As the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings in Washington, DC, hundreds of activists march on Oct. 16 to Mendiola Bridge, demanding “Stop the harm! Cancel the Debt! Reparations and Just Transition Now.”
The demonstration brings together campaigners and activists from Oriang National Women’s Movement, Kilusan para sa Kabuhayan Kalusugan Kalikasan at Katiyakam sa Paninirahan, Sanlakas, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice. Aniban ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, Freedom from Debt Coalition, Zone One Tondo Organization, and the regional Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
The mobilization calls out corruption as a systemic problem, requiring systemic solutions. It also highlights shared demands for debt cancellation and an end to austerity loan conditions, which are pushed especially upon cash-strapped countries in the Global South, stopping fossil-fuel lending, providing grants-based climate finance, payment of reparations for historical and continuing destruction, and for a Just Transition.
Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, said, “The IMF and the World Bank remain key actors of the G7, the world’s richest countries, in worsening the climate and debt catastrophes. It is high time for these institutions to stop peddling more debts as solutions to crises, including the climate emergency caused by rich countries, and imposing their neoliberal policies and conditionalities of privatization and trade liberalization that violate people’s rights and intensify the climate emergency, while ensuring massive profits for big business.”
Photo: Jimmy Domingo/Mata: Asia Press Photo
