Page 210 - Volume 2_CHANGES_merged_with links
P. 210
Obstacles to progress
Realities
SAPS are viewed by some postcolonialists as the modern procedure of colonization. By
minimizing a government's ability to organise and regulate its internal economy, pathways are
created for multinational companies to enter states and extract their resources. Upon
independence from colonial rule, many nations that took on foreign debt were unable to repay
it, limited as they were to production and exportation of cash crops, and restricted from control
of their own more valuable natural resources (oil, minerals) by SAP free-trade and low-
regulation requirements.
In order to repay interest, these postcolonial countries are forced to acquire further foreign
debt, in order to pay off previous interests, resulting in an endless cycle of financial
subjugation. “
"Structural Adjustment." 255
Wikipedia
*****
Anthropological Perspectives on Structural Adjustment and Public Health
“ But the stories that anthropologists tell from the field overwhelmingly speak to a new
intensity of immiseration produced by adjustment programs that have undermined public
sector services for the poor.
***
The 30-year structural adjustment experiment has constituted an assault on the public sector
as an essential purveyor and guarantor of population health and welfare
***
If, as Farmer (2001, 2005, 2008) argues, social and economic rights are human rights, the role
of a robust public sector and government emerges as vital; not sufficient, but necessary to
guarantee the right to survive. Viewed in this light,structural adjustment's systematic
dismantling of public services for health, education, agriculture, water, and safety nets is rightly
seen as a war on the poor; its violence measured in increased morbidity, malnutrition, excess
mortality, DALYs, and the harder-to quantify destruction of community that anthropologists
have tried to depict. “
"Anthropological Perspectives on Structural Adjustment and Public Health." 257
Pfeiffer, James, and Rachel Chapman.
*****
Did the IMF actually ease up on structural adjustment?
"There is a mismatch between what the IMF says and what the IMF actually does. "
"Did the IMF Actually Ease up on Structural Adjustment? Here's What the Data Say." 258
Washington Post.
Kentikelenis, Alexander, Thomas Stubbs, and Lawrence King.
*****