Why the World Bank Should Embrace Human Rights

Embracing human rights also has implications beyond the bank. It could set the bar for other development banks and help build borrowing countries’ capacity and support for human rights. On the other hand, there is the risk that the bank’s dilution of human rights standards can weaken existing rights. As the case of the Ethiopian cash-for-work program illustrates, discrimination on the basis of political opinion – or a person’s language – violates human rights but apparently not bank policy. It is a grim sign that the definition of discrimination in the United Nations’ proposed Sustainable Development Goals does not explicitly include discrimination against people for their political opinions or language.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/-why-the-world-bank-shoul_b_7989002?utm_hp_ref=human-rights

Ethiopian Indigenous People Demand Accountability from World Bank for Contributing to Grave Human Rights Abuses

The complaint alleges that the Anuak people have been severely harmed by the World Bank-financed and administered Protection of Basic Services Project (PBS), which has provided 1.4 billion USD in sectoral budget support for the provision of basic services to the Ethiopian Government since 2006. A legal submission accompanying the complaint, prepared by Inclusive Development International (IDI), presents evidence that the PBS project is directly and substantially contributing to a program of forced villagization, which has been taking place in the Gambella Region since 2010.

Official economic forecasts for poor countries are too rosy

Over-optimism at the IMF and the World Bank can have serious consequences

Predicting growth, and especially downturns, is fiendishly hard. Getting it right is not helped by forecasters having little incentive to spot clouds on the horizon. Analysts fear that gloom could become self-fulfilling. Standing out from the crowd and wrongly calling a recession damages a forecaster’s reputation more than failing to predict one along with everyone else. Then there is “pushback from governments”, says Maurice Obstfeld, who was the fund’s chief economist in 2015-18.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/08/04/official-economic-forecasts-for-poor-countries-are-too-rosy?fbclid=IwAR15q_kYPy97nRti1ZrYAjVm07vLb_wwqjE9cAVJZ-9aKCsewOHCoxUoKa4