The history of the World Bank (WB)

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Sierra Club Charges World Bank with Violating Environmental Policies: Sierra Club press release, 9 January 1995. Citing recent reports which reveal the World Bank’s attempts to conceal investigation results of a proposed venture in Nepal, the Sierra Club today called for the Arun Dam project to be canceled, and for smaller, less environmentally destructive projects to be considered.
Evicted! The World Bank, British aid and forced resettlement: Executive Summary of report by The Ecologist on the World Bank’s record on compensating the people displaced by its development projects, 16 February 1995.
World Bank Misleads US Congress: From Probe International, Canada, 18 September 1995. New study takes the World Bank to task for recent claims that its loans to Third World nations are good for the American economy because they provide billions of dollars in jobs and contracts for US firms.
Getting the Facts on the IFC: Private Sector Lending of the World Bank: By Friends of the Earth-US. A critique of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation in terms of its environmetal impact, 10 November 1995.
World Bank Spending on Health/Education Plummets: From Results, 5 November 1997. In January 1996, World Bank President James Wolfensohn promised that the WB would increase its health and education lending by 50% for the next three years, with an increasing share going to primary health and basic education. However, these promises neglected, and the Bank taken an enormous step backward.
The World Bank’s Indigenous Policy: By Kay Treakle, NACLA Report on the Americas, 18 April 1998. In early 1994, the combination of new oil leases of Amazon regions and World Bank encouragement of privatizaiton in the oil sector. Indigenous organizations and NGOs have long criticized the World Bank for financing projects that destroy the lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples around the globe.
IMF/WORLD BANK Meetings discuss labour standards: ICFTU ONLINE..., 12 October 1998. The current financial and social crises facing the world economy are forcing the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to review their traditional reticence to include labour standards as part of their remit.
A Thai dam, a mistake, a debt: Opinion by Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 August 2000. The World Bank has been the largest single source of funds for large dam construction worldwide. Under its stated aim of alleviating poverty, it has promoted and funded dams that have displaced more than 10 million people, caused severe environmental damage, and pushed borrowers further into debt.
World Bank should follow socially responsible business practices: IFBWW press release, 28 August 2000. The IFBWW favors the insertion of clear and enforceable labour clauses in the WB's contractual documentation, rather than broad policy statements in the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). Because the WB favors using the CAS statements, it is not clear how forceful such a wording would be in any given case or what level of obligation it would place on the Government concerned.
The World Bank's Impacts on Education: The World Bank versus the World: By C. George Caffentzis, 1 December 2000. Background of the WB and IMF. The debt crisis of the early 1980s gave the World Bank the power to engage in social engineering on a grand scale in heavily indebted countries of the Americas, Africa and Asia. Under the name structural adjustment, the WB sought to commodify education, so that now the bank dictates education policy throughout the former colonial world and constrains access to education on all levels.
Bangladesh health conference slams World Bank: BBC World Service, 4 December 2000. Delegates from nearly a-hundred countries have been voicing their anger at both the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, which they claim are reducing ordinary people’s access to basic health care facilities. WHO policies aimed at protecting the interests of multinationals. Many countries victims of globalisation, whose voices remain unheard when health policies are formulated because of increasing commercialisation and the privatisation of health facilities around the world.
World Bank devastating developing countries: By Ershadul Huq, India Abroad News Service, 7 December 2000. World Bank healthcare policies were devastating developing economies, lives of the poor and the public health system, while favoring multinational pharmaceutical companies.