organizations-based-in-washington-d-c

"USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."

"“It is exceptionally painful to watch all this,” said Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also worked at World Vision and in Christian higher education as the president of Eastern Nazarene College. If USAID has specific problems, shutting the whole agency down instead of addressing the problems is a “tremendous overreaction” and “inhumane,” he said."

"Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care."

"Evangelical and other Christian charities have not been spared these cuts. Among the organizations that lost funding are such Christian behemoths as World Vision, International Justice Mission, Samaritan's Purse, and Catholic Relief Services, which at $476 million, was the largest USAID recipient in 2024. Because of the vagueness of the language around which programs would still be funded, some groups pulled back their spending, just in case. "World Vision is responding to the executive order that pauses U.S. foreign assistance funding—with the exception of emergency food assistance—for the next 90 days, while programs are reviewed for alignment with the current administration’s foreign policy," said the international relief organization in a statement to TIME."

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides funds to governments which have short-term liquidity problems. The World Bank invests in infrastructural projects. Both institutions are based in Washington and are controlled by the US. The head of the World Bank is always an American, and the IMF is always headed by a European, usually French. The IMF provided resources for France and Portugal to resist challenges in their colonies, and without these funds, decolonisation would have begun earlier. In the new Third World states, the World Bank and IMF favoured those states which adopted the American model. They became powerful instruments in the hands of the US and often infl uenced private bank lending as well. When the US left the gold standard in 1971, it became easier for Third World states to access loans. The rapid rise in oil prices after 1973 made more funds available as the oil-rich states sought to invest their new-found wealth, but the Third World fell into the trap of accepting cheap loans and gradually became heavily indebted. US banks were happy to lend to Third World states assuming that Washington would bail them out if these states defaulted on their debts. The newly independent states were often dependent on exporting raw materials, but prices fell as technology advanced. The US aim was to create an international environment which promoted convergence between communism and capitalism, but the opposite occurred. Hence US policy made it more diffi cult for developing states to raise living standards as so much wealth had to be used to service debt. This, inevitably, contributed to the growth of left-wing movements."

"The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, promotes international financial stability and monetary cooperation. It also facilitates international trade, promotes employment and sustainable economic growth, and helps to reduce global poverty. The IMF is governed by and accountable to its 189 member countries."

"Founding and mission: The IMF was conceived in July 1944 at the United Nations Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, United States. The 44 countries in attendance sought to build a framework for international economic cooperation and avoid repeating the competitive currency devaluations that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF's primary mission is to ensure the stability of the international monetary system—the system of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries and their citizens to transact with each other."

"Providing loans to member countries that are experiencing actual or potential balance-of-payments problems is a core responsibility of the IMF. Individual country adjustment programs are designed in close cooperation with the IMF and are supported by IMF financing, and ongoing financial support is dependent on effective implementation of these adjustments."

"The IMF provides technical assistance and training to help member countries build better economic institutions and strengthen related human capacities. This includes, for example, designing and implementing more effective policies for taxation and administration, expenditure management, monetary and exchange rate policies, banking and financial system supervision and regulation, legislative frameworks, and economic statistics."

"We know that the changing climate is triggering catastrophic weather events. And we know that unless we act decisively to mitigate the causes and adapt to the changes in the climate, we are going to be in very deep trouble. So, why is this relevant for the IMF? The reason is straightforward. Our mandate is stability, growth, employment and improving in living standards. We are not going to have stability unless we address the climate crisis."

"We can address the COVID the recovery that is necessary and we can address the climate crisis... We are committed to support our members with analytical work and through the programs we finance for an accelerated transition to a future of low-carbon climate-resilient growth... In the near term, giving priority to green investment in the recovery packages would support job-rich growth. As the economies recover, a gradual increase in carbon prices, well anchored in forward guidance, would provide much needed revenues and create a virtuous circle of adjustments in consumer behavior and new investments."

"The current crisis is both a risk and an opportunity. It would be short-sighted to go back to the economy of yesterday with its problems of growing inequality. We should look forward and take the opportunity to build a bridge to something better: a world that is fairer and more equitable; greener and more sustainable, smarter and above all more resilient."

"If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America."

"The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street."

"The concepts formulated at Bretton Woods and Havana, which brought into being the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were characterized by exchange, trade and development-financing systems based on the interests of a few dominant countries. They evolved at a time when war between the industrial countries of the West and the socialist world seemed inevitable. As always, economic interests and political interest joined forces to overbear the countries of the Third World. Our development was hampered by economic obstacles; and every time a people resolved to make a bid for emancipation, all possible means of attack were used against it. The systems in question established the rules of the trade game. They closed markets to the products of the Third World through the establishment of tariff and non-tariff barriers, through their own anti-economic and unfair production and distribution structures. They set up harmful practices and norms, fixed freight rates, and thus secured a virtual monopoly of cargo. They also left the Third World countries to watch the advance of science as outsiders and exported to us technical know-how which in many cases was simply an instrument of cultural alienation and of increased dependence. For example, in the international telecommunications system a formidable danger is implicit. Today, 75 percent is in the hands of the developed countries of the West; and of this proportion more than 60 percent is controlled by the big United States corporations, with whose policy we are familiar. I wish to point out that, in less than ten years, our community institutions and our homes will be flooded by information and publicity which will be directed from abroad by means of satellites of high transmission power, and which, unless they are counteracted by timely measures, will serve only to increase our dependence and destroy our cultural values. This danger must be averted by the international community, which should demand that control be exercised by the United Nations."

"What happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries."

"The big question today is 'Will globalisation allow democracy to survive?' On one side we have the multinationals, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. I want to help to redress the balance on the other side."

"Osama Bin Laden and George Bush were both terrorists. They were both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people’s lives. Bush with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al-Qaeda. The difference is that nobody elected Bin Laden."

"When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other Western leaders were starting to plan for the postwar world, they had the recent past very much in their minds in other ways. They wanted to build a robust world order that would prevent the world from sliding, yet again, into another deadly conflict. The interwar years had been unstable ones, partly because the League of Nations had not been strong enough. Key powers, the United States in particular, had not joined or, like Germany and Japan, had dropped out. This time, Roosevelt was determined that the United States should be a member of the new United Nations. He was also prepared to do a good deal to keep the Soviet Union in. What had been a precariously balanced international order was put under further strain in the 1930s by the Great Depression, which encouraged countries to turn inward, throwing up tariff walls to protect their own workers and their own industries. What may have made sense for individual nations was disastrous for the world as a whole. Trade and investment dropped off sharply and national rivalries were exacerbated. To avoid that happening again, the Allies, with the Soviet Union's grudging acquiescence, created the economic institutions known collectively as the Bretton Woods system. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Trade Organization (this last did not materialize as the World Trade Organization until much later) were designed to provide stability to the world's economy and to encourage free trade among nations. How much difference these all made to the international order after 1943 will always be a matter of debate, but the world did not get a repeat of the 1930s."

"Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those countries became known as the "IMF riots". They were so called because they were sparked by the fund's structural adjustment programmes, which imposed austerity, privatisation and deregulation."

"Being told by the IMF to go easy on austerity is like being told by the Spanish Inquisition to be more tolerant of heretics."

"A contradiction lies at the very centre of the neoliberal project. On a theoretical level, neoliberalism promises to bring about a purer form of democracy, unsullied by the tyranny of the state. Indeed, this claim serves as the model lodestar for neoliberal ideology - a banner under which it justifies radical market deregulation. But, in practice, it becomes clear that the opposite is true: that neoliberalism tends to undermine democracy and political freedom. More than 40 years of experimentation with neoliberalism shows that it erodes the power of voters to decide the rules that govern the economic systems they inhabit. It allows for the colonization of political forums by elite interests - a process known as political capture - and sets up new political forums, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the , that preclude democratic representation from the outset. Neoliberalism also tends to undermine national sovereignty, to the point where parliaments of putatively independent nations no longer have power over their own policy decisions, but are governed instead by foreign banks, the , trade agreements, and undemocratic international institutions, all of which exercise a kind of invisible, remote-control power."

"People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear that the extention of neoliberalism has entailed powerful new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global 'free market' required not only violent coups and dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy – the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral free-trade agreements – with reams of new laws, backed up by the military power of the United States. In other words, an unprecedented expansion of state power was necessary to force countries around the world to liberalize their markets against their will. As the has known ever since the in 1842, when British gunboats invaded China in order to knock down China's trade barriers, free trade has never actually been about freedom. On the contrary, as we have seen, free trade has a tendency to gradually undermine national sovereignty and electoral democracy."

"The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on global supply chains but new International Monetary Fund research shows that more diversification of source countries and inputs can significantly reduce the economic drag from supply disruptions."

"The government enacted new laws that expanded both the state's power to block websites and the surveillance capability of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Journalists faced unprecedented legal obstacles as the courts restricted reporting on corruption and national security issues. The authorities also continued to aggressively use the penal code, criminal defamation laws, and the antiterrorism law to crack down on journalists and media outlets. Verbal attacks on journalists by senior politicians—including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the incumbent prime minister who was elected president in August—were often followed by harassment and even death threats against the targeted journalists on social media. Meanwhile, the government continued to use the financial and other leverage it holds over media owners to influence coverage of politically sensitive issues. Several dozen journalists, including prominent columnists, lost their jobs as a result of such pressure during the year, and those who remained had to operate in a climate of increasing self-censorship and media polarization."

"You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy, according to Freedom House. But have you got a civilized life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools."

"At the time of Partition in 1947, the Hindu population, in what is now Bangladesh, was about 31%.4 By 1961, Hindus comprised 19% of the population. By 1974, the Hindu population had further reduced to 14%. And in 2002, it was estimated that the Hindu population was only about 9% of the total.5 By comparison, the Muslim population in India has grown from 10% of the total in 1947, to 13.2% in 2001."

"As noted in HAF’s prior annual human rights reports, attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh constitute the most serious threat to the Hindu community anywhere in the world. This reality is confirmed in the current report as well. Bangladesh was created after the India-Pakistan War of 1971, that was preceded by the massacre of an estimated two million East Pakistani citizens and the ethnic cleansing of nearly 10 million (mostly Hindus) who fled to India. The Hindu population in Bangladesh has been reduced from about 31% in 1947 to about 9% now."

"HAF concurs with several other human rights organization in expressing serious concern over the Pakistani government's continued complicity in human rights violations against minorities. According to internationally recognized criteria, Pakistan is not a free country today."

"The gang rape of women and girls, murder, beatings, harassment, kidnappings, attacks on temples, looting of gold and jewelry, and illegal occupation of land constitute the litany of human rights abuses suffered by Hindus, tribal people, and to a lesser extent Christians and Buddhists."

"Over the past decade, the rights of minorities in Malaysia have eroded as the government shifts from its seemingly secular state to one that is rooted in conservative Islam. Religious freedom is not protected and for ethnic Malays, does not exist at all. Three urgent concerns are the lack of freedom of religion, the ongoing destructions of temples, and the threat of arrest of HINDRAF and other human rights activists under the draconian ISA. The Malaysia Supreme Court should abide by Article 11 in the constitution and not force religion upon residents of Malaysia."

"Violence against women is a common weapon used to intimidate and harass minority communities across the world. It has similarly been used in Bangladesh as a means to attack Hindus. For instance, in the period immediately following the 2001 elections, approximately 1,000 Hindu women and girls were raped. ... The systematic kidnapping, rape, and murder of minority women, particularly young Hindu girls, continued in 2010. Rapes and kidnappings of Hindus are often accompanied by forced conversion to Islam... (225)"

"For instance, in the period immediately following the 2001 elections, approximately 1,000 Hindu women and girls were raped. ... The systematic kidnapping, rape, and murder of minority women, particularly young Hindu girls, continued in 2011."

"Hindus of Bangladesh continue to be victims of ethnic cleansing waged by Islamic fundamentalists that include daily acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, temple destruction, and physical intimidation."

"A disturbing trend in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh province, is the abduction and forced conversion to Islam of Hindu girls."

"As in previous reports, we once again express serious concern over the Pakistani government's continued failure to protect minorities and its complicity in perpetuating human rights violations. However, we realize that the present government is weak and therefore, unable to institute any real meaningful change without the consent of the military establishment. Nonetheless, HAF calls on the Government of Pakistan to take immediate steps for the protection of religious minorities from violence, rape, kidnapping, and forced conversions."

"According to a human rights report released jointly on November 7, 2014 by Bangladesh Minority Watch (BDMW), Bangladesh Center for Human Rights and Development (BCHRD), and Global Human Rights Defense (GHRD), 1,699 Hindu temples were demolished over the previous two years (2013 and 2014)"

"According to a human rights report by Bangladeshi rights groups, 706 Hindu girls were forcibly converted to Islam over a two-year period (2013 and 2014). The report also found that there were 292 incidents of rape and gang-rape of minority women and girls over the same time frame."

"Another Islamist organization, Hefazat-e-Islam, is thought to be a front for JeI, and controls many of the country’s madrassas. Hefazat was one of the prominent groups that said it would carry out jihad and use violence if necessary to ensure that Islam remained the state religion in the Constitution."

"In 2013, Hefazat called for the prosecution and execution of “atheist bloggers” as part of its 13-point Islamist agenda. The charter included, in part, “banning women from the work force by ending ‘free mixing’ of the sexes, a harsh new blasphemy law similar to Pakistan’s, and the declaration of the beleaguered Ahmadi sect as non-Muslim...’”"

"The period of 2019-2020 was once again marked by repeated attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities, institutionalized discrimination and legal restrictions, and the expanding influence of Islamist groups, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefaazat-e-Islam. Although radical Islamist groups have played a major role in the violence and growing intolerance in the country, the Awami League government has also contributed to worsening human rights conditions by failing to protect religious minorities, subverting democratic processes, suppressing civil liberties, and maintaining and enforcing discriminatory laws and policies. Consequently, immediate steps are required by both Bangladesh and the US to improve conditions on the ground and alter the country’s current religious freedom and human rights trajectory."

"Moreover, Kashmiri Pandits, thousands of whom continue to live in decrepit refugee camps, are optimistic about the future, but remain concerned about security and integration if they return to the Kashmir Valley."

"Religious minorities continue to suffer at an alarming rate, with several high-profile attacks on religious communities. Women of minority faiths, particularly Hindus and Christians, endure abductions, rape, and forced conversions, before forced marriages to Muslim men. Draconian blasphemy and apostasy laws are used to harass Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians. Such harassment, including long periods of pre-trial imprisonment, is done in collaboration with local judicial and law enforcement authorities. These and other discriminatory laws have left minorities as second class citizens and vulnerable to attacks by non-state actors."

"In Jammu and Kashmir, the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from the Kashmir Valley is almost complete, and therefore, the attacks against specific Hindu targets are thereby reduced. The Hindus forced from the valley are settled in refugee camps throughout Northern India and the decrepit conditions of these communities remain a tragic abuse of fundamental rights to shelter and dignity. The fate of these nearly 350,000 people is in limbo as the Indian government strives to end the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and the complex geopolitical realities therein."

"From our survey of events in 2004, we conclude that the direst threat to Hindus is in Bangladesh. They are the only remaining Hindu population of substantial size outside India that is suffering human rights abuses and being rapidly expelled by an Islamist regime. The massive number of documented atrocities in this report and those of the United States Department of State represent a small proportion of continuing attacks on Hindus in that country."

"In the case of Pakistan, access to information is more limited. Given the small number of Hindus in Pakistan and their vulnerable minority status, documentation is rendered difficult. This report provides a historical basis for violations against Hindus, clearly manifested by a population of Hindus that continues to contract and has nearly been completely erased. Human rights abuses in Pakistan are of a chronic nature that shows no indication of amelioration."

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section.... The Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon are national properties in which every citizen has a vested interest; they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona. Who will gainsay that the parks contain the highest potentialities of national pride, national contentment, and national health? A visit inspires love of country; begets contentment; engenders pride of possession; contains the antidote for national restlessness.... He is a better citizen with a keener appreciation of the privilege of living here who has toured the national parks."