We hope the letter will serve as an educational and mobilizing tool for citizen's groups around the world, but especially in countries undergoing structural adjustment programs and poverty reduction strategy consultations. It is targeted at the World Bank as it undergoes a revision of its policy on information disclosure. The letter, hopefully with your endorsement included, will be sent to the Boards of the institutions in early April, in advance of the spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF, so that groups conducting advocacy at these meetings can raise these concerns and circulate the letter to policymakers and the press. Deadline for organizational sign on is March 23. The institutions currently negotiate macroeconomic and structural adjustment policies with borrowing governments behind closed doors, without the knowledge or consent, much less participation, of affected citizens.
Transparency is a basic tenet of open societies and good governance.
Yet most structural adjustment-related documents remain secret even after the loans are approved by the Board of the IMF or World Bank. As long as compliance with specified policies remains a critical element in determining access to IMF and World Bank resources, it is essential that information about these policy reforms is publicly disclosed and subjected to open national processes of deliberation and consensus building. Therefore we urge you to acknowledge the right of citizens to participate in the formulation of national development policies, including macroeconomic and structural adjustment policies that may be associated with IMF and World Bank lending instruments. The institutions exhort governments to prepare these documents with broad-based public participation. Yet, the IMF and World Bank have a narrow conception of the roles of citizens' groups relative to their governments.