The failure of the IMF, World Bank and WTO to represent and further the interests of the developing world, through their one-size-fits-all approach, has lead to the collapse of trade negations, widespread criticism of their effectiveness, and bitter international protest. Many countries are rejecting the neoliberal ideologies of the ‘unholy trinity’ with intensifying calls for their reform or decommissioning.
Burundi is a small, low-income state located at the geographic heart of Africa. It imports its petroleum and other goods principally through the port of Mombasa in Kenya, which means that they have to pass through Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda before they arrive in Burundi.
Capitalism from its beginning, when it first fought against Feudalist restrictions of trade, inaugurated the slogan "Free-Trade" which then became the shibboleth of capitalist expansion from proletarianization of the peasantry to form a wage working class in its primitive accumulation drive followed by a number of stages of industrialization and imperialism to the present stage of "single super-power imperialism" of the U.S.A., the prime progenitor of "Free Trade" today. Witness U.S. driven Globalization in the current (and hopefully last) stage of imperialism and domination of economic integration through the WTO, IMF, and the World Bank in their present modes.
Under the EU's plans to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), big businesses will continue to get most of the subsidies that create starvation and death in the developing world, writes Devinder Sharma.
In an embarrassing wake-up call for the developing countries, the US and EU again managed to apply the dope trick on the developing countries. They not only walked away with all the trade-distorting farm
subsidies but also threw a protective ring
around their agricultural production.
A keynote address delivered by Devinder Sharma at the national seminar on 'Alternative Strategies for Development' held at the RCVP Noronha Academy of Administration and Management, Bhopal, India, from Aug 10-12, 2004.
Despite the World Bank repeatedly painting a faulty picture of the
gains that would result from the implementation of the WTO trade
agenda, the fact remains that surging food imports have hit farm
incomes and had severe employment effects in many developing countries, writes Devinder Sharma.
Significant advances have been made in health status in most countries all over the world in the last few decades. However, despite these general improvements there still remain major inequalities in health status within and between countries. Globalization has caused new conditions for health policies at an international level, but especially in developing countries. As the traditional distinction between national and international public health has been broken up by the process of globalization, sovereign states are forced to view health problems from a global perspective and depend on international cooperation in protecting the health of their citizens. The increase in international trade and travel has led to a greater and wider spread of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, while an increasing anti-microbiological resistance is causing even more difficulties in treating them effectively.
