In April, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington DC to close down the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings.
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Social services
News
Police break up anti-IMF protests in Zambia
In April protesters outside a Lusaka hotel where IMF and Zambian officials were meeting were dispersed by armed riot police in Zambia.
Rights
News
Ministers Support Protesters
Leaders attending the G77 meeting of developing countries in Cuba in April, also lent their support to the protests in Washington against the IMF and World Bank.
Conditionality
News
Sri Lankan appeal on aid transparency
Sri Lankan NGOs wrote to their President in May urging him to open up the annual Aid Group meeting at the end of May.
Rights
News
Anti-IMF And Bank Protest Tear-Gassed
In Malawi in May, a peaceful official demonstration, led by the Congress of Trades Unions, against IMF and World Bank reform policies and calling for the government to consider peoples’ needs before conceding to donors’ demands was broken-up by police with tear gas.
Conditionality
News
IMF demands Cote d’Ivoire austerity
The IMF has told the transition government in Cote d’Ivoire that it should cut government spending after finding that spending was more than double the level agreed by the former president, who was overthrown in December 1999.
Finance
News
Brown’s Committee Is “Political Whitewash”
Bank and Fund staff have complained that the Joint IMF-World Bank Implementation Committee (JIC), which has been established to coordinate work on the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) program is just “political whitewash”.
Conditionality
News
New briefing papers
A new short briefing from the Bretton Woods Project, The A, B,C of the PRSP, drawing on discussions with IMF and Bank staff reveals the reality behind the rhetoric of the new IMF and World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
Environment
News
Imf Saps Hurt The Environment
A new report by Friends of the Earth-US, The IMF: Selling the Environment Short, highlights how the IMF’s growth-led development model and its approach to stabilisation are unsustainable and fail to consider the implications of ecological limits.
Finance
News
Drowning By Numbers - Executive Summary
While the cost of using bilateral contributions to finance multilateral debt reduction is relatively high, this would not be the case if genuinely additional resources could be generated
Conditionality
News
Imf Suspends Lending To Moldova
The IMF has suspended lending to Moldova because the parliament has refused to allow the state-run wine and tobacco industries to be privatized.
IFI governance
News
Stiglitz “Appalled” At IMF Policy
Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist, took the opportunity of the extensive media interest in the planned protests against the Bank and IMF at their Spring Meetings to launch an attack on IMF policy advice and practices.
Featured briefings
12 December 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2024
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
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.