For the 50 Years Is Enough Network, with a well-defined mission and scope which preclude shifting our focus to, say, anti-militarism, it was very clear that the prospect of delivering our critique of the international financial institutions was neither possible nor appropriate in the face of this massive catastrophe.

DC residents have always fulfilled national obligations: they have paid taxes and served in wars. They are taxed without representation. Nestled in this political paradox between theory and practice are the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unfortunately for DC's residents, who already have little leeway for political self-determination, the World Bank and IMF's presence in DC has significant implications for DC's tax and revenue situation.

For those who may be new to trade and investment issues, this article will attempt to provide some basic background on some of the links between debt, trade and investment, as well as some of the ways to extend a gender analysis into this new arena.

Our Friends at the Bank, a documentary film by Peter Chappell, approaches the issue of globalization through a penetrating "insider" look at the World Bank's, and to a lesser degree the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) and donor governments', interaction with borrower governments. The film casts bureaucrats, functionaries, economists, and civil servants almost as chess pieces, shuffling to and from a series of cabinet level meetings in a game played on a shifting board: sometimes Uganda – both city and countryside – sometimes the Bank and Fund's towering office buildings in Washington DC. The stakes in this game are no less than the economic futures of the Ugandan people, whose lives of rural hardship, urban scavenging, and lost limbs – either in the war against the dictator Idi Amin, or the current rebellion in the north against the government – are presented in stark contrast to their elected and appointed civil servants: crisply dressed in western style, marking time on gold watches.

The World Bank is soon likely to adopt a private sector development (PSD) strategy that will require the inclusion of the private sector in all infrastructure and social sector operations in the 78 low-income countries that depend on credits from the International Development Association (IDA). The PSD strategy threatens citizenship rights, jeopardizes affordable basic service provision and promotes a two-tier "separate and unequal" apartheid of access to basic services.