In the mid-1990s, before the Seattle, Prague, Washington and other

demonstrations in the North against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World

Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the world had already witnessed

almost two decades of strikes, mobilizations and other forms of popular protest across the

countries of the South in reaction to the economic policies of these institutions. The

people most affected by those policies were seen by the international financial institutions

(IFIs) as having neither the wisdom nor the right, and certainly not the leverage, to

contribute to the economic-policy debates in their own countries. Their continued

exclusion from the economic-decisionmaking process both at the national and global

levels guaranteed that economic-policy programs would not be changed to reflect their

growing needs and priorities.

It was within this context that a number of non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) engaged in the “50 Years Is Enough” campaign challenged the new Bank

president, Jim Wolfensohn, to involve his staff in an exercise with civil-society

organizations in the South in order to bring critically important knowledge, perspectives

and analysis into the formulation of Bank economic advice and policymaking.

Wolfensohn accepted the challenge and requested that a mechanism be proposed by these

and other organizations for carrying out such an initiative.

In a letter dated 9 April 1996 to the global civil-society network organized for this

purpose, he noted that, “Policy reform has had a mixed track record... Adjustment has

been a much slower, more difficult and more painful process than the Bank recognized at

the outset.” He went on to address the proposed initiative: “What I am looking for -- and

inviting your help in -- is a different way of doing business in the future. My objective is

to ensure that economic reform programs make maximum contribution to poverty

reduction, that we fully appreciate the impact of reform on disparate population groups,

that we promote measures which narrow income differentials, and that we encourage

governments to consult and debate with civil society on policy reforms.”

Thus was born the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative

(SAPRI), a joint four-year, multi- country participatory investigation into the effects of

specific structural adjustment policies on a broad range of economic and social sectors

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and population groups. Financed by generous contributions from five European

governments, the European Union, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

and various foundations and NGOs, SAPRI sought to add local knowledge to the

economic-policymaking process and to legitimize a voice for organized civil society in

such decisionmaking processes at both the national and global levels. The Initiative was

a tripartite arrangement involving national governments, World Bank teams and national

networks of hundreds of civil-society organizations that mobilized around the opportunity

to influence the economic course of their respective countries. These networks form the

national chapters of the three-tiered Structural Adjustment Participatory Review

International Network (SAPRIN) that was built originally around this engagement with

the Bank and that coordinated civil-society’s participation in SAPRI.

The country exercises followed guidelines negotiated by the SAPRIN global civilsociety

Steering Committee and its World Bank counterpart. These national assessments

of the impact of specific adjustment measures were structured in four stages. The first

stage called for extensive and highly inclusive and participatory outreach to, and

mobilization of, a broad cross-section of local populations affected by the country’s

adjustment program, particularly those who had been most marginalized by the

economic-decisionmaking process to date. The second step in the process involved the

convening of national public fora, organized by local civil-society steering committees in

conjunction with Bank and government officials, to discuss key adjustment measures and

issues prioritized by citizens’ organizations. The fora were designed to bring local

knowledge and analysis related to the impact of adjustment programs to the doorstep of

World Bank country and Washington officials. They were followed in each country by

participatory research into the selected issues in order to deepen this analysis. Designed

and carried out jointly by World Bank and SAPRIN teams and research consultants, this

research constituted the third and longest phase of the program. The joint results were

then reviewed publicly by dozens of civil-society organizations and Bank and

government representatives at a second national forum in each country at which

modifications were suggested for the final national report.

This document synthesizes the various national reports and the rich and diverse

learning that has been gleaned from the country exercises. It draws on the findings from

the SAPRI investigations in Bangladesh, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Hungary, Uganda

and Zimbabwe, as well as from independent civil- society initiatives undertaken with the

same program methodology in Mexico and the Philippines. The paper is organized

around the seven adjustment policies that were most commonly identified and explored in

the nine countries, namely trade and financial-sector liberalization, privatization, labormarket

reform, agricultural- and mining-sector reforms, and public-expenditure policy.

A common denominator across all the analysis -- whether it be of the policy impact on

the productive sector or on social services, on employment or women’s access to

resources -- is the relationship between adjustment programs and poverty and inequality.

Given the almost total absence of an analysis of this relationship in current Bank supported

poverty assessments, these findings take on added significance.