Conditionality

News

Social Principles limited to crisis situations

15 September 1999

The Bank’s paper on best practices for implementing the social principles (see Bretton Woods Update 13) will be discussed by the Board on 10 September. After this it should be available on the Bank’s website (www.worldbank.org).

Commenting on the document, a UK official noted that it was disappointing that it focused largely on addressing the social impacts of financial crises since this will exclude the majority of poor countries. It appears that the Bank has focused on this issue to placate the Bank’s larger borrowers who objected to some of the principles and who feared that they would lead to greater conditionality.