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Recommended Resources on the World Bank and the IMF 2023

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Recommended resourcesKnowledge

Pile of books from the Tibet Green Library. Credit: Bart Heird
Pile of books from the Tibet Green Library. Credit: Bart Heird

Reports

  • Private sector watch: Global synthesis report 2023
    CSO Partnership in Development Effectiveness, 1 December 2023
    This report interrogates the role of the private sector in development, and the risks posed to marginalised communities due to the increasing involvement of such actors in this arena.
  • Thread lightly: Why IFIs should put people and the environment at the centre of the transition mineral supply chain
    Recourse and Trend Asia, 27 November 2023
    This report explores the reality for mining and supply chains of transition minerals needed for renewable energy expansion in coming decades. It questions how International Finance Institutions (IFIs) can play a role in ensuring human rights and environmental justice are at the heart of the transition mineral supply chain, so that mineral rich communities and countries can benefit from their natural resources, and not be harmed.
  • The colonial roots of Global South deb
    Debt Justice, 27 November 2023
    This report exposes how current global south debt is both a colonial legacy, and a neo-colonial tool used by global north governments, institutions and corporations to plunder the wealth of, and extend their control over, global south countries and communities.
  • Counting on the International Monetary Fund: Aligning the IMF Quota System with Global Need
    Global Development Policy Center, 5 October 2023
    The report outlines concrete steps for IMF shareholders to ensure that the IMF remains a legitimate, quota-based anchor of the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN), the collection of global, regional and bilateral institutions designed to help provide short-term crisis finance.
  • Blowing Smoke: How coal finance is flowing through the IFC’s Paris Alignment loopholes
    Inclusive Development International, 4 October 2023
    This investigation reveals that despite promises to halt financing for coal development and align with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the World Bank continues to indirectly support a sector that experts say is one of the most significant contributors to carbon emissions and the devastation of the planet through climate change.
  • How are the IMF and the World Bank shaping climate policy? Lessons from Pakistan
    Recourse, 3 October 2023
    The report examines the limitations of WBG’s Climate Change Action Plan and the IMF’s Climate Change Strategy and assesses the negative impacts of climate-related interventions in Pakistan in the last decades.
  • Bandage on a Bullet Wound: IMF Social Spending Floors and the Covid-19 Pandemic
    Human Rights Watch, 23 September 2023
    This report analyses IMF loans approved from March 2020 until March 2023 to 38 countries, and finds that the vast majority are conditioned on austerity policies, which reduce government spending or increase regressive taxes in ways likely to harm rights. It also finds that recent IMF initiatives, announced at the beginning of the pandemic, to mitigate these impacts such as social spending floors are flawed and ineffective in addressing the harms caused by the policies.
  • Use of Special Drawing Rights: The cases of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay
    Latindadd, 5 September 2023
    This report identifies the use of Special Drawing Rights in three Latin American countries: Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay; with different mechanisms, benefits and lessons learned.
  • Radical Pathways Beyond GDP: Why and how we need to pursue feminist and decolonial alternatives urgently
    Oxfam, 3 August 2023
    There is growing consensus among policymakers, institutions and movements that GDP is not fit for purpose as the pre-eminent economic metric. Alternatives are urgently needed to facilitate the transition to a new economic model that supports a radically more equal, kinder, greener and feminist world in the present, while offering redress for historical damage and inequalities.
  • IMF Lending and the Road to Green Transition: One Step Forward, One Step Back
    Change Initiative, Environmental Governance Institute, Centre for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management (CECIC), the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI) and the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), 20 June 2023
    This report highlights the impact of recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs on the phase-out of fossil fuels and the likelihood of achieving green and just transitions in Bangladesh and Uganda.
  • Southern Debt Report: Characteristics and challenges
    Latindadd and Afrodad, 23 May 2023
    The report highlights the concerning levels of debt faced by countries in the Global South and warns of the adverse consequences for the most vulnerable individuals. The study, conducted in three regions of the South—Latin America, Africa, and Asia—analyses the debt composition, associated risks, and proposes global policies aimed at transforming the international financial architecture with fairness.
  • Sowing the seeds of poverty: How the World Bank harms poor farmers
    CAFOD, 26 April 2023
    This report shows how the World Bank is failing in its duty to tackle poverty by promoting a model of agricultural development that benefits large-scale agribusiness at the expense of some of the world’s poorest smallholder farmers.
  • War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land
    Oakland Institute, 21 February 2023
    This report exposes the financial interests and the dynamics at play leading to further concentration of land and finance.

Briefings & Policy Papers

Journal articles, books & blogs

  • The World Bank Needs a Remedy Framework to Deliver on Loss and Damage
    Aubrey Manahan, CIEL, 18 December 2023
    The blog urges the World Bank to live up to its mandate and align itself with international human rights law and the global shift toward accountability and remedy.
  • What’s not to like about the IDA Private Sector Window
    Center for Global Development, 9 November 2023
    This blog argues IDA21 negotiators should take a hard look at the PSW before considering more funding for it, because the window is distorted, opaque, and doesn’t let very much of anything through.
  • Love or labour? The invisible wheel that turns the world
    Joanita Najjuko and Crystal Simeoni, Interventions, lssue 3, 6 November 2023
    The authors argue for greater inclusion of the perspectives of women and girls as well as better recognition of their needs in macro-level economic decision-making. They demand feminist economic justice, show how unpaid care work is central to our economies and encourage resistance against the co-option of gender-based initiatives by neoliberalism.
  • The World Bank A Critical History
    Eric Toussaint, Ed. Pluto, July 2023
    Seven international case studies illustrate the impact of World Bank policy. The author also explores the political, economic and strategic motives of the US government with regard to the World Bank. The book concludes with a proposal for replacing the World Bank, IMF and WTO with new, multilateral and democratic institutions.
  • An unbelievable truth: The World Bank approves US nominated Ajay Banga as President of World Bank
    Recourse, 4 May 2023
    The statement reacts to Ajay Banga’s election as World Bank President and notes that with Banga at the helm of the institution what is more likely is a “business as usual” roadmap that focuses heavily on de-risking private capital, while failing to put governance reforms, energy access and a just energy transition at its core.
  • Financing the common good
    Marianna Mazzucato, Project Syndicate, 1 May 2023
    The United Nations has warned that “cascading and interlinked crises” are jeopardizing not just the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but “humanity’s very survival.” Mitigating the threat requires a radical reform of international finance, based on a market-shaping paradigm that advances the common good.
  • The return of austerity imperils global health
    Thomas Stubb, Alexandros Kentikelenis, Daniela Gabor, Jayati Ghosh and Martin McKee, BMJ Global Health, 20 February 2023
    This article examines the prospects of national health budgets increasing in such a context, drawing on new International Monetary Fund projections on public spending around the world.
  • The Urgent Need for IMF Reform: Illustrations from the Middle East and North Africa
    Shereen Talaat and Leila Oulhaj, 1 February 2023
    This blog questions the interventions of international financial institutions in the region over the past decades, particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
  • The World Bank needs to get serious about reform
    Jake Smith and Joe Thwaites, NRDC, 9 January 2023
    This blog argues that the World Bank needs to seriously up its game to help tackle the multiple crises the world is facing, with addressing climate change prime among them.

Open letters, statements and press releases

  • Ahead of COP28, civil society groups call for end to IMF surcharges so that heavily indebted countries can better respond to climate crisis
    CEPR, 28 November 2023
    Ahead of COP28, various civil society groups urged the International Monetary Fund to end its policy of levying billions of dollars in unnecessary and counterproductive surcharges so that heavily indebted countries will have more funds available to respond to the climate crisis.
  • Evidence submission for the World Bank’s draft Gender Strategy (2024-2030) consultation
    Publish What You Found, 26 November 2023
    The submission draw attention to some of the key ways the World Bank must address gaps in disclosure of project and financial information related to its gender investments.
  • Civil society demands the World Bank Group to rethink the direction of its Evolution
    Reality of Aid, 20 October 2023
    CSOs sound the alarm on the continuing dominance of private sector-led development, lack of climate funding, lack of proper accountability and transparency mechanisms, and the downplaying of the need for a CSO enabling environment.
  • An urgent call for debt, climate and economic justice
    Global Action for Debt Cancellation, 8 October 2023
    The letter calls on the IMF and World Bank, all governments North and South, and private financial actors to act now to ensure urgently needed and real reform of the international financial architecture alongside undertaking systemic solutions that include building post-carbon societies and economies where financial, food and energy sovereignty are a reality.
  • Social Security for All: Key Pillar for New Eco-Social Contract
    Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors, 3 October 2023
    This joint statement urges the IMF and the World Bank, pivotal actors in financing and shaping social security policies in low- and middle-income countries, to take measures that could improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people such as committing to realizing the right to social security, and cease austerity measures.
  • A joint statement on the IMF’s Article IV report
    Arab Reform Initiative, 28 July 2023
    Regional civil society analyses IMF’s Article 4 on Lebanon and urges the IMF to: maintain vigilance to prevent the dilution of reforms and ensure the proper adoption and implementation of legislation; solidify the principles of equality and accountability as fundamental pillars in addressing the losses in the financial sector; and continue to broaden its consultations with civil society actors and other stakeholders, given the political resistance to reform within formal political institutions.
  • Marrakech Working Group first statement
    Marrakech Working Group, 25 June 2023
    More than 70 organizations from the MENA region and the world launch a statement today calling the IMF and the World Bank to cancel the debt and End austerity policies. This statement is issued by the Marrakech Working Group, composed of individuals and organizations from the MENA region.
  • Statement: Concerns on the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact and its governance and policy implications
    Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, 19 June 2023
    The statement expresses the Mechanism deep concerns on the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact and its governance and policy implications, nothing that this is another initiative of powers in the Global North to strengthen their undemocratic governance and political hegemony by usurping roles and functions of legitimate intergovernmental institutions.
  • Global North leaders must redirect trillions from fossils, debt, and the 1% to address global crises
    Oil Change international, 19 June 2023
    This letter from 150+ economists and policy experts calls on Global North leaders to put real global financial system transformation on the agenda at the June 22-23 Paris “Summit for a New Financing Pact” — starting by redirecting funds from three parts of our economies that are driving climate change and inequality: fossil fuels, unfair colonial debts, and the super rich.
  • We reject the IMF & World Bank Meeting on our continent
    Africa Liberation Day 2023 Statement, 24 May 2023
    The statement demands that African leaders wake up at last to their responsibility of leadership, articulate our interests and promote and implement the myriad African counter proposals to IMF and World Bank policies.
  • IMF/World Bank spring meetings: Bold action for sustainable recovery needed
    ITUC, 6 April 2023
    In a statement to the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the ITUC and its Global Unions partners are calling for the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to overhaul the multilateral system and take bold action to ensure a new social contract for a sustainable recovery.
  • World Bank still “fuelling the fire” of climate chaos, campaigners say
    Recourse, 20 March 2023
    Climate and human rights campaigners condemn the World Bank’s plan for aligning its investments with the Paris Agreement, as “fuelling the fire” of climate chaos and failing to shift finance away from fossil fuels.
  • Civil society demands the end of the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ and calls for merit-based, open and transparent World Bank presidential selection process
    CSO letter, 7 March 2023
    CSOs and individuals write to demand that the World Bank use the opportunity of the resignation of President David Malpass to heed long-standing calls from global civil society and countries from the Global South and ensure the next World Bank president is selected in accordance with a merit-based, open and transparent process, underpinned by well-defined and publicly available selection criteria and civil society engagement with the candidates.

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