Contents

Document 1

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are

1. To maintain international peace and security… 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…
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination…
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 center 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…Members.
2. All Members…shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them….
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means [so] 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…
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes…and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.

Document 2

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.

Document 3

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

Nilufar Ahmad: …[D]uring 1974 there was…flood and…famine in Bangladesh…. Bangladesh was politically more connected to the Soviet Union…We also sold the Soviets and the Cubans jute…our main export. Because of its trade embargo on Cuba, the United States stopped all the grain supply to Bangladesh. Thousands of people died…Everybody wanted to help out. The World Bank somehow convinced all donor countries that Bangladesh would not be able to manage all this money…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…[T]he World Bank and Western states all say that population is Bangladesh’s biggest problem. … Of all the money that goes into Bangladesh, 55 percent goes into population control. …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.

…Bangladesh’s population has not decreased…population is not the problem; the problem is poverty.… 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.

Document 4

Monica Ghosh

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

Tyree Scott

… [W]e were already doing work around international trade and the relationship between workers in our country and workers abroad…

In 1997, we had a meeting…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, and the international lending institutions, what their policies represented. So we were 35 workers from 11 countries…the discussion was about…,how do we join this discussion about…trade that affects our lives.

So when the WTO was announced…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.…

…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.

Document 5

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.

Document 6

Yesenia Bonilla

Bonilla…[is]…the oldest of seven…forced to quit school at…16 to contribute to the family income. Rather than be…silence[d] 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: Why did you…get involved in the union?

YESENIA: I saw so much abuse. We started work at 7:00 [a.m.] and wouldn’t finish until late…the company didn’t provide purified water…But the worst problem was how they treated us.…[S]upervisors 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.…[U]nfortunately 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…gains. We got purified water; the company started to pay for transportation…They put in lights, so it wasn’t so dark for the workers who had to walk home late at night.

But…they…start[ed] 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…KIMI fired the executive committee and 16 other workers, including myself. …

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.

Document 7

Yesterday…the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world…

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites…that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons. What a strange democracy.

The U.N. system…[is] worthless.

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

…[1] 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.

…[2] effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

…[3] the immediate suppression…of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto…on decisions of the Security Council. …

…[4] strengthen…the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

We want ideas to save our planet…from the imperialist threat. And hopefully…we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of…a renewed United Nations. …