23 January 2014
IFC accountability mechanism formally links World Bank client to human rights abuses on palm oil project in Honduras, and highlights systemic problems with IFC procedures.
The World Bank-funded conditional cash transfer programme in the Philippines fails to include people with disabilities, meaning they are missing out on vital support.
This briefing analyses the recently published IMF discussion note Women, work and the economy and draws some positive conclusions from its recommendations, whilst pointing to additional measures that the IMF can take to promote gender equity.
US legislature’s spending bill blocks IMF governance reform, insists the World Bank pay reparations to communities that suffer human rights abuses, and bans US support for large dams or extractive projects in tropical forests.
While India is pushing for the World Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility, the US voted against IFC support for a Saudi Arabian corporation linked to coal power and an Inspection Panel case was registered for a Nepal power transmission project. Concerns were also raised on infrastructure projects in India, Nepal and Burma.
A new study shows a significant worldwide pattern of protests targeting the IMF, reflecting the increase in IMF influence through loan programmes with austerity conditions attached and indirect pressure on governments.
Indigenous peoples have been evicted from their forests by a conservation project in Kenya funded by the World Bank. The Bank is currently drafting a new forests action plan.
As eurozone crisis countries, such as Ireland, complete their loan agreements with the IMF and European lenders, the IMF looks to amend rather than end its role in Europe. Meanwhile, a European parliamentary committee is examining the lending agreements and questioning their efficacy and lack of transparency.
The new World Bank Group strategy moves into the implementation stage with changes to country planning and internal structure, but critics say that little will change.
Since 2005 the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the Bank’s private sector arm) has used the Development Outcome Tracking System (DOTS) to track the development impact of all its investments and advisory work
The World Bank’s December 2013 claim of a record IDA replenishment was undermined by lumping donor loans in with grants and a decline in real terms, while India secured transitional support.
The Bretton Woods Project awards the most comical use of words by members of staff at the World Bank and IMF in 2013.
The best papers, books and electronic resources on the World Bank and IMF from 2013.
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.
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.
