Funding from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank for the controversial Bujagali dam in Uganda is imminent.
Safeguards
Gender
Commentary
Huge gaps in the World Bank's Gender Action Plan
The World Bank's new Gender Action Plan (GAP), aptly named Gender equality as smart economics, is tightly framed in the Bank's economic policy framework.
Environment
News
Congo: mining, conflict and complicity
A confidential World Bank memo dated September 2005 finds that three of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s biggest mining contracts were approved with “a complete lack of transparency”.
Accountability
Analysis
The IFCs lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project
In September 2006 the IFC published its first issue of a new publication entitled Lessons of Experience. However, the IFC's lessons drawn from the external compliance monitoring group in the Chad-Cameroon project read more like a tool to market the concept of external monitors to IFC clients than lessons meant to design a more effective role for the external monitor in improving implementation of social and environmental commitments.
Infrastructure
News
High-risk water infrastructure at any cost
After a decline in the late 90s, World Bank lending for water projects has been rapidly increasing over recent years, reaching $1.8 billion in FY05, and is set to continue.
Accountability
News
BTC: destruction, abuse and betrayal
In July, as the oil in the IFC-supported Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline finally began flowing a year behind schedule, civil society groups from affected countries and elsewhere presented evidence of destruction, abuse and betrayal.
Rights
News
The IFC at fifty: All that glitters is too much gold
As the International Finance Corporation (IFC) marks its golden anniversary, the institution claims to serve "as a catalyst for innovative, market-based solutions for reducing poverty and addressing environmental and social challenges". The reality fails to justify such a glittering perspective. Problem gold mine projects in Ghana, Peru and Kyrgyzstan and serious weaknesses in its recent human rights impact assessment programme undermine the future credibility of an institution that is increasin
Environment
News
Bank environmental commitment under fire
Details of the World Bank's current sustainability disasters in light of the dismantling of ESSD
Accountability
News
Justice or conditionality by another name?
In a statement at the first session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2006, the World Bank stated that the advancement of human rights is "critical" to its poverty reduction mission, including the "global fight against corruption and the promotion of good governance". It has been greeted with scepticism from civil society.
Environment
News
Sustainability dismantled
World Bank president Wolfowitz announces his move to disband the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) network within the Bank. It will be merged with the Bank's infrastructure department and report to the current head of the infrastructure department, Kathy Sierra.
Featured briefings
6 April 2022
The Bretton Woods Observer: Spring 2022
8 December 2021
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2021
8 November 2021
IMF surveillance and climate change transition risks
New briefing by ActionAid USA and the Bretton Woods Project highlights research showing that IMF policy advice has undermined a just energy transition since the Paris Agreement was signed.