The World Bank and IMF have announced new facilities to support countries hit by public health disasters.
Emergencies
Finance
Analysis
The IMF’s debt restructuring dilemma
Burgeoning debt levels, and problems in Jordan and Philippines, indicate that debt crises are not behind us. While the IMF considers policy changes, an influential group of scholars has proposed a new Fund facility for handling sovereign debt restructuring.
Finance
Analysis
The IFIs in 2013: year in review
The Bretton Woods Project review of the most important developments at the World Bank and IMF in 2013.
Environment
News
Bank seeks business in Middle East unrest
Staff at the World Bank's political insurance arm greeted unrest in the Middle East and North Africa as a business opportunity, amid criticisms that IFI policies had fuelled the crises.
Environment
News
IFI-induced debt catastrophes?
Natural disasters in Haiti and Pakistan have heightened calls for larger debt cancellation, rather than new IMF loans, and for a rethink of the sovereign debt system.
Environment
News
IFC's new private insurance facility for disasters stirs concern
The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, launched in December a programme to facilitate insurance against natural disasters and weather-related risks in developing countries.
Environment
News
Debt aftershocks to shake Haiti's recovery?
An IMF loan to Haiti in response to the devastating earthquake in early January has been criticised for exacerbating the country's debt burden and endangering recovery.
Environment
News
Bank accused of neglecting poorest countries
The Bank is under fire for failing to focus on low-income countries in its lending, and concentrating instead on the demands of rich and middle-income countries.
Environment
Background
CSO Townhall meeting
Notes from the CSO townhall meeting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick
Accountability
Background
Safeguard policies and performance standards
Originally drafted as internal operational policies to guide staff, World Bank safeguard policies evolved after pressure from environmental and social groups in the 1980s and were first officially implemented in 1998. They aim to protect people and the environment from the adverse effects of Bank-financed operations and are based on international agreements, even if these protections are not explicitly provided for in the borrower country's national law.
Featured briefings
5 October 2023
World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings 2023
4 October 2023
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2023
4 October 2023
The IMF and World Bank talk good governance, but walk with state- capturers
From South Africa to Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the Bank and Fund have demonstrated they are not appropriate allies to address the scale of the crisis the world is facing, especially, given their record.