CIVIL SOCIETY: That Much Holier Than the World Bank?

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

GLASGOW, May 25 2007 (IPS) - It might be an unexpected tribute to Paul Wolfowitz that he departed leaving the World Bank a little more civil society like. It might just happen, going by some suggestions John Garrison, senior civil society specialist with the World Bank, made at the Civicus world assembly in Glasgow Friday.

For a start, the World Bank might just be a little more popular than before. Garrison pointed to the “greater visibility” of the Bank. “The fact that the Bank is now on YouTube and on comedy shows, shows how mainstream we have become. People who had never heard about the Bank are now talking about it.”

Not every civil society organisation is exactly popular, but few have been quite as unpopular as the World Bank. But more than popularity, the World Bank is discovering an in-house freedom of expression more commonly associated with civil society.

The staff association at the Bank had issued an early statement asking for Wolfowitz’s resignation, Garrison said. The Bank has also seen “a proliferation of blogging, of a frankness of open debate. On some boards we had more than 600 messages in one day.”

Now a demand is being raised for the leadership to change the selection process. “Sixty bank staff (members) have signed on to this along with CSOs (civil society organisations) and academics. So for the first time ever, maybe, we are on the same page in terms of the government.”

The two could have stumbled onto another common page. Because there are “structural problems and contradictions in the institution,” Garrison said. “First the uneven power relations between northern and southern shareholders.” Elsewhere at the world assembly, other civil society members have spoken of the continuing and even growing unevenness between northern and southern NGOs.

The World Bank is having a crack at tackling some of its structural problems. A structural review was shared late last year and early this year with representatives of government, business and the civil society in 47 countries. That has produced a range of recommendations.

One is that the Bank should “strengthen country systems rather than relying on donor mechanisms for governance issues,” Garrison said. And there are others; that it should strengthen third party monitoring of the World Bank, harmonise actions among donor agencies, and promote transparency and accountability.

“This is at the implementation stage, and we’re actually seeking comments on this implementation through May 30 through our website,” Garrison said. “We have responsibility moments right now that we at the Bank and other institutions should try to take advantage of.”

The recommendations will be finalised next month, and the Bank is expected to start implementing these July 1.

Whether this will mean that Europe and the United States give up an agreement to share the top positions on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the fundamental question that these envisaged reforms may not reform. That certainly is not a kind of page that civil society organisations would want to share with the World Bank.

The World Bank and other such institutions like the IMF “are accountable to their executive boards, and the power on the executive boards is skewed towards the donor institutions,” outgoing Civicus president Aruna Rao told IPS. “The World Bank is accountable to its largest shareholders. While there is representation from other countries, the power is the dollar. So the largest shareholders wield the greatest amount of power.”

And the departure of Wolfowitz might not turn out to be the opportunity some think, she said. “It seemed that there was some opportunity with the Wolfowitz scandal to address the question of larger governance, and not just appointment of the new president. But I think the climate within the U.S. with such a conservative government, and the Europeans not willing to have an open fight with the Americans, means you’re going to get an American president of the World Bank.”

But is that so terribly unlike the position of some civil society organisations? Are civil society organisations that so routinely point fingers at the World Bank therefore better run? “I don’t think that is necessarily the case at all,” said Rao. “One aspect is the governance level, and the inequity. But how well the Bank is run has to do with the management of the Bank, the checks and balances, and the accountability issues, quality standards, monitoring, evaluation, and in many of those areas the World Bank has very robust mechanisms in place.”

Every year the Bank reviews one-third of their entire project portfolio, Rao said. “And they subject those projects to quite strict quality standards. They have the resources to do that, NGOs certainly don’t have those kinds of resources. Are we as well run? We try to be, we try to build in good methods of accountability, and open methods of governance, but I think we have a long way to go.”

And that includes, she said, Civicus. “Many NGOs that are here at the Civicus world assembly, including Civicus itself have much to do in terms of really walking the talk on addressing exclusion issues, addressing women’s rights issues within their programmes, and within the power structure of their own organisation,” Rao said. “There’s a lot, a lot of work ahead for civil society organisations in many of those areas.”