Topics

This topic area covers: the impact of Bank and Fund policies and activities on the environment, including the impacts of individual projects; programmatic and sectoral lending; and Bank and Fund policy research. Subjects covered include: oil, gas and mining; forests, large hydroelectric projects; energy issues; agriculture; the Global Environment Facility (GEF); the World Bank's involvement in carbon trading; safeguard policies; environmental compliance with World Bank policies and international mechanisms ; and related infrastructure issues.
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Bank and Fund involvement in financing development and debt creation. The role of World Bank aid and lending in development and reconstruction projects as well as a focus on the Funds' role in the international financial architecture and financial sector reform in borrower countries. Includes: Development finance, capital account liberalisation and capital controls, financial sector reform, International financial architecture, debt and debt arbitration, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC), crisis prevention and resolution
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Bank and Fund analysis and conditionality on "building efficient and accountable public sector institutions", including issues relating to the Bank's own frameworks for promoting good governance and reducing corruption. Includes: Corruption and anti-corruption, transparency and accountability, human rights, governance and conditionality, national-level coherence between ministries, country policy and institutional assessments (CPIA), decentralisation, legal reform, regulation/deregulation
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In 2003, Roberto Danino, the World Bank's legal council, argued that the Bank should begin to consider non-economic issues, such as human rights, as long as it is related to projects the Bank intends to support and is done in a non-partisan manner. However, since his departure from the Bank, the gap between the rhetoric and implementation of rights has grown wider. Human rights remain visibly absent from World Bank safeguards and while the International Finance Corporation, includes some labour rights and indigenous peoples rights in its performance standards, they remain vague. This topic area covers: the impact of World Bank policies and projects on human rights, including economic and social rights, compliance mechanisms, private finance and the extractives industries.
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Examines the World Bank's role as a self-proclaimed "knowledge bank". Questions IFI's knowledge biases as well as providing critical analysis of the bank's development effectiveness and its new Information and Communications Technologies initiatives, such as the Development Gateway. Includes: Technical assistance, development gateway, World Development Reports, media, global public goods, research, poverty measurement, 'results' agenda
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World Bank private sector work; the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, and Involvement of transnational corporations in IFI projects. Includes: Work of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) / Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) / International Court for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), Private sector development strategy, privatisation of services, corporate social responsibility, TNC involvement.
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Bank and Fund structural adjustment programmes (SAP's) often required dramatic reform of a borrowing country's economic policy. The successor to SAPs, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSPs) set out a country's macroeconomic, structural and social policies to promote growth and reduce poverty. These comprehensive strategies for reform are necessary for World Bank loans or lending by the fund under the poverty reduction and growth facility (PRGF). Includes: conditionality, structural adjustment lending, Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRIN), Poverty and Social Impact Assessment (PSIA), PRGF, letters of intent
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Covers the impact of Bank and Fund work on people and people's rights. Includes: Human rights, indigenous peoples, education, health, gender, labour, nutrition, land reform, social impact assessment, displacement, Inspection panel (social claims)
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Bank and Fund work in trade policy covering trade-related conditionality, advisory services, and trade related capacity building. Questioning the Bank and Fund approach to trade liberalisation. Includes: Capacity building, integrated framework, trade-finance coherence, trade-related investment, trade conditionality and national development plans read
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Involvement in, and oversight of the Bank and Fund by the government of the United Kingdom. Includes: UK structures, UK parliamentary oversight, UK ministerial announcements, civil society campaigning and advocacy. For more detail on the UK's role in the World Bank and IMF
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Issues relating to the governance of the Bank and Fund by their member countries. Includes: Governance structures, Parliamentary scrutiny, transparency, accountability, complaint mechanisms, governance structures, evaluation mechanisms, spring/annual meetings read
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Debate on the mandates and responsibilities of the Bank and IMF. Includes: Division of responsibilities, reform/abolish debates, mission creep, evaluation bodies, role of the Bank and Fund in conflict-affected countries, IMF/WB/WTO coherence and relations with UN agencies.
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