[afro-nets] Food for an insensitive banker's thought

["Claudio Schuftan" <cschuftan@phmovement.org>]

Human Rights Reader 192    
[No.3 of 3 in a short series on non-actors in the human rights arena].

*RIGHT TO HEALTH: WHILE SMALL SUCCESS STORIES ARE CERTAINLY POSSIBLE, NEEDED GLOBAL REFORMS ARE BEING HAMPERED.*

1. Although the World Bank (and related international financial institutions) pay lip service to the right to health (RTH), in practice, they continue to promote centralized, unsustainable projects. All summed up, it is not an exaggeration to say that the World Bank (WB) de facto stands in the way of adequate RTH policymaking. *

2. Despite the newest WB jargon --like "inclusive globalization" (supposedly including the health concerns of indigenous people, of women and of the rural poor) -- the same does not fool many any longer, especially because it is used in a (deliberate) confusing manner. Also, their claim to be the No.1 development and health knowledge-broker may be true --but the question is: of what knowledge and information?  [May this Reader then claim to be one of the knowledge-brokers-of-an-opposing-kind from the WB….?]

3. Looking at it dispassionately, all along, the WB has actually promoted a health agenda that has little to do with the de-facto respect, protection and fulfillment of the RTH --and, therefore little to do with the social and political determinants of ill-health. Through sometimes overt and sometimes veiled conditionalities, WB policy can even restrict the scope (and tie the hands) of poor countries to redesign health projects to respect, protect and fulfill the RTH. The Bank thus successfully further postpones urgent structural change.

4. True, the WB mentions the RTH and promotes these aims in some projects (but it also continues to support controversial projects with negative HR implications). Moreover, the Bank's financial commitment to the RTH is less than modest. [It tells us that HR are the responsibility of other agencies in the UN family…]. Currently, the funds it allocates are not sufficient to seriously promote the RTH in the poor countries where it lends; a look at its loans reveals the Bank's ultimate priorities. *

5. It seems the Bank does not feel it is dubious to suddenly expect 'the market' to be considerate towards and to ensure the RTH. That must be why the Bank continues to stress market mechanisms as the way they dream will address this right. …But that is not a dream, it is a nightmare. So we are left with a market-based model where key crucial decisions are left up to private investors who stick to their ideology… as though nothing had ever gone wrong.

6. Unheeded, the Bank continues to promote 'aggressive 'health sector reform' in poor countries, but with a twist: with the aim of mobilizing private investors.  No representatives from civil society are consulted a priori on the HR issues in these reforms. It is no secret that the social and environmental track record of the same reforms is poor (if not miserable).

7. We note that such contradictions not only haunt the WB's RTH rhetoric and the HR-damaging policy decisions it makes, they are also evident in other multilateral agencies like the African Development Bank.

8. It should be seen as no coincidence that these strategies reflect the interests of the firmly established transnational corporations' lobby, as well as those of the current major players in the global economy. …The Bank's RTH policies, of course, can only be as good as those of its most influential shareholders…

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva  under No.69<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.69>]