The Association for Progressive Communications is born, creating a global network of activist groups online, well before the web is in vogue. Activists, coordinating a global campaign through the Internet, force the OECD to shelve plans for a Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which would have opened up the global economy to corporate investment beyond that contemplated in the WTO agreements. In 2000 a bipartisan US Congressional Commission concludes that the World Bank is unsuccessful in achieving its avowed mission of alleviating global poverty. The Meltzer Commission urges that most of the Bank's lending activities be devolved to the regional developing banks. Tens of thousands of protesters rock the World Bank Annual meeting in Madrid.
Protests continue for five full days.
The talks collapse. Thousands protest a gathering of corporate CEOs and world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Massive, nation-wide protests against water privatization in Bolivia force American corporate giant Bechtel to withdraw from the country. Plans for privatization are put on hold. A peaceful demonstration calling for debt relief and an end to IMF conditions ends in violence and arrests of 63 protestors, including 15 church leaders in Nairobi, Kenya.