Despite World Bank involvement, the Chad Cameroon petroleum project has confirmed that under authoritarian regimes there is a fundamental incompatibility between poverty alleviation objectives and oil exploitation activities.
Safeguards
Knowledge
News
WB poverty policy review
Since March, the Bank has posted a revision of its policy on poverty reduction. Bankwatchers are concerned by the language of the policy which they say represents a significant step backwards from the World Development Report 2000 on poverty.
Rights
News
IEO on prolonged use, crises and PRSP
The process of following up on recommendations made by the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) in their first report on “prolonged use” of IMF resources has been completed.
IFI governance
News
Indigenous policy implementation weak
An official assessment of the Bank’s compliance with its indigenous peoples operational directive confirms criticisms by indigenous peoples’ organisations that the Bank's record is deficient.
Rights
News
Bankspeak of the Year 2002 award
Terminology would be simplified accordingly by discontinuing the use of special names and acronyms for sectoral adjustment loans (SECALs), structural adjustment loans (SALs), rehabilitation loans (RILs), and programmatic structural adjustment loans/credits (PSALs/PSACs).
Environment
News
Update on key World Bank policies
The World Bank is in the process of “reformatting” a wide range of its key safeguard policies.
Environment
News
Forest Policy "fails to address deforestation"
NGOs working on forest issues have charged that the Bank's revised draft Forest Strategy ignores advice given by both civil society and the Bank’s own Technical Advisory Group.
Rights
News
NGOs criticise the Bank’s water strategy
The Bank’s draft Water Resources Sector Strategy has been faulted by critics for distorting the findings of the World Commission on Dams, continuing to support high-cost megaprojects and emphasizing privatisation.
Conditionality
Background
The Ugandan PRSP Experience
Meeting with Rick Rowden, RESULTS, 31 May 2002
Rights
News
SAPRIN findings overwhelming, but Wolfensohn tells NGOs to “change their tune”
Authors of the recently released Structural Adjustment Policy Review Initiative Network report find that SAPs have contributed to the further empoverishment and marginalization of local populations and increased economic inequality. Bank president James Wolfensohn responds that he wishes critics would focus on where the Bank is going and not where it has been.
Featured briefings
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.
16 October 2024
Sustainable development requires sustainable finance: why local currency financing is part of the solution
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.