Emergencies

Social services

News

Palliative treatment? IFIs follow up on Ebola

The World Bank and IMF have announced new facilities to support countries hit by public health disasters.

31 March 2015

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.

3 December 2013

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.

8 January 2014 | Review

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.

7 April 2011

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.

30 September 2010

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.

12 February 2010

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.

12 February 2010

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.

20 November 2009

Environment

Background

CSO Townhall meeting

Notes from the CSO townhall meeting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick

8 October 2009 | Minutes

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.

22 September 2009 | Inside the institutions