Every Person Everywhere Counts

A week at the World Bank and IMF

The 2015 Spring Meetings and Civil Society Policy Forum brought people from many different sectors together to discuss how fiscal and development policy and governance can be made to serve real human need future-focused thinking and enforceable transparency. The news of the week, the running theme, and the most under-reported story in mainstream financial reporting, is that the work these institutions are looking forward to is about actual service to all people everywhere, especially the most vulnerable.

The World Bank’s mission is to end poverty and foster shared prosperity; the IMF focuses on fiscal solvency, and works to ensure nation-states don’t collapse from runaway inflation or crippling debt burdens. For decades, critics have argued that though well-intentioned, many of their projects have had the opposite effect, leaving harm where it didn’t need to be or propping up illegitimate regimes. As the voice…