Primary Sources: Resistance to Global Institutions, 1900 to Present

Introduction to this collection

This collection explores resistance to global institutions. It gives readers a glimpse of the founding documents, called charters, of major global organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank, which help us see the stated purposes and declared values. These are juxtaposed against sources from workers’ collectives and activists in the United States, Bangladesh, and Honduras. Together, these sources show the tensions between the promise of these organizations and how they work in communities on three continents.

Guiding question to think about as you read the documents: How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

WHP Primary Source Punctuation Key

When you read through these primary source collections, you might notice some unusual punctuation like this: . . . and [ ] and ( ). Use the table below to help you understand what this punctuation means.

Contents

Source 1 – UN Charter, 1945 (1:00)

Source 2 – World Bank Articles of Agreement, 1944 (5:55)

Source 3 – Battling the World Bank, 1992 (9:20)

Source 4 – World Trade Organization Protests, 2000 (15:05)

Source 5 – Big Protest at IMF Site, 1988 (19:05)

Source 6 – Worker Testimonies from Maquilas, 2000 (21:45)

Source 7 – Hugo Chavez’ Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2006 (31:25)

Source 1 – UN Charter, 1945 (1:00)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self- determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends. Article 2

The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Citation

Source 2 – World Bank Articles of Agreement, 1944 (5:55)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Article I: Purposes

The purposes of the Bank are:

1. To assist in the reconstruction and development of territories of members by facilitating the investment of capital for productive purposes, including the restoration of economies destroyed or disrupted by war, the reconversion of productive facilities to peacetime needs and the encouragement of the development of productive facilities and resources in less developed countries.
2. To promote private foreign investment by means of guarantees or participations in loans and other investments made by private investors; and when private capital is not available on reasonable terms, to supplement private investment by providing, on suitable conditions, finance for productive purposes out of its own capital, funds raised by it and its other resources.
3. To promote the long-range balanced growth of international trade and the maintenance of equilibrium in balances of payments by encouraging international investment for the development of the productive resources of members, thereby assisting in raising productivity, the standard of living and conditions of labor in their territories.
4. To arrange the loans made or guaranteed by it in relation to international loans through other channels so that the more useful and urgent projects, large and small alike, will be dealt with first.
5. To conduct its operations with due regard to the effect of international investment on business conditions in the territories of members and, in the immediate postwar years, to assist in bringing about a smooth transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy.

The Bank shall be guided in all its decisions by the purposes set forth above.

Citation

Source 3 – Battling the World Bank, 1992 (9:20)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Battling the World Bank

An interview with Nilufar Ahmad

Trained as a statistician and an economist, Nilufar Ahmad is a university professor in Bangladesh and works with grassroots organizations of rural women. … “I made up my mind to work with rural people, especially rural women, because they are at the bottom of the pit.”

Multinational Monitor: Could you describe your work in Bangladesh?

Nilufar Ahmad: My associates and I mobilize rural women, help them form their own organizations. … I would not call it a sustainable living—but a living at their own subsistence level.

…

MM: How are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank involved in Bangladesh?

Ahmad: It is a sad situation. We fought a nine-month war with Pakistan in 1971. The United States supplied arms to Pakistan, so after Bangladesh was liberated, the Americans had no great footing in Bangladesh. In fact, they were very much hated. And the World Bank did not have much footing in Bangladesh at that time either. But, during 1974 there was a big flood and a great famine in Bangladesh. At that time, Bangladesh was politically more connected to the Soviet Union, which helped us during the war with Pakistan. We also sold the Soviets and the Cubans jute, a fiber mainly used to make grain sacks, that was our main export. Because of its trade embargo on Cuba, the United States stopped all the grain supply to Bangladesh. Thousands of people died during the few months when the grain supply was cut off. So though we tried to maintain an independent international policy, Bangladesh had to go begging on bended knees to the United States. The World Bank started to gain a footing in Bangladesh at the same time. During that period, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of our country, was attempting to get rid of the military. He said that we only needed the police and militia, not a big military. In 1975, the military came out one night with tanks and killed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family. Under military rule, Bangladesh shifted its policies towards the United States and World Bank. At the time of the military takeover, Bangladesh was suffering; a lot of people were dying of famine. Everybody wanted to help out. The World Bank somehow convinced all donor countries that Bangladesh would not be able to manage all this money coming into the country; that it would not be able to fashion programs and strategies. So the World Bank took the coordination of relief and aid out of our hands.

The World Bank became the coordinator of a consortium of donor groups. Now the World Bank decides what our policy and our budget will be, and it allocates all the money to different sectors. We are totally beholden to the World Bank. Whatever the World Bank says, we have to say yes. For example, the World Bank and Western states all say that population is Bangladesh’s biggest problem. Bangladesh is a highly populated, very small country—we have about 2,000 people per square kilometer. So the first priority of foreign lenders is population control. Of all the money that goes into Bangladesh, 55 percent goes into population control. They give us … all kinds of IUDs. And they actually set targets for the number of each type of contraceptive that has to be distributed. If we do not satisfy the target, they can keep the money in the pipeline and not give it to other sectors. They [currently] give only 2 percent to education and only .4 percent to women’s health. We have no control over our population policy; it is totally controlled by the World Bank.

In the last 20 years, however, Bangladesh’s population has not decreased. This is because population is not the problem; the problem is poverty. We have a high infant mortality rate in Bangladesh. If a woman does not know if her child is going to survive or not, she’s not going to use contraceptives. So our first priority is to put money into basic human needs: education, health, shelter, food. But the World Bank decides that population control is the first priority.

Citation

Source 4 – World Trade Organization Protests, 2000 (15:05)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Monica Ghosh

How and why did you get involved in the WTO mobilizations?

Tyree Scott

Well, for years now, [the Labor and Employment Law Office] has been involved with workers outside the United States, and in the last few years, we’ve come to understand the importance of this question of trade. And so we’ve actually, unlike a lot of the groups that came together just around this international stuff or the trade stuff or because of the WTO, we were already doing work around international trade and the relationship between workers in our country and workers abroad for a long time.

In 1997, we had a meeting right here in Washington at Seabeck,¹ over on the peninsula. That meeting was about bringing ordinary workers together to talk about this question of trade and how we related to it, and what it meant for workers in our country and workers abroad. What solidarity would mean, and what the current policies of both our government, the government of the G-7 countries,² and the international lending institutions, what their policies represented. So we were 35 workers from 11 countries. That’s what the discussion was about, like, how do we join this discussion about something as important as trade that affects our lives.

So when the WTO was announced in Seattle, they were coming to Seattle, we were already ready to engage. We didn’t know where we intervened. Our idea was that we should have a parallel meeting to talk about world trade from the perspective of ordinary working people, and counter the other side, which is different from just the massive demonstrations. …

Now, we read some statistics that said that seven percent of the people in Seattle knew about the WTO before November. After it was 70 percent of the people in Seattle knew. But, probably, that less than seven percent knew what our fight was with the WTO, or what we proposed in place of the WTO. That never got articulated before, during or after the WTO. The message was lost, because the idea was not just to demonstrate, but to transform our world.

Citation

1 Seabeck – an area of Washington State
2 G-7 countries consist of the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan. This is an informal group that consider themselves to be the most advanced economies in the world.

Source 5 – Big Protest at IMF Site, 1988 (19:05)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Big Protest at IMF Site

About 20,000 demonstrators from a broad array of leftist causes marched peacefully through West Berlin today in the largest of many protests planned against the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The three-hour march had something of a festival air. Many demonstrators carried children, led dogs or pushed bicycles. The police, who have mounted extraordinary security for the I.M.F. meetings, kept their distance through most of the march, though policemen in full riot gear marched alongside a cluster of about 200 “autonomen”, members of a radical group that has a reputation for violence.

Small groups of autonomen, who have vowed to disrupt the meetings, kept police busy through the day with spontaneous confrontations. One group stopped traffic in the middle of the city next to the memorial ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, drawing dozens of police vans. But the police seemed to take pains to avoid any confrontation.

The purported goal of today’s march was to protest I.M.F. policies toward developing nations. The leftist groups say the policies are exploitative and unjust. Some West German commentators noted also that the West German left is currently without a major unifying cause, and seemed to seize on the congress as a rallying point.

Citation

Source 6 – Worker Testimonies from Maquilas, 2000 (21:45)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Yesenia Bonilla

On the surface, Yesenia Bonilla’s story is all too familiar: the oldest of seven, she was forced to quit school at the age of 16 to contribute to the family income. Rather than be intimidated into silence by abusive supervisors, Yesenia decided to affiliate to SITRAKIMIH, the struggling union in the Korean-owned KIMI factory in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where she worked making clothes for JC Penny and other US retailers.

…

MARION: How old were you went you started working at KIMI?

YESENIA: I started working at KIMI when I was 16. …

MARION: What work do you do?

YESENIA: My first job was cutting cloth. I only did that for two days. On the third day, a Korean supervisor who was very tough put me on a machine attaching sleeves. She wanted to take advantage of me because I was so young.

She insulted me, made me cry, and hit me. …

MARION: Why did you decide to get involved in the union?

YESENIA: I saw so much abuse. We started work at 7:00 in the morning and wouldn’t finish until late at night. … Another problem was that the company didn‘t provide purified water. The water was really dirty. But the worst problem was how they treated us. Like I told you, supervisors would hit us with the fabric pieces. They’d throw them in our faces and swear at us.

So in 1994, we decided to organize a union. We organized almost the whole industrial park, but unfortunately in Honduras the laws favor the bosses and not the workers. The company fired our first executive committee and that really weakened our union.

But we did make some gains. We got purified water; the company started to pay for transportation; and they also fixed the road to the factory, which used to be horrible. They put in lights, so it wasn’t so dark for the workers who had to walk home late at night.

But it didn’t take long before they forgot all that and start treating us badly again. They took away our transportation and the other things we had gained.

In 1996, we started to organize again. We organized a work stoppage involving workers from all the factories in the park. In response, KIMI fired the executive committee and 16 other workers, including myself. We had been out of work for a month and a half when the company decided to fire 48 more workers who had continued to organize inside the plant.

That’s when we called a strike. It started on October 7 and finished October 12. Through the strike we won recognition of our union. Without the strike, we couldn’t have done it. The company was also forced to reinstate all of us with full back pay.

…

MARION: What do you hope for in the future?

YESENIA: I would like to study, and to be able to have a better job. I went to school up to the sixth grade. Now I would like to prepare myself, and perhaps go to university. That would be great. Of course, right now that’s not possible. It is really difficult trying to study and work in the maquila at the same time. With a collective agreement, we could do that.

You know, for the past eight years, since I was 16, I have worked in a maquila almost seven days a week. Of course, it makes you tougher. But after so many years in the same job, you want a better job. But if you don’t have the opportunity to study, it’s just not possible. Perhaps you don’t have any support, like your parents can‘t help because they have too many children or because their jobs don’t pay enough.

But yes, one day I will do it. I will get an education, Maybe I’ll even go work in other countries, who knows?

Citation

Source 7 – Hugo Chavez’ Address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2006 (31:25)

Guiding question

How did globalization lead to new international organizations and why do some individuals and groups resist these organizations?

Excerpt

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. …

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs? …

The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It‘s worthless. Oh, yes, it‘s good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches.

… But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, 20 September, that we re-establish the United Nations. …

The first is expansion. … The Security Council, both as it has permanent and non-permanent categories, developing countries and [least developed countries] must be given access as new permanent members. That‘s step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression—and that is something everyone‘s calling for—of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council. …

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we‘ve always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations. …

Citation

Notes or additional materials

Students can watch a dubbed version of the full speech, televised by C-SPAN, at this link: https://youtu.be/kdZbddxXohU.