Due to structural adjustment with the reservicing of debt along with conditionalites, the role of government in third world countries such as Africa, has been performed by international institutions who are vested with the power to re-order those countries economic and social policies. When a country has to cut spending on social services who suffers? An estimated 36.1 million people around the world are living with HIV-AIDS. The vast majority of those infected,25.3 million people live in one of the globe's most impoverished regions, Sub-Saharan Africa. The fact that Africans are dying in horrendous numbers because they are poor-and that poverty has been exacerbated by the policies of the IMF and the World Bank,two institutions controlled by the world's wealthy nations. The country is unable to pay for health care services because they are spending so much money on interest payments. These institutions refuse to cancel the debts of these AIDS ravaged countries.
Reference
Global Exchange 2001
Clearly the objective of the IMF is to keep the debtor countries paying. The social costs of structural adjustment are not only severe but are also inequitably distributed. They impact most heavily on the poor and elderly, women and children. Women in general, and poor women in particular, suffer disproportionately more than men. Its high time the citizens of the countries who are faced with these challenges jail those who are given the charge to run the affairs of the country for mismanagement of funds because they are the ones who are feeling the hurt.
ReplyDeleteC. Samuel