This year, 85 per cent of the world’s population lives under austerity measures, while multinational enterprises and the wealthy have benefited from privileged tax structures and regressivity, allowing inequality to widen.
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Latin America & Caribbean
Environment
News
Resilience and Sustainability Trust’s first loans promote climate PPPs, raising concerns they may create fiscal risks
Initial financing for Costa Rica, Barbados, Rwanda, Bangladesh and Jamaica tied to efforts to ‘green’ PPP frameworks.
Private Sector
News
World Bank’s financial inclusion agenda blind to growing gendered over-indebtedness
The World Bank’s financial inclusion agenda in time of cost-of-living crisis, austerity and financialisation promotes indebtedness of the poor, especially women.
Environment
Commentary
Bridgetown Initiative calls for new Global Climate Mitigation Trust financed via Special Drawing Rights
IMF’s lending instruments fail to provide swift and large-scale funding for climate transition. The Bridgeton Initiative proposes a new trust backed by $500 billion in SDRs for climate and development.
Gender
Analysis
New IMF gender strategy's potential to catalyse change undermined by austerity and problematic mission creep
IMF’s new gender mainstreaming strategy makes effort to include civil society demands but falls short of transformative vision as austerity remains Fund’s raison-d’état.
Rights
News
A new SDR allocation: Combatting deepening fragility concerns
The links between high debt burdens, lack of climate finance, austerity and the rise in political instability and fragility, conflict and violence remain largely neglected as IMF shareholders consider calls for a new SDR allocation, as proposed by the Bridgetown Agenda.
IFI governance
Analysis
V20 communiqué analysis Annual Meetings 2022: Climate vulnerable countries call for debt relief and a revamped IMF
The finance ministers for the Vulnerable Group of Twenty, a bloc of 58 developing country economies representing some 1.5 billion people, issued a communiqué on 16 October.
IFI governance
Analysis
Spring Meetings 2022 Wrap-Up: Progress on key issues side-tracked by Ukraine invasion and BWIs’ own sense of drift
Spring Meetings conclude with frantic calls for stronger multilateralism, but few advances in key issues such as Covid-19 unequal recovery, debt, inequality and climate crises, while Russia participation prevents G20, G24 and Development Committee from releasing a communique.
Other news
IFI governance
Background
Voices of the Global South: Taxation and polycrisis
Notes from Civil Society Policy Forum event on April 14 2023 titled "Voices of the Global South: Taxation and polycrisis"
IFI governance
Background
Implications of financial deepening for inequality and its impact on gender, poverty, and marginalization
Notes from a Civil Society Policy Forum panel on 14 October 2022 titled "Implications of financial deepening for inequality and its impact on gender, poverty, and marginalization."
Finance
News
IMF continues to disregard UN Human Rights Commission concerns about its surcharge policy
IMF managing director continues to refuse to answer letter from UN Human Rights Council concerning the negative impact of IMF surcharges as world celebrates 75th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Finance
News
A different ‘evolution roadmap’: Havana conference calls for changes in world order hierarchy
As IMF and World Bank tinker at margins, 50 policymakers, diplomats and academics from over 26 countries issue Havana Declaration calling for an assertion of Southern power and the building of a new "planetary bloc".
IFI governance
Background
Greening whole economies? Unpacking World Bank plans for Paris alignment by July 2023
Notes from a Civil Society Policy Forum event on 14 October titled "Greening whole economies? Unpacking World Bank plans for Paris alignment by July 2023."
IFI governance
Background
Winds of change: the future of tax reforms in Latin America
Notes from a Civil Society Policy Forum panel on 13 October 2022 titled "Winds of change: the future of tax reforms in Latin America."
IFI governance
Background
Green and just? Climate in IMF surveillance & lending – evidence from Pakistan, Argentina, South Africa, Indonesia
Notes from a Civil Society Policy Forum on 11 October titled, "Green and just? Climate in IMF surveillance & lending – evidence from Pakistan, Argentina, South Africa, Indonesia."
Land
News
IFC approves loan to industrial agriculture producer in Brazil despite pleas for protection of sensitive grassland biome
World Bank’s IFC $200 loan for large-scale agricultural production in Brazil disregards serious human rights and environmental concerns, despite calls by 200 civil society organisations globally
