On March 11, 2005 belarusian state information agency BELTA announced, that the World Bank approves the direction of “reforms” concerning health, education and social welfare systems, that Belarus has chosen. Nothing strange, if we remember that all these destructive “reforms” are implemented in accordance with the WB recommendations for “better effectiveness” of social policies. It seems that cooperation between the World Bank and belarusian government becomes an important argument and an alibi for Lukashenko’s regime in order to dismantle few social rights that still exist in the country. In 2005 this “cooperation” has intensified considerably. Chernobyl disaster is probably the best example of this kind of “cooperation”.
«In the Country Assistance Strategy and other dialogue with the Bank, the Government has indicated that support for Post Chernobyl Recovery is among its highest priorities and it was on this basis that the current CAS included this project even in the low-case lending scenario. The Government has welcomed two recent World Bank studies: The Belarus Chernobyl Review and the Review of Environment and Natural Resource Management, and has acted on several of the recommendations of these studies», states the WB website. For 2005-2006, on the insisting demand of belarusian government, the World Bank restarted “preparation work on the Post Chernobyl Recovery Project, based on the findings of the Bank’s Chernobyl Review Study. The Government indicated that it wished to focus the proposed project on government investments in the project area in the areas of agriculture, forestry, energy, water supply, sanitation, and other infrastructure. These sectors are part of an existing large, multi-faceted government program for the districts that have been most affected by the Chernobyl accident. The government currently lacks the financing to fully fund these activities”. This common project can result in $45 million loan form the WB.
And as we can see, the money will be mostly borrowed for “economic recovery” of the region. While economic liberalization presents the indispensable condition of all the WB assistance, still exciting social rights of the belarusian citizens (compensations and benefits, health care), considered by the WB as “stigma”, constitute a real “problem” for the belarusian government. And the planned abolishment of the Chernobyl benefits with aim to correspond to the WB cutthroat politics is only the first step towards final dismantling of the social sphere.
So, in order to remove this barrier to liberalization, first of all a revision of the impact of the catastrophe is needed. For example, the WB doesn’t hide that the project “activities include the need for advice to the Government on how to harmonize its national radiation safety standards with the international ones because current inconsistencies, especially among Belarus’ neighbors, limit and complicate international trade, and furthermore because some national standards need updating to reflect current international knowledge and consistent logic about exposure risk from various radiation sources”.
The project is really revolutionary. First of all, the WB in collaboration with belarusian government proposes to revise all existing Chernobyl social legislation. According to the new concept, the status of “Chernobyl victims” will not be given to everybody who lives on the contaminated territories, but only to those who can “prove” the connection between their health problems and Chernobyl disaster (“real impact”). As it is easy to understand, it will be almost impossible to prove this “real impact”, while scientific consensus on the issue doesn’t exist. This situation will automatically lead to exclusion of the major part of the population from any compensation. The second step of the reform consists in re-evaluation of the most of the contaminated territories as “safe” or “clean”. And, by the way, belarusian government officially plans to exclude such terms as “disaster”, “catastrophe”, “victims”, “contaminated zone” from the official Chernobyl vocabulary. As the government’s website proposes, we must stop «to psychologically stress the population by using inappropriate terms in existing Chernobyl legislation, which leads to strengthening of the “victim syndrome”» (translated from Russian). This “linguistic” initiative is obviously inspired by a WB idea which considers the Chernobyl health problems mainly as a result of stress and unhealthy lifestyle of the population. Such a “theory” is overtly put on paper in the Bank’s Chernobyl Review (Report №23883-BY”, 8.04.2002) (http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTBELARUS/Resources/chernobyl_1-2.pdf) and serves to justify the dismantlement of the social rights.
No disaster, no zone, - it means no compensations, no rights. Instead, it is planned to create at the contaminated territory a kind of “free economic zone”, where it will be “experimented” (WB, Report, 66), mostly in such sectors as forestry and agriculture. As the Bank’s report proposes, then this neoliberal “reserve” could be extended over the whole country.
After all, the intensification of the described “international cooperation” can be linked to another belarusian project - building of belarusian nuclear plant. This project implies that it is necessary at first to do away with Chernobyl problem, and then to find international partnership, which will be a kind of cover. The WB project could become a bridge between Belarusian regime and big nuclear corporations. One and the most important of them, AREVA, came in Minsk at the beginning of spring. Is there any link between this brief visit and the WB’s Chernobyl program? Maybe there is no direct connection. But let us take the educational projects ETHOS (1996-2001) and CORE (since 2002), largely advertised in the WB documents, which are backed by the European Union and… nuclear power corporation AREVA. Coincidence?
attention!!! For the company against revisionism of Chernobyl in Belarus and planned building of nuclear power station, we need contacts with activists, who have information about AREVA corporation, and who are interested in taking part in company against antisocial and “pro-nuclear” reform, performed by WB, WMF and AREVA in Belarus.
chernobyl2006@lists.riseup.net