Christine Lagarde is the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Undoubtedly, this is a step forward in the right direction, and would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago.
This report offers a detailed look at the U.S. funding and assistance for democracy and governance in the Middle East, the Congressional appropriations process, and implications for U.S. policy in the Middle East during this turbulent time.
This paper describes the G20's Development Action Plan (DAP) to promote economic growth in some 80 low-income countries. The DAP would deploy existing bilateral and multilateral aid to offset risks to private investment in infrastructure and agriculture projects that promote regional integration.
This paper examines how the current WTO negotiations propose limits or disciplines on governmental regulations. The paper focuses on regulations that limit or discourage speculators from participating in commodity markets, which contributes to volatility in the prices of food commodities. To demonstrate this point, the paper presents a case study of a specific policy option for regulation of derivatives. It concludes with a description of options for resolving the ambiguity of selected disciplines.
This paper critiques the World Bank's proposed Program for Results (P4R) instrument by examining protections of the environment and affected communities and control of corruption (Part I); the effectiveness of proposed mechanisms of accountability (Part II); and the integrity of the consultation process on the proposed P4R instrument (Part III). Part IV presents conclusions.
It is certainly laudable that gender equality gets the serious consideration it deserves in the current international development discourse, and having a WDR exclusively focused on gender equality gives it yet another ‘stamp of approval’ of being an intrinsic development issue. Too bad, that the World Bank is not using this occasion to accompany the academic exercise internally with a serious reflection and reconsideration of the Bank’s own understanding of and approach to gender equality.
For more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons -- everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works.
On October 22, Nancy Alexander spoke at the Global Capital Forum of the Korean Women's Development Institute about the importance of women's leadership in achieving sustainable development. Her paper appears here.
Gender equality is highlighted as a special theme in the ongoing 16th round of replenishment talks for the World Bank Group’s International Development Association (IDA 16). A discussion about gender equality at the World Bank group is not new. Since 2001, the World Bank has had an official gender mainstreaming strategy. Yet there are some structural weaknesses in the way the World Bank addresses gender considerations that need to be overcome in order for IDA 16 to be able to contribute to gender-equitable development in the poorest developing countries.
An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? The essays in this book are now available online in English.
