Recent involvement in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq has put the World Bank and the IMF work post-conflict in the spotlight, with serious implications for their mandates and work methods.
Analysis
Knowledge
Analysis
Leading a horse to water: Is there a role for the IMF in poverty reduction?
Many observers were sceptical when a few years ago the IMF embarked on a mission to respond to the "cries of the poor", in the words of its then head Michel Camdessus
Rights
Analysis
World Bank social and environmental policies: abandoning responsibility?
The World Bank is planning a controversial major overhaul of its ten social and environmental policies.
Trade
Analysis
Harmonisation and coherence: White knights or Trojan horses?
In recent months, the World Bank has been leading the charge to increase the harmonisation of donor policies and further coherence between the Bank, the IMF and the WTO.
IFI governance
Analysis
G-7, civil society press for IMF, World Bank transparency reforms
The World Bank and the IMF have responded to complaints about their lack of transparency by issuing mountains of documentation and offering innumerable meetings and consultations. But critics are still not satisfied, pointing to the difficulty for people to find and interpret many of the documents produced, and to the opacity of the institutions’ key decision-making bodies.
Conditionality
Analysis
Comments on ‘IMF Staff Note on Macroeconomic Programming for Poverty Reduction’
Civil society commentary on the 'IMF Staff Note on Macroeconomic Programming for Poverty Reduction'
Conditionality
Analysis
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs): A Rough Guide
The aim of this short briefing is to provide information to a non-specialist audience on some key aspects of PRSPs.
Rights
Analysis
The World Bank, the IMF and “results”: increasing dominance in development policy lending
The World Bank and IMF are making an audacious grab to consolidate their roles as judge and jury of countries’ policies with a plan to conduct “regular reporting on the implementation of the policies and actions for achieving the MDGs and related development outcomes”.
IFI governance
Analysis
Window of opportunity on IFI governance
Discussion of the key issues to be raised when the Development Committee discusses reforms to the governance structure of the IFIs at the Spring Meetings this April.
Conditionality
Analysis
Indispensable or unworkable? The IMF’s new approach to conditionality
The IMF says that streamlining will make conditionality more efficient, effective and focused. Careful scrutiny suggests there is still plenty to question in the new approach.
Environment
Analysis
Blinding with Science or Encouraging Debate?
Blinding with Science or Encouraging Debate?
Knowledge
Analysis
Cornering the Market: The World Bank and trade capacity building
The Bank’s role in trade capacity building affords enormous influence over the hearts and minds of trade policy makers and the way in which trade is mainstreamed into national development plans. The initial experience of the Integrated Framework programme shows that there is reason for concern. (September 2002)
Featured briefings
6 April 2023
World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings 2023
5 April 2023
The IMF at the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The need for governance reform
As the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time the IMF’s shareholders use the opportunities provided by the anniversary and growing calls for reforms to the international financial architecture to redesign the IMF’s governance structures and programmes to ensure they are consistent with the commitments outlined in 1948 and with international human rights law.
5 April 2023
The global financial architecture and the international debt crisis: An urgent call for reform
Influence of unreformed international financial institutions and creditor interests in debt solutions in low- and middle-income countries plagued by delay and ineffective when undertaken.