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LATEST NEWSLETTER
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Issue 41 of the Corporate Watch newsletter focuses on corporate involvement in Sierra Leone. Nestled inside, is our fun filled Readers' Survey. Please feel free to copy it into an email and it back to loukas(at)corporatewatch.org.
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What do you want from Corporate Watch? How would you like to see us develop? Answer some of these questions and help us to bring you the corporate research you need. |
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The prospects for world peace have always been somewhat grim, but the advent of corporate globalization has provided those intent on using violence to secure their interests with an extra source of justification. Through the markets, ‘their’ interests become ‘our’ interests – a threat to the economic growth of a country thousands of miles away has suddenly become our problem (presuming, that is, that we have strategic interests there). In short, wherever a ‘threat’ to unbridled capitalism is perceived, taking action against it can now be justified using the rhetoric of market stability. |
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For a long time ‘development’ has been equated with neo-liberalism. The imposition of free-market reforms through various means, including the use of loans, ‘aid’ and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (and their predecessors, Structural Adjustment Programs) is nothing new. What seems to have been generally overlooked, however, is that alongside these measures something far more subtle, and far more sinister is at work: the creation of consensus. |
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In 2004, at the cost of £7.5 million to the British tax payer, DFID launched ENCISS – ‘Enhancing the Interaction and Interface between Civil Society and the State to Improve Poor People’s Lives’. ENCISS is essentially a PR strategy to support the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) – a bundle of corporate-friendly initiatives dreamt up by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to the ENCISS Project Memorandum, obtained by Corporate Watch under the Freedom of Information Act, the main objective of the programme is the ‘successful delivery of the PRS’ by ‘aiming to strategically engage with civil society in contributing to an enabling environment for social and economic development.’ This is being achieved in a number of ways. |
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While the minerals of Sierra Leone are the main prize, overlooked are the events which took place in the oil industry. |
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