As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank gather for their 2025 Spring Meetings under the theme “Jobs – the Path to Prosperity”, global unions are raising the alarm over the return to austerity policies that undermine prosperity and decent work.
Tag: World Bank (page 1 of 3)
Today, more people have access to social protection now than at any point in history. Over the last decade, 4.7 billion people across low- and middle-income countries gained access to social protection. However, critical gaps remain. Two billion people in those countries remain uncovered or inadequately covered by social protection.
The State of Social Protection Report 2025: The 2-Billion-Person Challenge documents advances and challenges to strengthening social protection and labor systems across low- and middle-income countries and discusses avenues to gradually close the coverage and adequacy gap for the world’s poorest.
I think that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been misinformed. I don’t disagree with their shutting down USAID, but I think it’s rather small fry. There are much, much bigger fish to fry if you want to really save U.S. government money that is being wasted in programs that are mischievously justified as aid to the poor people of the world.
On the World Day of Social Justice, a high-level global union delegation is holding a two-day meeting with the leadership of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to call for economic policies that prioritise workers’ rights, social protection and equitable growth.
A reform path without linking up to the UN consensus on the future and on development.
This is the message the World Bank wants to give at its annual meeting this week-end. But is it possible?
ITUC’s statement about the needed reforms:
In the same way as in its old ‘Doing Business’ ranking, the World Bank shows once again it is not ready to fully recognize the importance of labour rights, including social protection
The mothers and daughters of the global south cannot celebrate the World Bank’s 80-year legacy of harm.
Opinion: Why we cannot celebrate the World Bank’s 80-year anniversary | Devex
The World Bank Group promotes a model of social protection
via poverty-targeted programmes that are error-strewn and can
cause social unease, and set back progress towards universal
social protection. But a global coalition, led by borrowing govern
ments themselves, is fighting back. This briefing is based on Mat
thew’s book, Beyond the World Bank: The Fight for Universal Social
Protection in the Global South, which explores the Bank’s approach
to social protection.
WBG-Social-protection-Mathew-Greenslade-FINAL-web.pdf (brettonwoodsproject.org)
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