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World Bank Knew Agriculture Loans to Uzbekistan Support Forced Labor

19 September 2016 - by Sputnik News

World Bank has been aiding and abetting the Uzbek government’s gross human-rights abuses, which violates international law on responsibility of international organizations for financial complicity in international crimes, according to the report (...)
BRICS banking and the debate over sub-imperialism

15 September 2016 - by Patrick Bond

ABSTRACT: Notionally funded at $100 billion each, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) and New Development Bank (NDB) represent ‘sub-imperial’ finance, insofar as by all indications they fit into – instead of providing alternatives to – (...)
UNCTAD14: A mirage of distorting mirrors

12 September 2016 - by Yash Tandon

People not versed in the complexities of the diplomatic world of distorted mirror images in Geneva or Accra or Nairobi may wonder in awe at the agreements negotiated in their name by their representatives in multilateral forums like UNCTAD. But, (...)
“The New Green Revolution”

5 September 2016 - by Rémi Vilain

“Addressing extreme poverty and hunger around the world.” These are two goals that have not ceased to appear on “good-practicing and well-intentioned” international institutions’ agendas for several decades. If these objectives are really on the (...)
Hoping ’something will turn up’

13 June 2016 - by Joseph Hanlon

Mozambique, long touted as an African “success story”, is sinking under debt. International lenders and donors have been angered by revelations of at least $2.3 billion in secret loans taken in 2013-4. Inflation is rising and so is the cost of (...)
Imperialism’s Junior Partners

27 May 2016 - by Patrick Bond

The response to the Brazilian coup shows that the BRICS powers are not a real alternative to US imperialism. On May 12, Brazil’s democratic government, led by the Workers’ Party (PT), was the victim of a coup. What will the other BRICS countries (...)
With Support from the US Treasury, World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia

11 May 2016 - by Oakland Institute

Oakland, CA – Moral Bankruptcy : World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia, a new report released today by the Oakland Institute, exposes the shameful reinvention of one of the Bank’s most problematic programs in Ethiopia. The report (...)
Why won’t the Bretton Woods institutions take crisis risks seriously?

27 April 2016 - by Eurodad

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank spring meetings have faded in significance since the G20 became the main forum for discussion between major economic powers. As happened last year, little was agreed when the governors of the (...)
How much is inequality increased by regressive taxation and government spending? (We don’t know, but let’s please ask.)

19 April 2016 - by Patrick Bond

‘You have to look at both the taxing and the spending sides of government policy – and, on that basis, South Africa can claim to have one of the world’s most redistributive public purses.’ This argument, made by Business Day associate editor Hilary (...)
Poverty in Africa, the unvoiced failures of the World Bank

15 April 2016 - by Salaheddine Lemaizi

A recent report from the World Bank tells us that the number of Africans living in extreme poverty has considerably increased since 1990, rising from 280 million people living on less than $1.25 per day in 1990, to 330 million in 2012. For the (...)
The 1994 Rwandan Genocide - The Use of Rwanda’s External Debt (1990-1994)

7 April 2016 - by Michel Chossudovsky, Pierre Galand

Twenty-two years after the 1994 Genocide, the role of financial institutions has to be fully understood. Development aid and foreign loans were channelled towards financing the military and paramilitary. The donors turned a blind eye. This (...)
Bulgaria in the trap of neoliberalism

29 March 2016 - by Daniela Penkova

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the so-called “transition period” for Central and Eastern Europe began. The goal pursued was a radical change of society at economic, political and social level. In relation to this, Bulgaria endorsed a variety of (...)
The Ouarzazate solar plant in Morocco: Triumphal ’Green’ capitalism and the privatization of nature

25 March 2016 - by Hamza Hamouchene

Despite the allure of the solar mega-project, the environmental/climate justice movement must question the Morocco’s propaganda and the emergent dominant global discourse around environmental governance to which it is linked. The urgent questions (...)
For Indigenous Peoples, Megadams Are ‘Worse than Colonization’

16 March 2016 - by Philippa de Boissière , Sian Cowman

These mega-projects expropriate land, spoil environments, and pollute democracies. Berta Cáceres gave her life resisting them. Early in the morning of March 3, Berta Cáceres was assassinated. They can displace communities, destroy the local (...)
World Debt Figures 2015

23 February 2016 - by CADTM

The ‘debt system’ involves using public resources to pay creditors instead of meeting the basic rights and needs of people. The relationship between creditors and debtors is strongly biased in favour of the (...)
World Bank safeguards review: “human rights-free zone”

16 February 2016 - by Bretton Woods Project

As the third and final consultation phase on the second draft of the World Bank’s proposed new environmental and social framework (ESF), replacing the current safeguards, progresses, civil society organisations (CSOs), the UN and certain member (...)
World Bank punches South Africa’s poor and coddles the rich

12 February 2016 - by Patrick Bond

Subsidised white capitalists, radical scholars and oppressed activists are amongst those who “must not be named”. Despite abundant evidence of pro-corporate bias, the Bank endorses the government’s “sound policy” on redistribution because Bank (...)
Children Suffer as World Bank’s Borrowers Upend Their Lives

9 February 2016 - by Michael Hudson, Jocelyn C. Zuckerman

In the disappearing rainforests of Indonesia, a 9-year-old boy copes with the trauma of eviction. KEY FINDINGS - Over the last decade, projects funded by the World Bank have physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million (...)
The Blood of the Earth : Agriculture, Land Rights, and Haitian History

15 January 2016 - by Beverley Bell, Jean-Pierre Ricot

Yesterday, January 12, on the sixth anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake, Haitians mourned the countless lives lost. Among the many aftershocks they face is disaster capitalism, in which the Haitian elite and foreign corporations - backed by the US (...)
The free trade agreements : contempt for citizens, sovereignty for multinationals

8 January 2016 - by Robert Joumard

They are called TAFTA, TiSA, TTIP, TTP, CETA – and many other names beside. Everything is done so that nobody understands anything and so that citizens will not be interested. For greater clarity, here we are summing up the very numerous partial (...)
’All in World Bank’: Manipulation in the Name of Deregulation

6 January 2016 - by The Tunisian Observatory of Economy

In November 2015, the Tunisian Observatory of Economic (TOE) published a critical analysis of a recent World Bank report, the latter of which is entitled “All in the Family: State Capture in Tunisia.” What follows is a summarized version of the (...)
Ukraine in the Oligarchs’ Grip

5 December 2015 - by Jérôme Duval

In a country marked by extreme paradoxes, changes happen quickly. Beyond its being an arresting symbol, when we see a statue of Lenin being pulled down in Odessa under “de-Sovietisation” laws only to be replaced by another statue... of the (...)
Doing Business 2016’s reformed indicator will favour land-grabbing

30 October 2015 - by Tiago Stichelmans

the World Bank makes it easier for foreign investors, at the potential cost of local farmers
The IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings 2015: The State of Play

5 October 2015 - by María José Romero, Bodo Ellmers

Next week’s annual gathering of the World Bank and IMF is going to be different for two reasons. Firstly, Finance Ministers from around the world will leave Washington DC and visit Lima, Peru – the first time the Meetings have been staged in a (...)
The World Bank’s Long War on Peasants

14 May 2015 - by Tanya Kerssen, Eric Holt-Giménez

It is difficult to overstate the degree to which the IMF and World Bank’s neoliberal economic policies contribute to extreme vulnerability for farmers and peasants. “The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are (...)