him to do so. At the IMF, Managing Director Horst Ko ̈hler described
poverty as “the greatest challenge to peace and security in the 21st
century.”^66 The Fund’s Enhanced Initiative for Highly Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC), established in 1999, and its Multilateral Debt
Relief Initiative, set up in 2005, helped to substantially reduce the debt
load of Southern governments. Moreover, the introduction by the IMF
of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) increased the bor-
rowing countries’ ownership of their economic policies, while encour-
aging more civil society participation in economic decision-making.
In trade, the failure of the 1999 Seattle conference prompted the
WTO to engage more closely with developing countries. Significantly,
the negotiation round initiated in Doha in 2001 was deemed the
“Development Round.” At the outset, the South took advantage of
more transparent negotiation procedures to make gains on issues such
as technical cooperation and the implementation of the Uruguay
Round. Later on, the WTO confirmed the poor countries’ right to buy
generic drugs, and agreed to lift trade restrictions on 97 percent of
the least developed countries’ exports to the North. The WTO does
not see itself as a development agency, but in the wake of the Seattle
debacle it admitted that spreading prosperity more widely stood as
a “moral imperative.”^67 WTO authorities thus became far more
vigorous in denouncing the rich countries’ protectionism, especially
in the agricultural sector. Director-General Pascal Lamy spoke of
“humanizing globalization,” and recognized that the WTO had to do
its share to achieve the MDGs. In an untypical critique of the market
economy, Lamy even suggested that at times “the ‘invisible hand’
itself needs to be taken by the hand.”^68
(^66) Horst Ko ̈hler, “Working for a Better Globalization,” remarks by the IMF
Managing Director at the Conference on Humanizing the Global Economy,
Washington, DC, IMF, January 28, 2002, p. 2 (www.imf.org/external/np/
67 speeches/2002/012802.htm).
Supachai Panitchpakdi, “Why Trade Matters for Improving Food Security,”
speech delivered by the Director-General of the WTO at the FAO High-Level
Round Table on Agricultural Trade Reform and Food Security, Rome,
April 13, 2005, p. 6 (www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001560/Trade-
68 matters_food-security_April2005.pdf).
Pascal Lamy, “Trade Can Be a Friend, and Not a Foe, of Conservation,”
address by the Director-General of the WTO at the WTO Symposium on Trade
and Sustainable Development within the Framework of Paragraph 51 of the
Doha Ministerial Declaration, Geneva, October 10–11, 2005, p. 1 (www.
wto.org/English/news_e/sppl_e/sppl07_e.htm).
184 Left and Right in Global Politics