From Seville to the CSPF: Reimagining IMF governance for a multilateralism fit for purpose
•
Article summary
Moderator
- Mahinour ElBadrawi, Global Partnerships Lead, Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)
Panellists
- Precious Tricia Abwooli, Akina Mama wa Afrika
- Shereen Talaat, MENA Fem Movement For Economic, Development, And Ecological Justice
- Katie Tobin, WEDO
- Robert Powell, Special Representative to the UN, IMF
A video recording of the event is available on the IMF’s website.
Mahinour: From our panellists, the first round will provide a diagnostic of where we stand today at the junction of global economic governance – on issues such as debt, inequality, climate, and tax – and where there may be alignments or, conversely, gaps between the various policy discussions taking place across different forums. Then, in a second round, we’ll move to recommendations and consider where we can go from here.
Katie: We’re a feminist climate justice advocacy organisation, and perhaps because I come from that angle, I don’t have particularly positive things to say. After more than 30 years of advocacy – through the UNFCCC climate negotiations and the UN processes that began in the 1990s – one lesson is clear: the large-scale transformations we need in our consumption, production, trade and economic systems, for both climate and gender justice, won’t happen until we confront the economic model that shapes our world. That’s how we came to focus on economic justice, even as a climate organisation – and why we follow the IMF and World Bank alongside the UN. These remain among the most influential, yet least democratic, actors in the international financial system.
The starting point is well known long-standing calls from the economic justice movement and global majority governments for quota reform and democratisation of these institutions. Their undemocratic governance affects borrowing costs, surcharges and the unequal allocation of Special Drawing Rights. While that’s not the focus of this session, it’s essential context for any discussion of the IMF and World Bank – whether we’re talking about coherence or structural transformation, which is ultimately what we want to see.
Even looking only at internal coherence, there are key points to note on gender and climate. Two new reports show that whether or not the Fund has gender or climate experts, its policy advice remains unchanged. In the first report, the Bretton Woods Project analysed Article IV reports since 2011 and found that the IMF’s policy direction has been consistent for over a decade. Despite new strategies and shifting contexts, the same old austerity, fiscal consolidation and structural adjustment persist, even when the Fund talks about gender. This has long been a critique from feminist groups: that a gender mainstreaming strategy is meaningless without addressing the impacts of the Fund’s own policies. Even where the IMF acknowledges gender – referencing women’s labour force participation, for example – this rarely translates into its actual policy advice.
In the second report, Recourse analysed IMF surveillance from 2022 to mid-2025 showing that even when the IMF acknowledges the need for policy change in response to the climate crisis, it continues to promote fiscal consolidation. Where the Fund does mention climate, it focuses almost entirely on market-based measures like carbon pricing, while simultaneously supporting fossil fuel expansion. In seven countries – including Côte d’Ivoire – governments are receiving IMF support for a “green transition” through the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, even as they’re advised to expand fossil fuels for economic stability and growth. Recourse also found deep inequalities in IMF surveillance. For middle- and higher-income countries, the Fund allows some space to invest in green transitions. But for lower-income countries, the advice remains unchanged: cut spending, privatise, and keep investing in fossil fuels. So rather than tackling the climate crisis, the IMF is actually reinforcing it through its policy advice.
So when we talk about coherence, I think we first need to ask whether we might, in fact, have too much coherence – coherence around the wrong priorities. Then, looking outward, there’s the bigger question of how the IMF and World Bank relate to the UN, which is supposed to be the overarching framework they sit under. That’s why, as civil society, we see potential in the UN, particularly the General Assembly, as a more democratic space for global governance – though it too has fallen short on both climate and gender. There’s still a great deal of work ahead, and I’m looking forward to the discussion.
Tricia: I’ll be painting a Pan-African picture of debt – examining its impacts and offering a brief diagnosis of the current IMF and World Bank financial architecture and how it affects the continent today. To begin, if you asked me whether the IMF and World Bank have achieved what they were created to do, I’d say yes – but only in the sense that they’ve fulfilled their mandates. The problem is that what they were designed to deliver has nothing to do with human rights, justice, or a genuinely multilateral system.
From an African perspective, the weight of debt is not only economic – it is political and historical. Africa’s indebtedness is the afterlife of colonial extraction, but also a real-time expression of neo-colonial and imperial power that continues to structure our economies and governance. Debt operates as a tool of control and discipline, keeping African and broader Global South nations compliant with neoliberal orthodoxy and austerity logic shaped by the IMF and World Bank. These logics shrink public spending, privatise essential services and care, and erode sovereignty over governance. In countries such as Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, the DRC, and South Sudan, debt repayments now exceed spending on social services. Governments are forced to choose between servicing debt and meeting the basic needs – the humanity – of their people. Much of this debt – accumulated during colonial rule – is illegitimate. Through structural adjustment programmes and the dependency, they entrench, the IMF has effectively engineered a reproductive dependency by design – ensuring that Africa’s economic subordination continues.
From a climate perspective, Africa’s situation is even more unjust. Despite contributing the least to global carbon emissions – the continent is being pushed into mechanisms such as carbon trading, loss and damage funds, and other schemes that often mean taking on more debt, disguised as finance for adaptation and mitigation. We are effectively being punished twice for a crisis we did not cause. This underscores the urgent need for climate finance in the form of grants, not loans.
Yet it’s also vital to acknowledge that resistance and reimagination have always been alive across the continent. Movements have long demanded debt audits, debt cancellation, and debt reparations – and this year, for the first time, the African Union has held a conversation on what reparations might look like. The recent adoption of the UN framework – driven by several African governments – marks a positive step. Still, the fragmentation within the G20 remains a lived reality, reminding us that the current multilateral system does not serve ordinary people.
Shereen: I want to speak about diagnosing power and process within the Compromiso de Sevilla. When we gathered in Seville, there was a real sense of possibility – that perhaps this time, the conversation on global financial reform could move beyond polite recognition of inequality towards genuine structural change. The Compromiso de Sevilla captured that spirit; it recognised reform as a political project, not just a technical one, and placed feminist, decolonial, and rights-based approaches at the centre – at least in theory.
But while the language was bold, the commitments remain voluntary. There is still no mechanism to hold international financial institutions – including the IMF, World Bank, or G20 – accountable to the values they endorsed. First, the Seville text reflects compromise more than transformation. It avoided naming power explicitly, especially the dominance of creditor countries and IFIs. It recognised inequality but didn’t challenge the underlying voting structures that reproduce it. Second, Seville spoke of coherence across institutions, but coherence without accountability simply coordinates the status quo. Who ensures IMF fiscal targets don’t contradict UN human rights recommendations, given the IMF’s place in the UN system? Third, civil society and feminist movements remain excluded from decision-making. As long as the same institutional actors control implementation, feminist and Global South perspectives remain tokenised. Fourth, Seville called for alignment between the IMF, G20, COP30, and UN processes, yet each continues largely on its own track. The IMF’s climate agenda still advances through market-based tools, despite calls from the Global South for a different approach to climate finance. The G20’s Common Framework still favours creditor priorities over debtor justice. Even progress at the UN – such as the tax convention – remains limited and under negotiation.
From a MENA feminist lens, Seville did not go far enough in addressing how austerity, debt, and climate vulnerability intersect. IMF programmes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan continue to enforce fiscal tightening as poverty deepens.
Robert: IMF doing its job is critically important as a precondition for human rights and social justice to flourish. If countries don’t have the resources to achieve health, education, climate, or social justice goals, and if they lack a stable macroeconomic framework, it’s very difficult for them to succeed. The key point is this: austerity arises from a lack of finance. It’s not the IMF telling countries to slash everything. It’s countries facing situations where they simply don’t have enough money and must make difficult, unpalatable choices. Our role is to help them navigate those choices, find resources, and, when needed, access debt relief.
What I want to focus on now is governance, which is critical. One positive recent development is the creation of an additional chair for Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing the total to five executive directors representing African countries — roughly 20 per cent of the board. To give a sense of governance at these institutions: each executive director has one or two alternates and often senior advisors from other countries. Over 100 countries can speak at the IMF board, and the same applies at the World Bank. Most board decisions are taken by consensus, without formal votes. This ensures every country is represented in discussions.
Two recent examples show this – first, reforms to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust aimed to strengthen it and double its concessional lending capacity. The negotiation was complex, involving surcharges, interest rates, and differing priorities between low-, middle-, and high-income countries. No formal vote was taken; instead, a consensus was reached where all sides made concessions. This allowed the Fund to double concessional financing while addressing the concerns of middle-income countries, who alone face surcharges. Second, is the IMF paper to Ffd4. Seville Summit covered many issues: debt, capacity building, and climate action. Importantly, it involved extensive discussion with members, and the outcome was expressed in the board meeting summing-up, which is available online. The process was largely by consensus, reflecting how the Fund board generally operates. There are some decisions – for example, SDRs or selling gold – that require an 85 per cent majority. This threshold ensures broad consensus. Effectively, any major shareholder, the EU, BRICS, or a coalition holding 15 per cent of the votes, can block these decisions. The design encourages consensus before big decisions are finalised.
One point I want to flag – returning to ownership – comes from the Budget Minister of Guinea, who made an excellent comment. While IMF or IFA reform, including quota reform, is important for legitimacy, it shouldn’t delay doing the basics that civil society and governments are calling for: domestic revenue mobilisation, domestic reforms, and catalysing financing on better terms. His message: don’t hang everything on IFA reform, because it will take time and isn’t the most critical element for finance for development.
Mahinour: We know this is a challenge, and we also know the Fund is being pressed on some of the issues most directly linked to the work we do as civil society. Perhaps this is a good transition to the next section: what are we really asking in terms of recommendations.
Tricia will go to you to focus on key asks and recommendations.
Tricia: Before I get into my recommendations, I want to briefly address the consensus voting under the IMF, which previous speakers mentioned. While it’s claimed that most decisions are made by executive boards through consensus, in theory meaning decisions are adopted without objection after full discussion, in practice this operates under unequal power relations defined by the quota system.
Historically, each member’s influence depends on their financial quota — how much they contribute and how much they can borrow — which heavily skews power. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa holds less voting power than a single European country, the US, or even China. Even when African countries wish to pass measures, the system prevents them from doing so. Moreover, the G7 collectively controls over 40% of voting power, meaning consensus often reflects their baseline positions. In short, consensus is a tool of soft control, structuring consent and dependency while limiting true decision-making by Global South countries.
With that, my recommendations:
- Confront colonial legacies and power asymmetries. Governing structures concentrate decision-making in a few wealthy nations, incompatible with democracy, sovereignty, and social justice.
- Reimagine the quota system to respect the sovereignty and governance of all countries, not just those with historical financial clout.
- The global financial architecture must shift away from a formalised colonialist order to a system that centres people over profit, not predetermined relationships of who owes and who is owed.
- Embed human rights, ecological justice, and gender justice at the core of multilateral finance.
- For Africa specifically, reparative mechanisms — debt cancellation and reparative finance — must be central to any reform, redistributing economic power.
- Sovereignty and solidarity should be recognised as technical foundations, not charity. The IMF and World Bank must move away from one-size-fits-all austerity, using instruments like the 2025 comprehensive surveillance review and the African Union 2063 Agenda to guide just transitions and public investment.
- Current mechanisms like the G20 Common Framework are slow, politically influenced, and poorly coordinated. There is a need for an independent, transparent, multilateral debt workout mechanism, ideally aligned with UN processes for sovereign debt.
- Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) for the Global South must be rechannelled to support historical climate and development balances.
In conclusion: to reimagine the IMF and World Bank, economic justice must be central. Debt justice is climate justice, and sovereignty is intrinsic to our feminist and bodily rights. The future of multilateralism must be decolonial, reparative, and globally solidaristic.
Questions and answers
Representative from Tax Justice Network Africa: Are there further opportunities outside the FfD process to push for broader reforms? While we can discuss specific issues like quotas, there may be a need for a systemic overhaul or rethinking of how these institutions operate.
Representative from CAFOD: It’s striking that we’re still discussing austerity, conditionality, and structural adjustment programmes decades later. Evidence is overwhelming that neoliberal policy packages have often harmed growth and development. Even the IMF’s own research, including Neoliberalism Oversold, recognises this. I’d be very interested to hear both civil society and IMF perspectives on why we haven’t seen more change and what the blockers have been.
Representative from Movement for Community-led Development: There is also an April follow-up to the FfD process. Is there an avenue to push for change in April, or, given the way these processes work, is it unlikely that anything will happen?
Robert: On recommendations, and in response to the question from CAFOD: I’m not entirely sure what the Washington Consensus or even “neoliberalism” means anymore. What I do know is that country ownership is crucial – something we’ve learned over the past 30 years. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Tough decisions really must be left to the countries themselves. Outsiders – whether IMF, World Bank, or donors – can present options and provide resources, but the final decisions must be made by the country, because they understand the political and social realities on the ground. It isn’t always about privatisation; the goal is to prevent budgetary problems. Publicly owned enterprises can work effectively if well-governed – there’s no dogma that policies must follow a strict template.
I also think it’s important for the IMF to provide neutral, high-quality policy advice, grounded in strong analytics, while avoiding, as much as possible, being drawn into politics – though, of course, that can be inevitable. A strength of the IMF is its independent economic analysis, which is highly valued by ministers, often in very difficult situations. Rarely do we hear complaints that the IMF is obstructing country priorities.
Finally, better coordination between New York and Washington is key. Foreign ministries and finance ministries often have different perspectives and can send mixed signals to CSOs. For example, finance ministries may focus on debt management and interest rates, while foreign ministries emphasise broader political positions. To improve coherence, we try to bring ambassadors to Washington to discuss issues, then engage executive directors in New York for the FfD forum. This helps ensure that multilateral institutions work together effectively on the ground, even in an imperfect world.
Shereen: One of the strongest outcomes from Sevilla was how the FfD civil society mechanism brought people together globally with concrete asks and projects – that was very powerful. So yes, maybe there is an opening; we need to keep hope alive.
From a feminist political economy perspective, legitimacy means redistribution of power. You cannot have legitimacy without shifting power between creditors and borrowers. Second, align microeconomic policies with human rights and care. Sevilla emphasised rights-based economics over austerity, yet countries are still punished with surcharges. Third, coherence across global processes is vital. The UN Tax Convention, G20, and COP30 all discuss finance, but without alignment. The IMF should help bridge these spaces, not compete with them. Climate finance, for example via the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, must be grant-based, not debt-based. Debt sustainability frameworks should integrate climate vulnerability and gender equality indicators. Fourth, true reform requires independent, UN-led debt work-out mechanisms with transparent, rights-based rules. IMF credibility grows by supporting such processes. Across MENA, communities are already filling gaps – women-led energy cooperatives in Morocco, social solidarity networks in Lebanon – but the multilateral system is failing them. We must act now to save the system, not continue business as usual.
Katie: On opportunities, there are two options. One is to lean into FfD or the April follow-up forum as the solution – but that risks disappointment. The other is fatalism – believing the system is broken and nothing can be done. I think the real option is to recognise that the system was never fit for purpose. Until we address power dynamics within institutions, governments, and civil society, meaningful change is impossible
Representative Coalition Article 109: Our coalition is pushing for UN Charter reform through Article 109, which originally required a review ten years after 1945 — a reform that never happened. The institutions we rely on were built for a world that no longer exists. Reforming the IMF or Security Council alone isn’t enough; we need to update the Charter itself to reflect today’s realities and power dynamics.
Representative Politico Canada: I’m surprised of IMF representative’s responses to this panel – I thought there was broad consensus that the multilateral system – in both New York and Washington – is broken. Just look at the recent UN General Assembly: almost every leader called for reform, the same goes for the Bretton Woods institutions. The post-war order of 1945 no longer reflects today’s world. On conditionalities – they’re not just advice. Having worked across 20 countries in the Global South, I’ve seen how these are effectively imposed. Governments often lack the legitimacy or agency to refuse IMF conditions, as local elites accept them to serve their own interests, disconnected from civil society or marginalised communities. We need more discussions like this – not to ask whether reform is needed, but how we can move forward to make it happen.
Mahinour: As we close, I’d invite the panel to reflect on a few points: where do politics end and policies begin? Has neoliberalism really disappeared, or simply been rebranded through concepts like de-risking or financialisation instead of privatisation and PPPs? Also, does the IMF still carry political weight as a “seal of approval” that shapes countries’ access to finance and markets? What happens when its recommendations aren’t followed? I encourage everyone to review the concrete reform proposals from the FfD CSO mechanism and consider how they align – or contrast – with the IMF and World Bank’s own visions for reform.
Robert: The question was what has changed – what’s now part of the mainstream “Washington Consensus”? First, ownership matters – there’s no one-size-fits-all approach anymore. Climate is recognised as macro-critical, integrated into debt sustainability analyses and core IMF work. Gender matters too: increasing women’s labour force participation supports growth, alongside its social justice value. Inequality is now central – inclusive growth matters because programmes don’t work if they fuel unrest. And collaboration across institutions has become essential. So, today’s consensus isn’t just about inflation or liberalisation; it’s far more nuanced, with social spending and inequality protection at its core.
Shereen: We must remember that our current crises stem from historical colonial extraction. The debt crisis many of us face is not solely our governments’ fault. The IMF’s legitimacy crisis exists because people live the consequences of its policies daily. Legitimacy cannot be rebuilt through PR or consultation – it demands structural change and a redistribution of power between North and South, creditors and borrowers, men and women.
