The Bretton Woods Project is about to publish a report examining the role of the World Bank and IMF in promoting private investment in developing countries, and the true costs and benefits of international financial flows.
Debt
Finance
News
Oxfam report on poverty targets
Missing the Target reviews progress towards the international development targets for 2015, highlighting the danger that none of the targets will be met.
Finance
News
New book on debt origins and impacts
Brazilian activist Marcos Arruda exposes the problems with his government’s economic policies and the role of the IMF in a new book.
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”.
Finance
News
Bank Report Counters Globalization Critics
In April the World Bank launched a new briefing Assessing Globalization, examining the implications of international trade for poverty, inequality and the environment.
Finance
News
IMF “Lending Into Arrears” In Ecuador
The new IMF policy of “lending into arrears”, that is lending to countries in financial crisis with debts owing to the private sector, has been applied to Ecuador.
Finance
News
Millennium Lottery
A new report from Christian Aid, Millennium Lottery, Who Lives, Who Dies in an Age of Third World Debt, looks at how debt and structural adjustment hinders development through the lens of health in Africa.
Finance
News
Countries embark on PRSP process
Bolivia is the first country to have produced an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which has qualified it for the enhanced HIPC Initiative debt relief.
Finance
News
Ecuador crisis leads to indigenous peoples’ uprising
In January, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and other social movements led an uprising in protest at the worsening economic situation which resulted in the resignation of the president, Jamil Mahuad.
Rights
News
Jakarta activists call for local initiatives
NGO activists in Jakarta wrote an open letter to World Bank President James Wolfensohn in February, asking him to meet directly with the people to hear their own solutions to reverse Indonesia’s economic decline based on small-scale, local initiatives.
Featured briefings
27 September 2023
Financialisation and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa
This briefing explains how the IMF and World Bank have driven the financialisation of MENA states, and the pervasive negative effects this has had on the region’s societies and economies.
19 July 2023
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2023
3 July 2023
Civil Society calls for rethink of World Bank’s ‘evolution roadmap’ as part of wider reforms to highly unequal global financial architecture
Joint civil society briefing paper highlights concerns with the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap, and provides a series of recommendations for a Roadmap that prioritises people, participation and the planet over profit and economic growth.