Joint CSO Statement: "We fear the demise of accountability at the World Bank Group"

We are writing with an urgent message ahead of today’s meeting of the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE): that the Board should delay any decision that would commit the Board now to adopting a specific structure for the compliance functions of the World Bank Group.

What is being decided today is not an administrative adjustment. It is a test of whether the World Bank Group is willing to preserve the one institutional innovation that, more than any other, signaled its willingness to be accountable to people around the world and influenced other development finance institutions to prioritize citizen driven accountability.

We are writing to make our position unambiguous: we reject this outcome, we reject the process that produced it, and we urge Board members to use whatever authority they have to stop an irreversible decision from being made today. The urgency of this letter is deliberate. So is its directness.

Read the full letter as published by Accountability Counsel, Arab Watch Coalition, Inclusive Development International, Recourse, and Urgewald here.