A Brief Note On The World Bank Cambodia Sub Project

In an effort to bring an end to world poverty the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) were established in 1944. Consisting of members from 44 nations “The Bank and the IMF are twin intergovernmental pillars supporting the structure of the world's economic and financial order”(Driscoll, 1996). In other words they are international economic organizations that grant loans to third world countries for development programs.

In July 1944, delegates from forty-four countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire for a conference. The meeting established the Bretton Woods System, a series of financial international organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 1945, twenty-nine countries signed the Articles of Agreements, which gave birth to the IMF. The

My work experience as a World Bank employee in 2014 solidified my interest in developing a career with the bank. I worked with three senior economists in the Development Economics Research Group on a research paper about the effect of long-term financing on economic growth for the Global Financial Development Report 2015. My stay with the World Bank was truly exciting for me because I learnt first-hand how the bank’s culture and operations, as well as

Target Audience: This policy brief is addressed to the Board of Governors of the World Bank Group, which

Since its opening loan of $250 million to France for post-war reconstruction in 1947, the World Bank has always declared its two primary goals as to “end extreme poverty within a generation and boost shared prosperity” (World Bank, 2014). The World Bank is first and foremost a bank - a business – whose primary interest is in making money, and in this profit-first business model the Bank imposes upon the sovereignty of foreign countries by forgoing its own policies by violating human rights, causing environmental degradation and implementing policies involving conditionality on to all loaned funds. Much of the Global

The World Bank was created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, along with three other institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The president of the World Bank is, traditionally, an American. The World Bank and the IMF are both based in Washington, D.C., and work closely with each other.

The World Bank, created after World War II by the superpowers, is supposed to be an anti-poverty bank. The idea behind it was to help people out of poverty, through projects, and give them an economic opportunity. The projects were mainly concentrated on less developed areas in developing countries, where the World Bank provides loans for capital programs. The World Bank Group states their mission as to end extreme poverty within a generation and boost shared prosperity. After 71 years today, more than 60% of the African population depend on land for subsistence (FAO, 2015), the most it has ever been. This puts into question why these world problems not only remain, but increase. Poverty is persisting around the globe, and African countries are among the lowest ranked in Gross Domestic Product per capita. Despite the mission of ending poverty, a new report showed the worldwide destructive legacy of World Bank projects (Prupis, 2015).

The Articles of Agreement of the Bretton Woods Conference clearly stated that the role of the World Bank was the reconstruction and development of the member countries including the restoration of economies damaged and deranged by the World War 2. Jean-Francois Rischard-former vice president, World Bank explained the working of the World Bank in the 1950’s, the World Bank borrowed money to lend them to the reconstruction of countries like Japan and Europe. The World Bank financed Toyota in Japan and the French railways and so forth. Post the reconstruction of war ravaged

Governance is becoming more and more essential in values of major international institutions. In order to receive the World Bank credit, poor countries need to comply several conditions set by World Bank which are in most cases aim to promote good governance but also liberalise countries economy to open market. As the essay question suggests not all people support this neo-capitalist approach as it may result in tension, exploiting of one by the other, and impact negatively on both society and environment of the developing country. As a result of successful lobbying from civil society institutions, World Bank and other major international institutions created monitoring and complaint processing panels to monitor its activities (Park, 2010). However the scope of influence of these panels can be limited and can have insufficient results. Though decision making in World Bank is getting more horizontal than it used to be, still economically and politically powerful countries are ultimately making key decisions without enough involvement of poorer countries. This paper will aim to analyse the reasons behind criticisms towards World Bank, nature of its funded projects, and effectiveness of the World Bank inspection panel.

In order to understand why Cambodia is filled with so many struggles, one must examine the countries’ past catastrophes. What first triggered all the poverty and crime was the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot. This period of genocide spanned from 1975-1979, and it is estimated that the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people. They specifically targeted Buddhists, ethnic groups and those who were educated in society (Chigas and Mosyakov). The genocide was short lived but it had long-lasting effects, leaving Cambodia in a frenzy of poverty and disease. In 2014, Cambodia can still feel aftershocks of this terrible occurrence, and it contributes to the rising sexual trafficking and exploitation

The World Bank exerts its economic means to provide developing countries with loans to help them reduce poverty and promote development. The World Bank focuses on Global South, especially Africa, offering “champion education” to “Africa’s fast-growing youth population” (World Bank, 2014). The loans support the policy implementation with adequate funds, giving young people more opportunities to access to education, offering universities more funds to maintain the quality of higher education, and attracting more talents to devote themselves in education career. However, the loans are with conditions. Only when the countries accept the conditions and obey the rules, formulating the policy based on the World Bank’s requirements and the ideas that the World Bank advocates, can they receive the funds assistant. This severely violates the sovereignty of the nation. From this view, the World Bank is acting as a dictator, pushing down its ideas, piloting in the

International Monetary Fund and The World Bank, though has a good purpose of their existence, they have come under lots of criticisms as to how they use the leverage of being in a position of helping poor countries to either recover from economic collapse or give them debt relief and economic boost from loans they give out to them to impose policies and condition that those poor countries has to implement. These loan conditions and policies structured by these international financial power institutions are geared towards moving resources from the poor countries to the rich western countries. The end result is creating a situation where the poor countries sunk into more economic suicidal condition in which

International Development Association (IDA), an initiative for providing additional financial assistance for the poorest develop countries.

The World Bank has admitted “shortcomings” in its protections for people displaced by projects the bank supports. It says it is working to improve its policies and how it enforces them. The bank also says protecting people in the way of big projects is a “cornerstone” of its efforts to “end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.” In Kenya, the World Bank’s in-house Inspection Panel found the bank violated its policies by failing to do enough to protect the Sengwer, an indigenous minority group in Kenya’s western forests. The report, released last year, concluded the bank wasn’t directly to blame for the evictions targeted at the Sengwer, but said the bank might have helped prevent abuses against them if it had enforced its own rules

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development which was the forerunner of the World Bank (WB) - was established to handle post-war renewal. Nowadays the organisation is the biggest leading development institution and basically operating for growth and poverty decrease. "Owned by the governments of its 188 member states, the Bank channels loans and grants and advises low and middle-income