NGOs continue to find that the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private sector arm, is off track in reducing poverty and promoting development, with concerns that the IFC development goals to be implemented in July will not help the poorest.
Health
Conditionality
Background
A Global Shared Societies Agenda
Minutes meeting for A Global Shared Societies Agenda
Social services
News
World Bank failing on reproductive health?
In an article for UK newspaper The Guardian, Elizabeth Arend of international NGO Gender Action questioned the World Bank's status as a "global leader" in reproductive health.
Social services
News
World Bank-funded "toxic dumping ground"
Ugandan newspaper New Vision called attention to the "horrific sanitation conditions" of a Bank-funded waterway in Uganda in November 2011
Social services
News
World Bank loans linked to child mortality
A June 2011 academic paper that analysed health outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa found that "when a country is under a World Bank structural adjustment loan it tends to have higher levels of child mortality".
Social services
News
IMF's focus on austerity proved "wrong, wrong, wrong", say critics
While Christine Lagarde and staff at the Fund begin to acknowledge that too much austerity is risking jobs and growth and civil society groups call for an end to IFIs policy conditions, IMF programmes continue to promote fiscal retrenchment.
Accountability
Background
Notes of meeting between UK Executive Director to World Bank and Civil Society Groups
Civil society organisations met UK Executive Director to the World Bank and staff from the Department for International Development to discuss water, the Bank's private sector approach, health and nutrition, safeguards review and energy strategy.
Finance
News
UK announces priorities for World Bank
In August the UK released its priorities for reform of the World Bank.
Accountability
News
IEG annual report slates World Bank's education work
The Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) released its annual report at end August, again finding shortfalls and uneven results across the World Bank Group. While the Bank's leadership has steered the institution towards more private sector work, outcomes in the education sector and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have dropped substantially.
Finance
News
World Bank admits failures in East Timor
In April the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the Bank's arms-length evaluation body, released a critical report assessing Bank operations in East Timor from 2000 to 2010.
Featured briefings
9 June 2025
New data reveal World Bank DPF ‘climate finance’ carries strong private sector bias, undermining a just transition
New BWP briefing finds the World Bank counted 70 per cent of energy-sector reforms in Development Policy Financing as having 'climate co-benefits' between 2018-2023 - but most of these promoted a private-led energy transition.
15 April 2025
The Bretton Woods Observer: Spring 2025
2 April 2025