"A BETRAYAL OF ASIA AND THE PACIFIC"
Boycott ADB AGM
37th ADB Annual Meeting 2004, Jeju, KoreaA Betrayal of Asia and the Pacific
Kirindi Oya Farmers Association- Sri Lanka
Southern Transport Development project- Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan Working Group of Trade and IFIs
Global Campaign Month PostersA Betrayal of Asia and the Pacific
The NGO Forum on the ADB calls on all civil society organisations and activists to participate in a month of protest against the disastrous consequences of the policies and projects of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). We also call upon civil society organisations and representatives to refrain from participating in the 37th Annual General Meeting of the ADB, on 15-17 May 2004, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea as part of this protest.
For nearly four decades, the ADB has created poverty in Asia through irresponsible project and program lending. Its continued focus on mega infrastructure projects, rent seeking investments, and privatization of water and power reflect its prioritization of narrow corporate, financial and elite interests over the concerns of the majority, especially the poor. The ADB's reckless promotion of economic models that benefit elites rather than common people has placed an unsustainable debt burden on the peoples and communities of Asia and the Pacific. Given that the major architects and beneficiaries of ADB projects and programmes are Japan, the United States (US) and Europe, ADB operations are tantamount to a betrayal of the people of the Asia-Pacific region.
It is time to say enough is enough.
The selection of the remote island of Jeju, South Korea, as the venue for the upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) is a highly inappropriate choice for a meeting of this magnitude. The expense of travel rules out civil society participation, even for Korean civil society. Jeju is the latest in a long line of remote and expensive venues for the ADB's AGM, which have included places such as Honolulu in the US and Nice in France. The choice of Jeju as the venue for the 2004 AGM indicates that the ADB cares little for broad civil society participation and largely ignores its own claim that "interaction with NGOs is essential to [ADB's] effective operations". If the ADB were serious about this goal, it would do everything in its power to ensure that the AGM is held in accessible venues.
Civil Society Organizations demand that the ADB be held accountable for the consequences of its lending. The ADB claims to agree in principle with this statement, but views accountability only in terms of compliance to its own operational policies for safeguard, governance and quality. While such a view of accountability is extremely limited, experience has repeatedly shown that the ADB is incapable of living up to even this narrow concept.
We demand that the ADB commission independent monitoring and evaluation of its projects. While the Evaluations Department of the ADB has recently been given some degree of autonomy, this does not constitute independence. We also demand that the ADB change its system of staff incentives to stop rewarding those who can most effectively have loans approved (currently the most common way for a Bank to measure success) and start rewarding those who work to ensure ADB compliance with its operational policies.
While the ADB recognizes official corruption as a major impediment to sustainable and equitable development, it has continued lending on a large scale to governments that have a limited capacity to utilize funds. The governments do not want their aid flows to decrease; the ADB does not want its lending levels to decrease. This scenario is an open invitation to corruption.
We demand that the ADB enforce its policy of "zero tolerance" towards corruption by conducting an independent audit of all its operations. The ADB must take steps to ensure that money lent to the public purse is not diverted to private pockets.
Despite ADB's lip service to the benefits of transparency, stakeholders are still often denied access to information while ADB projects impact their lives and livelihoods with impunity. We demand that all stakeholders have access to project related documents in local languages. We further demand that all documents submitted to the Board of the ADB be in the public domain, and that Board meetings and transcripts be open to the public.
We call on Civil Society from around the world to express their solidarity with the peoples of Asia by joining in the AGM boycott. We further call on groups to express their outrage at the ADB's policies of plunder by arranging demonstrations, letter writing campaigns and other activities of protest during the month of May.
List of Endorsing Organizations:
Australia
AID/WATCH
Australian Conservation Foundation
FoE - AustraliaBangladesh
Coastal Development Partnership (COP)
ActionAid Bangladesh
BanglaPraxisBrazil
Nucleo Amigos da Terra/Brasil - FoE-BrazilGermany
AsienhausIndia
Centre for Organization, Research & Education (CORE)
D K Parirasaraktara
Dehli Forum
EARTHCARE Foundation
Jeevan Santha
Manthan Adhyayan Kendra (Manthan Research Centre)
National Alliance of People�fs Movement
Sanctuary Magazine
South Asian Solidarity for Rivers and Peoples (SARP)Indonesia
DebtWatch
International Forum on Indonesian Development INFID
People�fs Coaltion for the Rights to Water
Yayasan Duta AwanKorea
Korean Federation for Environmental Movements in DaeguKyrgyzstan
Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law
Spravedlivost (Justice)
Kyrgyz Committee for Human Rights
Human Development Centre, Tree of Life
Civil Society Against Corruption
Center InterbellimNepal
WAFED
National Policy Institute
National Concerns Society
Melamchi Loan Concern GroupNetherlands
Both Ends
Friends of the Earth InternationalPakistan
CREED AlliancePhilippines
Focus on the Global South
NGO Forum on ADB, SecretariatSri Lanka
"Affected Communities Col Mata Highway"
Center for Environmental Justice
Gama Surekaama Sanvidhaniya
Sri Lanka Working Group on IFIs
United Society for the Protection of AkmeemanaThailand
EarthRights International (SE Asia)
Mangrove Action ProjectUK
Forest Peoples ProgrammeUSA
BIC
International Rivers NetworkADB Annual Meeting was held in May 2004 in Jeju, Korea. See the ADB's Annual Meeting Page
