Born of a unique five-year collaboration among citizens' groups, developing country governments, and the World Bank that was financed by European governments, UN agencies, US foundations and NGOs, this book represents the most comprehensive, real-life assessment of the actual impacts of the liberalization, deregulation, privatization and austerity policies that constitute structural adjustment programs. Its authors, the members of the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN) that engaged the World Bank's president in this ambitious endeavor, demonstrate the concrete consequences of adjustment policies for the manufacturing sector, small enterprises, the wages and conditions of working people, the delivery of social services, health and education spending, small farmers and food security, and poverty and inequality.

SAPRIN is a global network established to expand and legitimize the role of civil society in economic policymaking and to strengthen the organized challenge to structural adjustment programs by citizens around the world.

"This vitally important book cogently summarizes the various effects of structural adjustment and should be read by all who care about the developing world."--Martin Khor, Third World Network

"Structural Adjustment: The SAPRI Report illustrates the devastating impact that structural adjustment policies, undemocratically imposed by the international financial institutions, have had on national productive capacity, employment, wages and the growing number of people in poverty. It captures what we in Mexico and Latin America have fought against for the past two decades and is all the more pertinent given the intensifying challenges to neoliberalism in the region."--Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, former Senator, Governor and Mexican presidential candidate

"An excellent expose of how people's human rights are being sacrificed on the altar of the free market in the name of development."--Professor Fantu Cheru, former UN Special Rapporteur on Structural Adjustment

"This book documents a unique exercise in broad-based civil society participation, collaboration and engagement with official institutions. It represents a strong challenge to governments and the World Bank to open up economic policymaking to reflect local knowledge and realities."--Lidy Nacpil, International Coordinator, Jubilee South and Secretary General, Freedom from Debt Coalition (Philippines)