European CSO meeting with European executive directors to the World Bank

News|Bretton Woods Project|24 September 2005|url
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Civil society representatives from over twelve European countries, as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and a parliamentarian from Malawi, met with World Bank executive directors from the European region in what has become a staple event in the annual meetings diary. Executive directors from the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium were present, as were advisors from Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. On the agenda was discussion of conditionality and World Bank programmes in the DRC.

On conditionality, there still appears to be a wide diversity of opinion on it usage. The Swedish advisor spoke of the trend away from "buying reform towards supporting reform", while the Dutch executive director believes that "there is not such a margin for all countries to have their own choices" and that conditionality can bring "healthy pressure to break through interests in domestic politics". The Italian executive director challenged CSOs to think more about what conditions are appropriate for countries in crisis. The discussion ended with a commitment of the UK office to follow up on specific discussions on how the operationalisation of the Bank's new good practice guidelines on conditionality would be taken forward.

On DRC, NGOs raised very serious concerns that the Bank's support for land reform, forest concessioning and mining, violated both its own guidelines for working in conflict zones as well as a UN security council resolution on the DRC. They called for the European executive directors to ensure the Bank's compliance with UN security council resolution 1457 and its own safeguard policies on indigenous peoples and forests, and to ask Bank staff to explain the developmental rationale of its programme in DRC. Both the Dutch and Italian directors committed to following up with the case, especially the failure of Bank country staff in DRC to meet with indigenous peoples organisations. The Italian director asked the UK office to host a future meeting on the subject.

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Published: 24 September 2005 , last edited: 27 May 2010

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