Follow us on Twitter
Let's be friends
The World Bank
The Head Office of the World Bank in Washington
Image © Creative Commons 2.0 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dodo
The World Bank is the single largest multilateral development bank in the world and amongst the most powerful international organisations. The official main goal of the World Bank is to reduce global poverty.
The World Bank incorporates the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).
Criticism of the World Bank
The World Bank has faced heavy criticism recently from all sides, not just for failing to reduce global poverty but for actually increasing it by imposing harmful economic conditions. It has also faced critcism for environmental devastation, contributing to conflict and for failing to respect the rights of local people.
- For more information on the World Bank and critical perspectives on it, see the Bretton Woods Project website.
The World Bank Campaign Europe
People & Planet are part of a European coalition of more than 70 non-governmental organisations, who are scaling up their challenges to the World Bank. These organisations have fundamental concerns about the way the Bank operates.
The organisations backing the campaign are calling for European governments to press the Bank to accept specific reforms or to channel their funding elsewhere. The reforms are in the areas of economic policy reform and fossil fuel lending.
The European World Bank Campaign called a hearing in October 2007 to hear testimonies from around the world on how the World Bank’s current methods are not acheiving the goal of global poverty reduction and are in fact exacerbating the issue.
The outcome of the hearing will put governments under more pressure to set specific targets for how their taxpayers’ money should be spent and to establish regular audits of the World Bank’s performance. It will also feed into the debate about the current development model and the future of the organisation.
The hearing took place on Monday 15 October 2007. It was broadcast live over the internet and the video of this will be available online soon.
- Read the declaration from the hearing.
For futher information see the European World Bank Campaign website.
World vs Bank Public Hearing
