Latest Articles

During the past few days a good deal of coverage has been focused on the Meltzer Commission Report on the International Financial Institutions, and what it might mean for the World Bank. Let me take this opportunity to lay out some real concerns that we at the bank have, and also to set the record straight.

As students celebrated anti-sweatshop victories at Wisconsin, Indiana, and other schools, sit-ins began at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Macalester College in Minneapolis.

We enclose a US-India citizens declaration for a new solidarity and a Citizens Vision Statement for a new Millennium to articulate the India US partnership at the people's level to reverse globalisation.

In time for the spring planting season, the pressure group Friends of the Earth Europe is launching its biggest ever campaign on foods and crops made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in 22 countries across Europe.

The ''report of the international financial institution advisory commission'' sounds so innocuous. It is not. In the current US debate, it will be explosive. The question is whether it will end with pure destruction or efficient replacements for the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and regional development banks of today.

The Rio Tinto Shareholder Coalition, backed by worker-owners and trade unions in Australia, Europe and the United States, today launched an unprecedented global shareholder proxy contest with one of the world's largest mining companies, Rio Tinto.

WASHINGTON, DC -- A coalition of development and environmental advocates today said a new report by a Congressionally appointed commission is a welcome acknowledgement that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Group are largely failing in their mission to address world poverty and economic stability, and need major overhaul.

Warren M. Anderson, chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation during the 1984 chemical disaster at Bhopal, India, has apparently gone into hiding to avoid a summons to appear in a Manhattan federal court as part of civil proceedings against him and the company, say lawyers who have hired a private investigator to locate Mr. Anderson.

Escalating a campaign questioning Vice President Al Gore's environmental commitment, environmental organizations today placed a full-page ad in the west coast edition of the New York Times. The ad, whose headline reads ''Who is Al Gore?Environmental Champion or Petroleum Politician? The U'wa people need to know'' substantiates Gore's connections to Occidental Petroleum and argues that the Vice President has a specific responsibility to act on behalf of the U'wa people.

A non-governmental organisation has cautioned the new mine investors not to willfully pollute the environment despite a bill which indemnifies them from litigation against environmental degradation. Citizens for a better environment, a Kitwe based NGO, warned that should the new mines violate the rights of the people to a clean environment, they would face the wrath of the public.