New evidence of worsening gender performance and persistent conditionality has led critics to ask if the Bank is fit for purpose.
Education
Conditionality
News
Jamaica: IMF halts school construction
Newspaper Jamaica Gleaner reported in early September that the country’s IMF programme has slowed the building of new schools.
Social services
Commentary
Shakira gets the wrong man?
Colombian pop sensation ‘she wolf’ Shakira ended up in a February press conference with a World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, to launch her charity’s joint initative with the Bank on early childhood development in Latin America.
Accountability
News
Education strategy review: has the Bank learned its lessons?
The World Bank launched a review of its education strategy in January with a concept note setting out key challenges and principles for a sector where its activities have come under sustained criticism.
Finance
Analysis
Funding the World Bank - The sixteenth IDA replenishment: Major reform must be the price of UK suppo
Joint paper by ten UK development NGOs calling for the government to use IDA's 16th replenishment to push the World Bank to make significant reforms, without which the UK should not increase its cash allocation and instead consider alternative channels for aid.
Accountability
Background
Meeting between UK civil society and Susanna Moorehead, UK Executive Director to the World Bank
Minutes of a meeting between UK civil society, UK World Bank Executive Director Susanna Moorehead, and DFID staff
IFI governance
News
World Bank health work flawed
A recent evaluation of the World Bank's work in health is damning in its criticism of the lender's approach, particularly in Africa. Meanwhile, the Bank is continuing to push privatisation in public services such as health, education and water despite fierce criticism.
Finance
News
Not much on offer for poor countries to counter the crisis
The world's poor are being hard hit by a crisis for which they are not responsible. Low-income countries will face a financing gap of hundreds of billions of dollars this year. More than $2 trillion have been found to boost Northern economies and emerging markets. Yet richer countries have committed just over one twentieth of the additional development finance required to compensate low-income countries for the shock they face resulting from this crisis.
Environment
Background
Highlights of BWI-UK network meeting with Caroline Sergeant, 7 February 2008
Highlights of NGO meeting with alternative executive director to the World Bank, Caroline Sergeant
Accountability
News
Public campaigns to reform IDA
In Europe, Asia and the United States, civil society has campaigned for reform of the World Bank through the replenishment process of the International Development Association.
Featured briefings
3 July 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2024
3 July 2024
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.
3 June 2024
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.