This Inside the Institutions examines the joint World Bank and IMF Debt Sustainability Framework (DSF) for low-income countries (LICs) and evaluates its impact on LICs’ ability to maintain fiscal space for development and climate goals.
International
Finance
News
Project 2025 takes on the World Bank and IMF – harbinger of an uncertain new era of geopolitics?
US conservative blueprint for second Trump term calls for US to withdraw from World Bank and IMF, amid continued geopolitical tensions and unresolved debt crisis in Global South.
Finance
News
High stakes for December’s IDA21 pledging meeting
The replenishment process for IDA21 concludes in early December, amid hopes of a record replenishment and concerns over the global debt crisis.
IFI governance
News
CSOs call for mandatory and meaningful consultation at the IMF
Civil society organisations call for consultation on the design of policies that significantly impact states and citizens.
Finance
News
IMF surcharges review: tinkering at the margins as crises deepen?
IMF’s surcharges review is resorting to incremental changes by reviewing the level and time base of penalty charges, instead of achieving meaningful reform
Gender
News
2024 Gender IFI Summer School
Gender IFI Summer School, brings together regional and global organisations working to advance economic justice issues, particularly from a feminist perspective, to discuss the IFIs’ impact on women’s rights and wellbeing, as well as strategies and tactics to push back.
Environment
Analysis
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.
IFI governance
News
The Bretton Woods Institutions at 80: Where do we go from here?
As the World Bank and IMF celebrate their 80th anniversary in 2024, on 10th July the Bretton Woods Project, together with the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, were joined by a distinguished group of panellists to critically analyse the opportunities for, and challenges to, reforms of the BWIs and the international financial architecture more broadly.
Finance
Analysis
IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund's toolbox
IMF board's lukewarm endorsement of SDR rechanneling through MDBs stands in stark contrast to continued calls from Global South governments for additional SDR allocations, amid growing debt crisis.
Accountability
Analysis
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.
Finance
Analysis
No false solutions: IMF surcharges must go
The IMF’s surcharges review presents a golden opportunity to eliminate these harmful and counterproductive fees.
Gender
Analysis
IMF’s Interim Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Gender fails to address negative gendered impacts of IMF austerity
Gender Guidance note offers non-mandatory advice to staff on mainstreaming gender but integration of existing in-depth critiques from feminists and civil society needed to tackle gender inequality is missing.
