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World Bank-IMF annual meetings 2008
11 10 2008 At this year's annual meetings, the focus will of course be on the financial crisis gripping the rich countries of the world. Questions remain as to whether important issues around the World Banks role in climate change and its even governance structure will get the attention they deserve.
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Annual Meetings 2008: Communiqués coverage
11 10 2008 Coverage of the communiqués from the G24, G7, IMFC and Development Committee at the 2008 Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF.
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European NGO statement on Bank governance reform
09 10 2008 European governments, who hold eight chairs and have over 30% of the vote at the Bank, have a special responsibility to push for reform. We, the undersigned organisations, call upon our European governments to back a progressive proposal for transformation of the World Bank that includes the key reforms below.
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Highlights: Meeting of UK NGOs with UK Alternate Executive Director to the World Bank
09 10 2008 Meeting between UK NGOs and UK Alternate Execituve Director to the World Bank Caroline Sergeant on 5 September 2008.
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World Bank-IMF annual meetings 2008
08 10 2008 At this year's annual meetings, the focus will of course be on the financial crisis gripping the rich countries of the world. Questions remain as to whether important issues around the World Banks role in climate change and its even governance structure will get the attention they deserve.
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Financial crisis: IMF chases its own tail
29 09 2008 As global finance dries up and economic markets crash, criticisms mount of the IMF and its inability to convince its largest members to curb speculation or better regulate the financial sector.
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Africa and the making of adjustment
29 09 2008 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.
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Who should control the Bank?
29 09 2008 Proposed reforms to the way the World Bank is governed tinker at the edges, promising only marginal improvements for developing countries; critics are stepping up the pressure for a fundamental rethink. The World Bank board will discuss a package of reforms to the way the Bank is governed at its annual meetings in October, hoping to agree a concrete set of actions by next spring. Despite calls from developing countries, civil society and others for root and branch change to address the Bank's g
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World Bank legitimising illegal Israeli occupation of West Bank
29 09 2008 The Bank's approach to development in Palestine hinges on the full acceptance of the status quo - e.g. continued occupation and the presence of the settlements and the wall - as well as joint projects that impose PNA-Israeli cooperation, often with a third international partner. Politically, these development projects threaten to legitimise Israeli claims in regards to the wall, Jerusalem, land annexation and settlements that have resulted in the fragmentation and ghettoisation of the West Bank
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World Bank new poverty estimates: more confusing than ever
29 09 2008 The World Bank finally published a new count of the extreme poor worldwide at end-August. As expected the new figures are fuelling the ongoing debate on poverty estimates.
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'No regrets': The World Bank and climate change
29 09 2008 The World Bank has just finished consultations on a new strategic framework for its climate change work, which has one common thread: a massively increased role for the Bank. Yet there is little reflection on the reasons why the Bank's record in this area is so poor, as detailed by a number of recent reports.
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Bank failing on environment: IEG finds lack of coherence
29 09 2008 In July the World Bank's internal watchdog, the independent evaluation group (IEG), released an assessment of the Bank's record on environment between1990-2007. Delicate wording aside, the evaluation finds that the Bank has performed poorly when it comes to a coherent integration of environmental goals into its country strategies and investment portfolios.
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'Climate bank' or 'fossil fuel bank'?
29 09 2008 Analysis of the investment figures from the most recent fiscal year once again cast doubt on whether the World Bank Group is willing to give up its addiction to fossil-fuel projects that spur climate change.
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Bank plays blocking game in Accra aid negotiations
29 09 2008 The Bank´s confused identity in the aid effectiveness negotiations in Accra in early September was revealed as it oscillated between player, referee and match organiser.
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World Bank and IMF get a dose of 'health' criticism
26 09 2008 While falling short of claiming that the World Bank and the IMF cause people to die, a massive study on the social determinants of health by the World Health Organisation and another on tuberculosis treatment in Eastern Europe each fault the IFIs for exacerbating inequality in access to health care.
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Voluntary transparency not enough in IFI extractive operations
26 09 2008 A recent NGO assessment of World Bank and IMF operations in over 55 resource-rich countries finds that the IFIs have lacked consistency in insuring transparency of the revenues generated from extractive industries.
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World Bank, NGOs clash at roundtable on odious debt
26 09 2008 A recent roundtable meeting shows that some progress has been made in official understanding of odious debt, but that the World Bank is remaining very cautious on the topic.
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The IMF, fiscal space and development programmes
26 09 2008 IMF programmes for low-income countries continue to restrict governments' choices of how to fund development and how to manage the trade-offs.
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The World Bank and water privatisation: public money down the drain
26 09 2008 Though the World Bank may be changing its formerly dogmatic approach to full privatisation of the water sector, key cases in Tanzania, Armenia, Zambia and India highlight that the Bank may not be learning quickly enough and that the poor may be left both without improved water and paying for botched privatisations.
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The World Bank and IMF response to the food crisis
26 09 2008 Although conditions attached to food and fuel crisis lending are somewhat lighter, the Bank and the Fund should turn the crisis into an opportunity to learn that finance can be granted without the usual strings attached.
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Inside the institutions: IFC advisory services
26 09 2008 The advisory services (AS) department of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, has grown rapidly since its establishment in 1986 and is seen by the IFC as one factor that distinguishes them from other financiers.
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Pipe dreams shattered in Georgia
26 09 2008 The World Bank and others have tried to convince the region's poor that oil pipelines in the Caucuses would bring economic prosperity and strengthen democracy in the region. However, this Caspian oil game is partly to blame for the increased poverty, conflict and misery that now plagues the thousands of citizens displaced in the August conflict in Georgia.
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The Bank of the South: the search for an alternative to IFIs
26 09 2008 Despite the political victory of transformative forces in South America, differences of opinion over the direction of the Bank of the South, a new regional development bank, may slow progress towards developing an autonomous alternative to the World Bank and IMF-dominated international financial architecture.
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IFI inspection mechanisms slam Bank faults in Uganda and Nigeria
26 09 2008 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.
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Evaluation asks what value the IFC adds
15 08 2008 An evaluation of the World Bank's private sector lending finds that amidst overall high development outcomes, poor environmental and social performance continues to plague projects in Africa. For the first time, the evaluators look at the sensitive question of 'additionality'.
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