The World Bank and IMF announced on 5 November that their 2021 Annual Meetings, scheduled to take place in Marrakesh, Morocco, will now be hosted by Morocco in October 2022, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Annual Meetings are typically hosted by a non-US IMF and World Bank member country every third year. Bali, Indonesia, was the site of the 2018 Annual Meetings – the last gathering held outside the Bank and Fund’s Washington DC headquarters. The 2021 Annual Meetings will now be held in Washington.

Given the additional time to prepare, civil society will be calling on the Bank and Fund to work with the Moroccan hosts to ensure ample civic space at the 2022 Annual Meetings, after unofficial civil society events outside the Bali Annual Meetings were repeatedly broken up by Indonesian authorities, with activists harassed and threatened (see Observer Winter 2018).