating its "gatekeeper" function in
development finance (countries must have IMF arrangements
to be eligible for other multilateral and bilateral loans
and grants), canceling all IMF “odious” debt that
harms women inordinately, and developing a practical and just
vision for the global economy which will marginalize the IMF.
The campaign promotes citizen audits of IMF performance and
impact, with parliamentary participation and referenda to
repudiate IMF programs.
June 28, 2006
Gender Action joined other NGOs to support the new government
in Norway as it examines the odious and illegitimate nature
of many of its debts, particularly those incurred through
the Shipping Export Credit Campaign of the 1970s.
June 22, 2006
Gender Action and a coalition of trade activists signed on
to a letter pressuring WTO leadership to change the direction
of trade negotiations. The letter argues that current negotiations
preclude any possibility of benefiting the majority of the
world’s people, particularly those living in impoverished
developing countries, and radically foreclose domestic policy
options for developing countries.
June 15, 2006
Gender Action and a worldwide network of activists call for
(1) immediate and 100% cancellation of multilateral debts
without conditionalities; (2) an open, transparent and participatory
external audit of IFI lending operations, and; (3) an end
to the imposition of IFI conditions and the promotion of neoliberal
policies and projects including: (a) elimination of IFI-driven
privatization of public services and the use of public resources
to support private profits; (b) eradication of IFI funding
for environmentally destructive projects beginning with big
dams, oil, gas and mining, and; (d) an end to the imposition
of conditions that exacerbate health crises like the AIDS
pandemic and restitution for past practices such as requiring
user fees for public education and health care services.
April 20, 2006
Gender Action joined a coalition of NGOs spearheaded by Food
and Water Watch to debunk the World Bank’s anti-corruption
agenda. The statement illustrates the ways the World Bank
Group prioritizes the wealthy at the expense of the poor by
providing investment opportunities, finance and legal protection
to wealthy country shareholders and transnational corporations
for investments that increase poverty and violate human rights.
April 5, 2006
Gender Action and sixty other organizations joined New Rules
for Global Finance to urge the government of Nigeria and the
African Union to move negotiations with the Paris Club of
creditors to the capitals of indebted nations to help shift
the negotiating balance between debtors and creditors.
November 15, 2005
Gender Action joined the public debate on the conclusion of
the Doha round of WTO trade negotiations between hundreds
of international NGOs led by Focus on the Global South, and
the chairmen of the world’s largest corporations. The
letter argues that corporate-led globalization currently promoted
by the WTO does not produce economic growth or generate employment
for poor men and women.
November 7, 2005
In response to the IFC’s proposed revisions weakening
its policy on involuntary resettlement, Gender Action teamed
up with the International Accountability Project and dozens
of other organizations to pressure the IFC to strengthen its
protection for vulnerable populations, particularly women
and the elderly, who are involuntarily resettled.
October 6, 2005
In response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics decision to
stop collecting employment data by gender, Gender Action signed
onto the Institute for Women's Policy Research letter urging
Senators to require gendered data collection, which generates
critical information on women’s employment and salaries
in the U.S.
July 1, 2005
Gender Action cosigned a follow-up letter to U.S. Treasury
Secretary John Snow regarding the promotion of accountability
and transparency benchmarks at World Bank Group and the Multilateral
Development Banks.
June 1, 2005
As a clear message to Paul Wolfowitz on his first day as President
of the World Bank, members of civil society including Gender
Action urged Wolfowitz to promote democracy, accountability
and transparency within the Bank, as well as meaningful consultation
with members of civil society, debt relief and sovereignty.
The signatories commit to monitoring the activities of the
Bank.
April 5, 2004
Gender Action cosigned a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary
John Snow urging the Treasury department’s continued
involvement in advancing transparency and accountability within
the World Bank Group and the Multilateral Development Banks.
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