Multilateral Banks

Argentina has failed to make a crucial $681m debt payment, dealing a further blow to hopes of an economic recovery. Read More

The World Bank has frozen the distribution of $225m in loans to Venezuela's oil industry until the country ''normalises''. Read More

Child labor has not yet been eradicated in Brazil due to cutbacks in social spending aimed at ensuring payments on the foreign debt, Social Watch, an international network linking non-governmental organisations from 60 countries, said Wednesday. Read More

Two years ago, rioters protesting increased water rates forced a Bechtel, U.S. company, in Bolivia to pack its bags and leave. Now, in a harbinger of the loss of local control through globalization, the corporation is striking back in secret proceedings. Read More

Come Sunday, Latin America's biggest country could elect its first leftwing leader for 40 years, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers party. With 41% support in the polls and 20 points ahead of the next challenger - ruling party candidate Jose Serra - Lula, as he is commonly known, could win the presidency outright in the first round. Read More

Police used unconstitutional tactics and abused their authority when they arrested hundreds during the weekend anti-globalization protests, activists charged. Police arrested more than 650 people in three days of protests coinciding with the annual World Bank and IMF meetings. Read More

Dupont Circle was full to capacity this afternoon with several thousand people for a permitted rally protesting economic and environmental injustice, and the possibility of war in Iraq. The protest was part of a weekend of demonstrations timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Read More

Washington, DC (September 25, 2002) -- Ahead of this weekend's Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Africa Action denounced the failure of these institutions to respond to Africa's growing debt crisis, and issued the recommendations below for immediate action from creditors. Read More

Washington, D.C. and Manila (September 25, 2002) -- The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) today released a new report documenting the World Bank's continued funding of incineration, a polluting technology receiving intense criticism in many countries. The report, available online at www.no-burn.org, documents 156 World Bank Group projects in 68 countries in the last 10 years that have promoted incineration; 26 of those projects were initiated since 2001, including two projects that recommended incinerating PCBs in Argentina and Brazil, an Indian project that recommended incinerating PVC byproducts, and another Indian project that recommended an incinerator at a pesticide plant. Read More

Tell the World Bank to stop funding incinerators. Dioxin factories are not ''sustainable development''! Stand in solidarity on Sep. 25 with people in Kenya, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey, Mozambique, Nigeria, Philippines, South Korea, Bulgaria, and the U.K. as they tell the World Bank to break its ugly incinerator habit. Read More