One of our favorite pins says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." This issue of Economic Justice News is likely to prove the dangers of paying attention.

In the last month I have been repeatedly reminded of the global convergence of local activism. I was privileged to participate in organizing and education events in Soweto, South Africa; at the Putney School in Putney, Vermont; at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and in Halifax, Canada.

But incredible as it may have seemed, Malawi — hardly a desert state, but a densely-populated country in a lush region — really was facing catastrophic food shortages in the wake of a combination of flooding and a regional drought, and after over a decade of "structural adjustment" policies designed by the IMF.

The following article is the introduction to Nancy Alexander's latest study for CNES, "Who Governs Water Resources in Developing Countries?: A Critique of the World Bank's Approach to Water Resources Management."

Two leading U.S. progressive activists and good friends of the 50 Years Is Enough Network have died in recent months. Both led remarkable lives that placed them on the front lines of this country's political history in the second half of the twentieth century. Their experience, humor, friendship, and uncanny power to inspire both colleagues and the public will, we're afraid, be impossible to replace.

The following statement was issued by the Council for Development and Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) in a joint meeting in Accra, Ghana in April. CODESRIA is one of the leading associations of African intellectuals in politics and culture and Third World Network-Africa has been one of the most assertive advocacy organizations for Africa on economic issues.

This statement has rapidly become a touchstone for African civil society positions on the so-called "New Partnership for African Development" (NEPAD), a blueprint of neo-liberal policies prepared mainly by the South African government and endorsed by the presidents of Senegal, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria. NEPAD is on the agenda of the G7 Summit in Alberta; indeed it seems to have been written more for that body than for Africans. Its official launch is slated for South Africa in July.

Although very different in background and personality, Marsha and Trim led lives with strangely similar trajectories, and both ended up on the board of the Alliance for Global Justice. The 50 Years Is Enough Network was until recently a project of the Alliance.

There have been many plans put forth to address debt in the Global South, most recently the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative, launched by the World Bank and the IMF in 1996. All these plans failed to deliver on their promises. Most fundamentally, they have not managed to reverse the net outflow of resources. The targeted impoverished countries continue to pay out more in interest alone, and transferring net resources to the creditor nations far in excess of new capital inflows. Kenya and Tanzania are good illustrations of this scenario.

A report prepared by the World Bank and IMF for the meetings of their joint Development Committee in April 2002 reveals troubling failures in the implementation of their six-year-old debt relief plan.