For the first time ever, a tribunal of the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) will hear human rights arguments.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Environment
News
Contract transparency missing as IFC expands oil investments in Africa
As the World Bank's private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), expands its role in the African oil and gas sector, civil society groups are insisting that it adopt a requirement for full contract transparency in all of the extractive industries projects that it finances.
Conditionality
News
IFIs and Zimbabwe
The allocation of special drawing rights to Zimbabwe have stirred controversy about whether the country should use these to bolster its flagging public finances, while the fragile coalition government struggles with an external debt burden projected by the IMF to hit almost $7 billion by the end of the year.
Rights
News
Inspection Panel raps World Bank in Ghana
A complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel by the NGO, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), on behalf of the Agyemankata community has resulted in a report confirming violations of Bank policies on forced evictions and environmental hazards related to a planned landfill near Accra, Ghana.
IFI governance
News
African leaders call for greater say in IFIs
At the close of March's IMF-Africa conference, South Africa's finance minister Trevor Manuel insisted that a clear message be sent to G20 leaders about the effect the financial crisis will have on African economies.
Environment
Commentary
Ghana's off-shore nightmare
The IFC ignored due process requirements mandated by the laws of Ghana in the case of the Jubilee oil field project and should not have considered the loan applications at the board. In so dong the IFC is encouraging the infringement of the basic rules of governance and transparency.
Accountability
News
Ghanaians calls for expulsion of Bank rep
In January, Ghana Web, a daily news and resource site, issued a sharp attack on the World Bank and its country representative in Ghana demanding that the president expel the World Bank country director in Ghana from his post.
Environment
News
Poznan and beyond
Recent UN global climate negotiations in Poland highlighted ongoing tension over whether funds will be channelled through the United Nations or the World Bank and once again shone a light on the role of the Bank as a major investor in carbon intensive projects.
Finance
Analysis
Africa and the making of adjustment
Development economist and professor of African studies Howard Stein examines the evolution of policy in the Bank, focusing on how economists became hegemonic. In this essay he details the origin of structural adjustment, tracing its roots back to a set of neoliberal economists who gained influence at the Bank in the late 1970s.
Conditionality
News
The IMF, fiscal space and development programmes
IMF programmes for low-income countries continue to restrict governments' choices of how to fund development and how to manage the trade-offs.
Rights
News
Bank paying workers poverty wages
Union Network International (UNI) is fighting the World Bank to ensure that their security workers are paid just wages.
Accountability
News
IFI inspection mechanisms slam Bank faults in Uganda and Nigeria
The Bujagali dam project in Uganda and the West Africa Gas Pipeline project in Nigeria have been roundly criticised by the World Bank's Inspection Panel.
