All nations agreed on a doc­u­ment from the spe­cial ses­sion of the United Nations that con­cluded last week. The plan con­tains pro­pos­als for help­ing the under-developed world through the global eco­nomic reces­sion. Cri­tiques of the agree­ment range from it being too weak, to relief that all nations could agree on something.

How­ever, con­tro­versy has stemmed from the UN sum­mit due to pro­posed reform of the IMF and World Bank. The plan only says that reform needs to be done, not what should be done. Despite agree­ing to the plan, the US says any reform is up to IMF and World Bank share­hold­ers, mean­ing you have to go through us first.

From the IPS, reporter Thalif Deen describes the after­math of the summit.

Per­haps one of the far­thest reach­ing pro­pos­als was “the urgent need” for fur­ther reform of the gov­er­nance of the Bret­ton Woods insti­tu­tions (BWI) — namely the World Bank and the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) — where rich nations exer­cise dis­pro­por­tion­ate power based on their share­hold­ings.

The out­come doc­u­ment calls for “a fair and equi­table rep­re­sen­ta­tion of devel­op­ing coun­tries, in order to increase the cred­i­bil­ity and account­abil­ity of these institutions.”

“How­ever,” said Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), the U.S. del­e­gates “indi­cated gov­er­nance struc­tures of the BW insti­tu­tions should not be influ­enced by the United Nations (there­fore refus­ing demo­c­ra­tic scrutiny) and that the World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion (WTO) should be left to do busi­ness as usual.”

She said the 27-member Euro­pean Union (EU) com­pli­mented the out­come doc­u­ment as being highly ambi­tious, “which is cyn­i­cal indeed when most devel­op­ing nations feel they have been rail­roaded into accept­ing a very weak com­pro­mise, with only an ad hoc U.N. work­ing group to con­tinue the work.”

“Civil soci­ety is angry that no con­crete bailout mea­sures have been agreed on for the most affected: women and the socially mar­gin­alised,” she added.

The doc­u­ment also says: “We recog­nise that it is imper­a­tive to under­take, as a mat­ter of pri­or­ity, a com­pre­hen­sive and fast-tracked reform of the IMF.”

Not so fast, says the United States.

Speak­ing after the adop­tion of the doc­u­ment, a U.S. del­e­gate said the BWI had “gov­er­nance struc­tures inde­pen­dent of the United Nations”.

“Any deci­sions on their reform could only be made by share­hold­ers and their boards of gov­er­nors. The United States did not inter­pret the lan­guage in the doc­u­ment as endors­ing a for­mal United Nations role in deci­sion affect­ing them,” he said in a state­ment Friday.

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