This briefing finds significant bias in favour of corporations and commercial interests in the main venue for settlement of legal cases brought by corporations against governments: the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Trade-finance coherence
Land
News
CAO investigation: IFC-linked rubber firm project paused
An IFC-linked Vietnamese rubber plantation company agreed to temporarily suspend activities in three Cambodian plantations, but activists urged the company to cease its activities in all communities.
Trade
News
ICSID problems in the spotlight
Civil society challenges ICSID role in El Salvador mining dispute as international lawyer accuses the arbitration forum of being “seriously flawed”
Trade
Background
The future of Doing Business
Sponsors: EURODAD, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), International Working Group on Trade-Finance Linkages Panelists: Natalia Speer…
Rights
Background
Smart assessment: Capturing and managing human rights risks
Sponsor: Bank on Human Rights Panelists: Isabel Lavadenz-Paccieri (Former Ombudsperson for the Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism,…
Private Sector
News
A bad business: Bank divisions on Doing Business revealed
Newly emerged internal documents from the World Banks’ own legal unit reveal strong criticism of the controversial Doing Business rankings following the independent review panel’s critical final report in June.
Trade
News
World Bank to publish procurement contracts
The World Bank has revealed the detail of its 2012 promise to publish contracts online, following on from its procurement review.
Infrastructure
Background
Colombia case study: results measurement and poverty eradication
This session examined Colombia's private sector partnerships and poverty eradication programme.
IFI governance
Background
From the Arab revolutions to global austerity trends
This session examined issues thrown up by the Arab revolutions, including the fiscal, monetary, tax and investment policies being considered by governments facilitating, or hindering countries in the Arab and other regions in building an inclusive economy and supporting socioeconomic recovery, the impact on public expenditure for the strengthening of education, health, and other social sectors as well as the management of chronic and high unemployment and high food and fuel prices.
Social services
Background
Leveraging private finance with public money: Positive Innovation? Corporate Welfare?
This event explored how modalities to "leverage" the private sector are beginning to appear in different ways in the World Bank and donors' agenda, and the challenges they pose.
Featured briefings
15 August 2019
The World Bank and gender equality: Development Policy Financing
New BWP briefing offers critical gender analysis of World Bank lending instrument to borrowing countries.
30 July 2019
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2019
30 July 2019
The Bretton Woods Institutions and the second crisis of multilateralism
At 75, the World Bank and IMF face a crisis of multilateralism in no small part of their own making as failed economic policies have resulted in skepticism of the international order they helped to create.