International Campaign news
Reports on some of the campaigns our readers are involved in. If you have an update on one of these campaigns, or you want us to monitor a new initiative, get in touch!
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E-mail <[email protected]> would be a co-edition with the Catalan COCAD preparatory committee, the IRE, and a number of organisations in Latin America. The French version of "World Bank, IMF, WTO: Enough!" will be published in book for at the end of this month. The initial 2,500 copy brochure has sold out. The French "Other Voices of the Planet" Committee will hold a weekend discussion on 17-18 February, to plan events to mark the June 1996 G& meeting in Lyon, France. COCAD: Plantinstraat 29, B-1070 Brussels, COCAD: Plantinstraat 29, B-1070 Brussels, Belgium. C +32.2/523 4023, fax 522 6127 Internationa Workers Aid Rebuilding Bosnia's trade unions is a top priority, International Workers' Aid delegates from a number of European countries decided at their 13-14 January meeting in Berlin. Since autumn 1993, IWA's main project has been delivering food to the miners' union in Tuzla. Delegates argued that, with many roads re-opened, and the food situation in Tuzla greatly improved, it was time to change the direction of our solidarity work. Limited food-deliveries for certain groups of miners will continue. But the IWA office in Makarska, Croatia will be closed, and all but one of the IWA lorries sold. An IWA office will be opened in Tuzla itself, to support the new projects. Lone Rasmussen from Danish IWA presented the first issue of the Tuzla miners' newspaper (dated 21 December), produced with IWA financial support. The Berlin meeting voted to continue financial support, so that the paper can be published on a regular basis. An international trade union conference is planned in Tuzla in September 1996. "I think we can get broad participation from the European union movement" said Theo Mewis, Belgian IWA, who represented IWA in Tuzla in Autumn 1995. Mewis hopes that this IWA-sponsored international conference will lead to new direct contacts for the Bosnian unions, in the difficult period after the "peace" settlement. IWA also decided to continue its Tuzla schools programme, which has broad support in Denmark and Belgium, and its support for a women's magazine in Tuzla. Source: Arbetaren, Stockholm
Portugal % Youth Camp It's official! The organisers of this year's summer camp of youth organisations in sympathy with the Fourth International have fixed the dates of the 1996 camp, late July, and the place, in northern Portugal. Representatives of all the participating organisations will meet at the International Institute for Research and Education (IRE) in AmsterdaminApril to fix the final agenda. According to Vincent Scheltiens, one of the camp coordinators, the Portuguese comrades suggest that we focus the camp on the themes of police and state repression, racism, and the campaigns against the G7, IMF and World Bank" For more information, contact your regular International Viewpoint seller, or write for the address of the participating youth group nearest to you.
Internationalists' World Congress The resolutions of the 14th World Congress of the Fourth International, held in 1995, are now available in English, French and Spanish, for £5/$10/60FF plus 10% postage charge for orders of four copies or less. Order from your local agent, or directly from International Viewpoint.
MF IMF World Bank WTO Enough The re-colonisation of Bosnia Bosnia's new constitution entrusts the International Monetary Fund with the choice of Director of the new Central Bank of Bosnia. The all-powerful Minister of Public Enterprises and Services will be named by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). This kind of interference in the internal affairs of a state is uncommon, even for the IMF. A just-published study by CACAD member Michel Chossudovsky shows quite clearly that the real priorities of IMF involvement in Bosnia are not post-war reconstruction, nor development, but obtaining reimbursement of existing debts, and controlling the economic levers in the new country. The first IMF loan to Bosnia will be used to repay an earlier debt to the Netherlands, the lead country in the IMF group which includes Bosnia-Herzegovina. 32 International Viewpoint
Zimbabwe It is five years since Zimbabwe began its IMF/WB funded Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. "Originally, the programme was meant to last only five years, with the promise that after five years every Zimbabwean would be laughing their way to the Bank!" writes the Harare-based NGO co-ordinating group Ecumenical Support Services. "Five years later, rentrenchemnts continue. Government expenditure in health, education ans social services is being drastically reduced, under the watchful eye of the IMF and World Bank... IMF people are camped at the Treasury, to ensure that public expenditure is drastically reduced. These policies have grace effects for the poor. Rural district hospitals under the Ministry of Health are now restricted from providing ambulance services to the rural poor, as a result of the ZW$ 23 million budget cut.one of the African organisations participating in the collection of signatures for the COCAD $50 Years is Enough" appeal, and which has offered to become the local contact for the campaign. The IIRE and COCAD have coedited. Many of the texts have previously been published in French COCAD publications. This new brochure should help extend the campaign in the English-speaking countries, particularly in the Third World. We are currently investigating the possibilities of a similar brochure in Castilian. This February 1996