World Bank Population Policy; Remote Control

Picture yourself applying for a loan at the bank. You need some extra cash for a development project — like kitchen remodeling, plumbing repair, or a second family car.

“How many children do you have?” asks the bank official. “And how many more do you intend to have?”

You protest that it is none of his business, but he shows you an official bank policy statement indicating that population is a major concern of the board of directors.

It’s a development loan you want, after all. And the bank has every right to know how you intend to develop your house – including the number of people who might be living there and eating there in the future. Money spent on diaper services is money that obviously won’t be available to service the household debt. Besides, the bank is financed by investors who themselves have the good sense to limit their fertility, as the loan officer explains. “You, too, must therefore act responsibly.”

Well, you absolutely must have the money. The roof is leaking and the front steps are falling off of the house. So you submit the required “development plan,” which includes a special policy to check population growth. In other words, you agree to make sure that your kids — some of them, anyway — get sterilized. The procedure will be financed by the bank, of course, but you’ll pay the money back with interest.

Welcome to the World Bank.

The World Bank deals with governments, not families — at least not directly. But it labors relentlessly to make sure that the size and constituency of every family becomes a concern of borrowing country governments.

The World Bank’s advocacy of population control became widely known under the leadership of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But at that time, the Bank was neither fully committed to large-scale population projects, nor was it allowed to finance consumable commodities.

A 1974 National Security Council memorandum (NSSM 200, Dec. 10, 1974),1 reported that the Bank “could supply low interest credits to [developing countries] for the development of low-cost health-related services to neglected populations but has not yet made a policy decision to do so.” It said, however, that the Bank “has a population and health program,” and that leadership in the division has “been quite sympathetic with the above objective.” Nonetheless, according to the report, Bank management had not yet made a commitment to the widespread promotion of birth control.2

“The Bank’s stance is regrettable because the Bank could play a very useful role in this area” by providing money for clinics, training and family planning services, the memorandum concluded. Moreover, its involvement “would open up new possibilities of collaboration.”3

A follow-up report, prepared in May of 1976 by a special task force on population of the National Security Council’s Under Secretaries Committee,4 called the World Bank “the principal international financial institution providing population programs? But it lamented the inability of the Bank to lend money for “consumables such as contraceptives and other family planning commodities.”5

It revealed, however, that “a high-level outside consultant group is [presently] evaluating the Bank’s population programs,” and that “[t]his evaluation and our review of it should help provide a clearer picture of what improvements there might be in the Bank’s role and activities in the population field.”6

A subsequent report of the Under Secretaries Committee population task force, dated April 1980,7 finally advised that “the Bank’s Executive Board approved a change in policy” and would “begin regular lending operations in health.” This lending was specifically to include such matters as population and family planning.8

But there were still problems. “[B]y its nature, population assistance is generally more suited for grant aid than for bank loans,” the task force reported. And it might be necessary to seek “a more systematic promotion and design of potential projects in other development sectors more directly supportive of fertility-reduction objectives.”9

The World Bank is to a large degree under the control of the United States. An August 15, 1978 General Accounting Office report on “Multilateral and Bilateral Assistance for Developing Foreign Mineral Projects” stated: “U.S. influence in the international development institutions is predominantly measured by how much funding the United States provides to these institutions.” Quoting the National Advisory council on International Monetary and Financial Policies (NAC), it continued: “U.S. funding decisions must provide for support which does not fall below levels at which U.S. influence would not be adequate to defend or promote our interests .…”10

The 1988 annual report of the NAC states that, “[w]ith regard to the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank and Fund, the council seeks to ensure that, to the maximum extent possible, their operations are conducted in a manner consistent with U.S. policies and objectives and with the lending and other foreign financial activities of U.S. Government agencies.”11

Like family planning programs financed under the U.S. foreign assistance budget, the World Bank’s population activities were built around a strategy of planned escalation. In late 1989, Bank President Barber O. Conable, in an address to the Board of Governors,12 announced that the bank had “lent over half a billion dollars for population projects during the past five years.”

“We expect,” he added, “to raise this level to $800 million in the next three years. This constitutes nearly a tripling of our population lending on an annual basis.”13

Getting nations to borrow money for projects they don’t want is a lot like a bank manager telling a couple they can’t have money to fix the bathtub unless they agree to use contraceptives. The World Bank uses a process called “policy dialogue” along with a little “imagination.”

In September of 1988 the Bank published a working paper on the policy dialogue process titled, “The World Bank’s Population Lending and Sector Review.”14 Authors George Simmons and Rushikesh Maru reported that one of the Bank’s “most important functions …is to help the receiving countries in the development of national population policies.” This, they add, “is achieved through policy dialogue, sector reports, and policy-oriented research.”15

Policy dialogue, they add, consists mainly of “information contacts with the top leaders, project negotiations and monitoring, discussions of the sector reports with the host country program managers and top political leaders … and institutional development for policy analysis.”16

The development of a birth control policy in the small East African nation of Malawi is cited as an example of “successful policy dialogue.”17

In Malawi, they wrote, “government policy has shifted from a pre-198l pro-natalist stance to the acceptance of child spacing as a formal policy, and a low key discussion of population issues among the top civil servants and policy makers has even begun. This is partly a function of support from a few committed civil servants and technocrats within the government,” said the study, “but the Bank also played a significant role in this process.”18

The report noted that the Bank was able to take advantage of a “conference of experts and officials” to open the “dialogue” that led to a formal “child spacing component” in Malawi’s 1981 development program. “A population sector review was conducted in October 1984,” the document continued, “which was then used as a basic document in a conference of senior officials from various ministries.” This, in turn, provided the stimulus for further discussion of “child spacing within the context of primary health care” at another conference held in 1986. And so on.”19

“The Malawi case illustrates how an orchestration of a number of factors mentioned earlier helps in successful policy development,” the report concluded.20

While mixed results have been produced in many African nations, Simmons and Maru commented that “the Bank has played a particularly active role in the development of population policy dialogue at the regional level in Africa,” largely through “conferences and training programs for African policy makers” and other promotional activities.21

They also acknowledged that “Bank lending for population has increased markedly during the past five years” and is expected to increase even further as African nations capitulate and agree to “undertake population programs.”22

And the advised that a “willingness to try new approaches, as in the case of the funding to IPPF for NGO [non-governmental organization] support in Africa, will be an important complement to conventional lending. In short, the prospect for increased lending for the population sector is high, but the overall impact of the Bank in this sector will be greatly increased through flexibility and imagination.”23

Endnotes