While South Sudan achieved formal independence in early July, it was not until late July that full agreement was reached that left South Sudan with no debt, apportioning all existing debts, including significant arrears to the IMF and World Bank, to Sudan alone.
As agricultural market continue to experience increasing volatility, and record food prices intensify global hunger and poverty, the World Bank's approach to the crisis, which emphasises the use of commodities markets and corporate agriculture, is found wanting by groups demanding food sovereignty and food security.
The Bank's energy projects in Kosovo and India are being lambasted by critics for threatening livelihoods and the environment.
Since the financial crisis, the IMF's rhetoric has tried to be nuanced about austerity policies and the need to stimulate growth, but critics says its actions risk pushing the world back into recession and hurting workers.
The sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, where Greece now needs a second round of loans, threatens major economies like Spain and Italy, but IMF-backed lending packages that demand deep austerity with insufficient attention to lenders' responsibilities anger the public.
A critical analysis of the World Bank's new strategy for Africa
The April IMF board approval of its budgets for the 2012 financial year (FY), and indicative budgets for FY2013-14, gave the first public insight into the amount the Fund plans to spend on refurbishing its offices.
In May, three IMF staffers published a working paper with National Bureau of Economic Research,, A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis, pointing out the role of lobbying by financial firms for lax regulation which directly led to the 2008 subprime crisis.
International donors including USAID and UK DFID have halted aid to Afghanistan following the IMF's suspension of funds in February.
The IMF is withholding part of a loan to Pakistan over its failure to raise consumption taxes or decrease spending, but IMF-led reforms fail to address the under-taxation of the country's wealthy elite. The IMF's official approach to tax policy advice, articulated in a March board paper, shows a new appreciation for the distributional effects of taxation, but policy has not translated into practice.
As revolutionary movements sweep the Arab world, the World Bank and the IMF have taken a lead in international economic engagement in the Middle East and North Africa region. But critics have warned of the dangers of locking transitional governments into long-term loans with economic conditionalities that may perpetuate the flawed development model that contributed to the crisis in the first place.
Major developing countries have rebuffed the IMF's proposed framework on capital controls, or 'code of conduct' as it has been renamed. The board paper discussed in March drew fire from Brazil and India for being too prescriptive and suggesting that controls should only be used temporarily and as a last resort, but the policy will go ahead despite the acrimony.
The sovereign debt crises threatening states in the Global South are less about fiscal mismanagement and more about monetary power in the global currency hierarchy.
