The IMF and World Bank (IMF-WB) Annual Meetings have just finished in Marrakech, Morocco from 9-15 October, 2023, amidst multiple crises and worsening women’s human rights violations in the Global South.  APWLD releases this statement to reiterate its strong opposition to IMF-WB’s recurring austerity- and debt-servicing impositions on debtor governments as they seriously inhibit the realisation of gender equality,  women’s human rights, and Development Justice in their respective countries.              

As the IMF-WB holds its annual meetings this year, eighty five per cent of the world’s population is estimated to be impacted by its adverse austerity measures, underscoring the stark disparity between its ambitious, progressive rhetoric and the exploitative policies that prioritise the profits of the world’s wealthiest creditors over people’s rights.[1] It is ironic for IMF-WB to lay emphasis on ‘building economic resilience’ and ‘securing transformational reforms’ when its loan conditionalities have a long history and continued evidence of chronically hindering national development, democratic governance, and genuine systemic transformation in the Global South. The IMF-WB, through its loan conditionalities and debt-servicing imposition, is immensely responsible for the deepening debt crisis in the region, resulting in deprivation of wealth and resources and the very basic human rights of peoples. Fiscal consolidation measures like rationalised social safety nets, privatised essential public services, trade liberalisation, increased domestic borrowing, regressive taxation and indirect taxation on essential goods significantly raise user fees and overall out-of-pocket expenses, compounding household debts, thus undermining the fulfilment of fundamental human rights like healthcare, education, decent work, adequate housing, food, water and sanitation. 

It is appalling that despite the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,, the IMF-WB’s recovery response came in the form of loans and worse, eighty five per cent had conditionalities that were either recommended or required to be implemented during the recovery period. As such, these loans have compounded the indebtedness of struggling economies, necessitating more borrowing from the same predatory lenders and leading  debt crises to spiral out of control across the Global South.[2]

Following default on its foreign debt in 2022, the government of Sri Lanka was forced  yet again to seek and roll out an IMF bailout plan, which places on its middle- and low income families, especially women, the burden of repaying the world’s wealthiest creditors. Hurriedly imposed without public consultation and consent, austerity and revenue generating measures including cuts in public spending, hikes in utility tariffs, costs of food and energy and regressive taxation is dealing a crushing blow to the working class, who are additionally set to lose their  lifelong savings as the government also targets  their  Employee Provident Fund for domestic debt restructuring. 

In the same vein, the IMF-WB’s call for Women’s Economic Empowerment through an increase in women’s labour force participation, although disguised as ‘empowerment’, is a narrow-minded approach rooted in and geared towards reinforcing neoliberalism and patriarchy. The majority of women workers in the world are often concentrated in precarious, informal, unregulated and low-wage jobs such as domestic work, service sectors and the bottom-end of the global value chain. They are forced to rely on government interventions through labour, fiscal and industrial rules and regulations. Austerity measures such as reductions in the public wage bill, regressive taxation and labour market flexibilisation that slash public expenses, including safety nets for women workers, remove safeguards that ensure decent work, wage and job security for women. Hence, a mere increase in labour force participation does not amount to any systemic change that enables the realisation of gender equality and  genuine empowerment of women and will only lead to further exploitation. 

Similarly, IMF-WB’s supposed prioritisation of ‘reinvigorating global cooperation’ at the Annual Meetings to tackle pressing crises like climate change also rings hollow, given the stark disparity in the burdens borne by the wealthy industrialised countries that contribute the most and those which contribute the least to climate change. Rich nations are yet to fulfil the promise of USD 100 billion a year for climate finance by 2020 – a  pledge not only grossly inadequate, but is yet to be fulfilled and largely constitutes loans instead of grants. The destruction caused by climate emergencies and debt crises in climate-vulnerable countries like Pakistan mutually aggravate each other. High debt levels constrain public spending and investment in measures that ensure people’s right to a healthy environment, and limit  mitigation capacities and responses to future emergencies. 

We highlight and raise the alarm at the aggregated impact of multiple crises on marginalised communities, including workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, especially women and children. We demand the governments behind the IMF-WB to cancel the debts, end conditionalities, and instead adopt a people-centred, rights-based, sustainable development for countries of the  Global South. 

Our Feminist Demands

  1. Cancel the debts and associated conditionalities and policies such as austerity measures, regressive taxation, and structural adjustments.
  2. Ensure that borrowing country governments and their peoples are represented and have a voice in discussions concerning national debt issues and relief mechanisms  
  3. Recognise universal social protection as a centre of national and global strategies to end poverty, narrow the gender inequality gap, and promote human wellbeing, political stability and inclusive and sustainable development.
  4. Deliver  climate finance to cover the costs of Adaptation and Loss and Damage in the Global South.
  5. Implement both ex-ante and ex-post Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) of economic policy in the local context. HRIAs are connected to transparent, participatory and gender-responsive budgeting processes that ensure increased public participation in debt management processes and monitoring evaluating the efficacy of fiscal reforms.

[1] Oritz, I., & Cummins, M. (2022). End Austerity: A Global Report on Budget Cuts and Harmful Social Reforms in 2022-25. Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)/ Global Social Justice (GSJ)/ International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC)/ Public Services International (PSI)/ ActionAid International/ Arab Watch Coalition / Bretton Woods Project/ Eurodad/ Financial Transparency Coalition/ Latindadd/ Third World Network (TNW)/ Wemos. Retrieved October 17, 2023, from https://publicservices.international/resources/publications/end-austerity-a-global-report-on-budget-cuts-and-harmful-social-reforms-in-2022-25?id=13501&lang=en
[2] ABDO. (2021). Adding Fuel to Fire: How IMF demands for austerity will drive up inequality worldwide. Oxfam.https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621210/bp-covid-loans-imf-austerity-110821-en.pdf;jsessionid=5D9BF3055C1F8FC6186F6E2CC13E81DF?sequence=1