Unconvincing World Bank Evolution Roadmap reforms and IMF’s struggle to mainstream climate and gender symptomatic of wider malaise.
Analysis
IFI governance
Analysis
New World Bank Corporate Scorecard: overlooking client priorities and ignoring development impact
The World Bank’s new Corporate Scorecard misses the forest for the trees as it lacks an indicator to measure the Bank’s contribution to economic transformation, a cornerstone of its development mandate.
Conditionality
Analysis
Kenya's growing youth movement for fiscal justice rejects IMF-mandated austerity
Youth-led led protests lead to withdrawal of controversial finance bill by President William Ruto.
Finance
Analysis
The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.
Finance
Analysis
Sustainable development requires sustainable finance: why local currency financing is part of the solution
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.
Gender
Analysis
World Bank fails to incorporate key elements of new Gender Strategy in IDA21 policy package and Corporate Scorecard
Despite Bank’s new Gender Strategy’s positive offerings on human rights and the value of public services to women and girls, IDA21 replenishment and new Corporate Scorecard see women only as economic opportunity for the private finance push.
Environment
Analysis
Year one of World Bank Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector: ‘green conditionality’ dwarfs green investments
New BWP research finds the Word Bank's approach to Paris alignment is being used to a significant extent to impose ‘green conditionalities' on borrowing countries, especially in the Global South.
Finance
Analysis
IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund's toolbox
IMF board's lukewarm endorsement of SDR rechanneling through MDBs stands in stark contrast to continued calls from Global South governments for additional SDR allocations, amid growing debt crisis.
Accountability
Analysis
Is the World Bank rolling back commitments to citizen engagement, again?
Understanding the Bank’s chequered history with public, community and civil society participation is key for understanding what is at stake and what to do next.
Finance
Analysis
No false solutions: IMF surcharges must go
The IMF’s surcharges review presents a golden opportunity to eliminate these harmful and counterproductive fees.
Gender
Analysis
IMF’s Interim Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Gender fails to address negative gendered impacts of IMF austerity
Gender Guidance note offers non-mandatory advice to staff on mainstreaming gender but integration of existing in-depth critiques from feminists and civil society needed to tackle gender inequality is missing.
IFI governance
Analysis
A way out for IMF reform
New paper analyses the IMF 16th Quota Review and identifies key governance reforms feasible in the current economic and geopolitical context.
Featured briefings
15 July 2025
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2025
15 July 2025
Will the World Bank be a partner for a just energy transition in developing countries?
As renewable energy finance shifts from China to the World Bank, whether the Bank can be a partner for a just energy transition depends on three areas: strong environmental and social oversight, avoiding a new resource curse in minerals and debt relief during crises.
9 June 2025
New data reveal World Bank DPF ‘climate finance’ carries strong private sector bias, undermining a just transition
New BWP briefing finds the World Bank counted 70 per cent of energy-sector reforms in Development Policy Financing as having 'climate co-benefits' between 2018-2023 - but most of these promoted a private-led energy transition.