Notes of a meeting between Rachel Turner of DFID and UK NGOs, April 2010
Health
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.
Social services
News
World Bank health insurance not delivering in Ghana
In a forthcoming paper, NGO Oxfam will criticise the national health insurance scheme in Ghana, which has received technical assistance from the World Bank, for failing to deliver equitable health care.
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
Social services
News
IMF economic policies under fire
While the political agenda at the IMF is shifting back to mandate and governance reform, there are growing calls that the Fund needs to fundamentally rethink the monetary and fiscal policies it recommends if the institution is to retain legitimacy and renew its mandate.
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.
Accountability
News
The DFID white paper and the World Bank: Missing the point?
The latest DFID white paper strengthens the UK's target setting for the World Bank, but fails to adequately tackle the crucial questions of governance, conditionality, human rights accountability, and climate finance. A recent Tory Party policy paper leaves it unclear whether they would do any better.
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.
Social services
News
World Bank under fire over support for private sector health care
The debate over the World Bank's support for private sector investment in health care provision in developing countries is in the limelight again. A new report by Oxfam asserts that while the private sector can play a role in health care, evidence shows that only scaling up of private sector provision of services is likely to deliver health benefits for poor people.
Featured briefings
1 October 2024
Year one of World Bank Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector: ‘green conditionality’ dwarfs green investments
New BWP research finds the Word Bank's approach to Paris alignment is being used to a significant extent to impose ‘green conditionalities' on borrowing countries, especially in the Global South.
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.