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Newswire on the IFIs
- Austerity a moral issue as it inflicts millions
- Bangladesh exposes flaws in World Bank's Doing Business Index
- Poverty should not be entrusted to economists
- A flawed 'Doing Business' report
- Risk and accountability: What role for the Inspection Panel?
- Rio Tinto gets Australian government loan for Mongolian mine project
World Bank
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The World Bank Boycott is an international campaign that demands an end to socially and environmentally destructive World Bank policies and projects through grassroots financial and political power. The campaign targets a key source of World Bank finance, international bond sales. The Bank receives most of its resources to finance lending to over 100 developing countries from the sale of World Bank bonds on private capital markets. Bonds are bought by governments, universities, mutual funds, pension funds, trade unions, life insurance companies, churches, and civic groups. Employing the tactics of the anti-apartheid movement, ordinary people are organising locally to boycott these bonds, effectively threatening the Bank’s primary source of funding. |
This page links to information concerning a number of projects on which we have worked, in solidarity with local communities. In some cases, the projects rely on World Bank funding. In others they involve Canadian companies that may be seeking, or have secured, financial support from Export Development Canada (EDC). Sometimes they involve both. Regardless of the source of funding, in all cases, communities have contacted us because they are concerned about the significant adverse environmental, social and human rights impacts of the projects.
Oyu Tolgoi is an enormous copper and gold deposit in Mongolia. The project is jointly owned by Canadian company Turquoise Hill Resources and a state owned enterprise. According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), estimated project cost is $12 billion. Project proponents seek financing from Export Development Canada, the IFC, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, among others. In this document, CSOs argue that the project does not comply with the IFC Performance Standards and provide a series of recommendations.
The UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights held its first forum on December 4 and 5 in Geneva. The Halifax Initiative spoke at the forum on a panel concerning public financial institutions and human rights. ECA-Watch, CIEL and BankTrack disseminated the attached document at the forum containing analysis and recommendations regarding financial institutons and human rights.
This month we examine 'odious investment' - Mongolia Undermined; (Mis)Investment in Agriculture; More than Bricks and Mortar; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
The debt edition featuring articles on the re-emerging debt crisis, odious debt, debt distress assessments, export credit agencies and soveriegn debt work-out procedures.
Climate finance: the World Bank, Export Development Canada and the Canadian government. Plus Rio+20 postmortem.
Presentation concerning the role of the private sector in international development with a focus on new CIDA programming in support of the extractive sector.
Energy poverty, climate change and the World Bank; Durban postmortem.
The role of the World Bank in climate finance; Europeans raise the bar on export credit disclosure; the FTT; glacier protection in Argentina; new UN working group.
