WORLD DEVELOPMENT 2015

WORLD DEVELOPMENT

as sponsored by the World Bank [www.worldbank.org]

It seems that all is not well in the world of International Development.

I have just completed reading the latest World Development Report 2015:. Mind, Society. Behaviour.

This report does not focus on the injustice of inequality and the need for the redistribution of

wealth .  It is much more concerned to create a development psychology: Looking at the attitudes and mental models and mindsets of poor communities in order to explain their poverty. In fact, the 236 pages of the Report make it clear that the World Bank staff tend to blame the poor for their lack of opportunities and faulty decision making. Although it did admit that the decisions about loans and aid and projects were made by people who had little experience of; and limited sympathy for, the world poor. The report acknowledged  that one of the prime purposes of the World Bank was to look after the development of poor communities across the world.

However. the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [www.icij.org] revealed that it had been involved in describing and analysing the World Bank projects in many countries across the world. Their investigators revealed that many World Bank projects have harmed many poor and vulnerable individuals.

Projects that had involved the construction of dams, the building of villages,as well as  new suburbs, new hospitals, conservation of forests, the creation of factories; all of which were worthy endeavours had resulted in the misplacement of 3.4 million people in Albania, Brazil,Ethiopia, Honduras, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Kosovo, Nigeria, Peru.Serbia,

South Sudan, Uganda.

In April 2015 the ICIJ went further:

describing how a resettlement project  in Ethiopia involved enforced beatings, rape, and murder. Many families did not want to be displaced and resettled and so had to be forced... A similar project in Kenya led to homes being burnt down. In Badia East in Lagos, Nigeria, a  suburb was flattened to the ground. In Peru, as part of an agricultural project the land was poisoned as a result of the widespread use of pesticides.

World Bank funding has resulted in the destruction  of undeveloped countries, and the exploitation of many poor communities.

Recent Reports by Oxfam, and the World Economic Forum, along with the Huffington Post, and the Forbes Fortunes,   declared that out of 7.3 billion people,  85 controlled more wealth than  3.5 billion. 1654 billionaires had more wealth than 7.2 billion people. The World Bank must recognise that in order to protect the interests and opportunities of the poor, they must move with the support of the UN, the IMF in the redistribution of wealth. The majority of the 7.3 billion people are poor. The norm in our capitalist world is ‘ poverty’.

We do not want a development psychology, we want a global society in which all people are paid a fair days wage for a days work; and a World Bank that provides aid for the poorest communities.