What are the main challenges to the World Bank's accountability and effectiveness today? What should it do about them?
As an institution charged with fighting global poverty, the World Bank has found itself on the firing line of late. Critics cite a persistent lack of transparency and failure to include local insights in decision-making that affects the poor directly, among other grievances. But supporters note a number of reforms over the past two decades, including a current review of the Bank's information disclosure policy, and a series of "safeguards" on sensitive issues such as environmental impacts and effects on indigenous peoples.
Long-term governance reforms are central to the Bank's legitimacy as a global public institution. At the same time, there are numerous shorter-term actions the World Bank can take to greatly improve its accountability to the poor. Four key recommendations are provided here, with a more comprehensive set available in Herz and Ebrahim (2005):
This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.