Finance

News

The World Bank and IMF at sixty: plus ça change?

5 April 2004

Sixty years after their founding, the World Bank and IMF remain the dominant institutions in development but face determined opposition to their role in shaping globalisation.

Infrastructure

Commentary

The World Bank's high-risk hypocrisy

the World Bank is not serious about the social and environmental policies it trumpets at global conferences. Senior World Bank staff in its India office indicated that they neither know nor care about procedures that are supposed to make its infrastructure lending socially responsible. This represents institutional hypocrisy.

5 April 2004 | Guest comment

Rights

News

Congolese groups unite to demand scrutiny of forest policies

NGOs in the Democratic Republic of Congo have allied to challenge industrial logging in their country's rainforests. In February they appealed to the World Bank and other agencies to halt a plan which would make up to 60 million hectares of rainforest available to logging companies in the coming years.

5 April 2004

Background

BWP seeks new Coordinator

Alex Wilks is leaving his position as Coordinator of the Bretton Woods Project. In June…

5 April 2004 | Project news

Rights

News

World Bank pushes Malawi agriculture privatisation

World Bank manoeuvres to ensure parliamentary approval of a controversial agriculture privatisation policy demonstrates the continued influence of the Bank and the problems with Poverty and Social Impact Analysis.

5 April 2004

Conditionality

News

Parliaments: the missing link in democratising national policy making

Across sub-saharan Africa, good governance efforts depend on the strengthening of parliamentary democracy. In sharp contrast country relations with IFIs reveal weak parliamentary engagement.

5 April 2004

Knowledge

News

Challenges to World Bank report on MDG progress

The World Bank has produced a long new report on how countries and international institutions are performing in relation to the Millennium Development Goals. But the Bank faces severe conflicts of interest in producing such a report.

5 April 2004

IFI governance

News

IMF selection mess only a symptom

The political machinations laid bare by the selection process for the head of the IMF…

5 April 2004

Finance

News

Disengaging from the Fund: possible and worthwhile?

Some countries have clearly benefited from defying the Fund and as it is clearly often wrong it should have competitors, such as regional monetary funds, which can provide alternative advice and funding.

5 April 2004

Knowledge

News

PRSPs: a continuation of structural adjustment

Debate remains over the formulation and content of PRSPs. Many analysts suggest that they continue the trajectory of structural adjustment policies.

5 April 2004

Private Sector

News

Acres debarment: Litmus test for Bank on corruption

The Bank's sanctions committee has reopened the debarment case against Acres International, a Canadian firm whose conviction for bribing an official was upheld by the Lesotho appeals court last August.

5 April 2004

Rights

News

Pakistani hunger strikers seek reparations for damaging project

In March Pakistani activists observed a hunger strike in front of the World Bank offices in Islamabad. The strikers pointed out that Bank-backed projects have caused serious damage to their livelihoods and the coastal ecology and called for the loan to be suspended.

5 April 2004

Conditionality

Commentary

Life under the IMF’s magnifying glass:

The Fund takes to micro-management in Zambia to ensure compliance with belt tightening measures, threatening civil unrest.

5 April 2004 | Guest comment

Rights

Analysis

World Bank, IMF: Helping peace or creating conditions for war?

Recent involvement in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq has put World Bank and IMF post-conflict operations in the spotlight. While some believe multilateral finance is essential, others argue that the Bank and the Fund are acting primarily as pawns of powerful diplomatic and economic interests.

5 April 2004 | Briefings

Environment

News

Global warming speaks louder than words

The gap between the World Bank's pronouncements on the dangers of climate change and the reality of its lending practices presents an ever increasing danger for the global commons.

5 April 2004

Rights

News

World Bank faces lobbies on human rights, climate change

The World Bank has recently faced increasing pressure to adopt strong policies on human rights and climate change. NGOs have been joined by parliamentarians, nobel laureates for peace and a group of religious leaders in advocating for the Bank to adopt the recommendations of the Extractive Industries Review.

5 April 2004

Knowledge

News

IMF and poverty: strange bed fellows

The IMF's capacity and legitimacy to address poverty have been debated by many analysts within…

29 March 2004