For the first time in 50 years, the World Bank Group and IMF held their annual meetings in Africa. Our team and allies hosted a series of events and actions to call for a real transformation of the world’s financial architecture, an obligations-based approach to mobilizing resources for climate justice, including through reforms to international tax rules, and urgent calls for debt relief and cancellation.
Reclaiming Human Rights in Fiscal Policy: Cross Regional Exchange was a highly successful session where partners from the Euro-Mediterranean region and Latin America shared their experiences in fighting for fiscal justice through a human rights lens. Concrete asks and needs emerged, such as connecting Latin America and SWANA on national tax deal analysis and collaborating on upcoming international review mechanisms. Additionally, in A Global Financial System that Advances Human Rights? Towards a Shared Vision for Change, a diverse group of partners working on human rights, economic, and environmental justice joined forces with social movements and civil society activists to strategize on building collective power to disrupt the global financial system. Members from peasant movements, the food sovereignty movement, and human rights activists from the Global South delved into the consequences of IMF-backed neoliberal reforms in Mobilizing for Peasants' Rights and Food Sovereignty: A Global South Dialogue on the World Bank’s Agrarian Policies, exploring how these reforms impact peasant rights and undermine food sovereignty.
We joined the Universal Social Protection Campaign launch, highlighting key demands to end the injustice faced by over 4 billion people worldwide who lack social protection coverage. At the End Austerity Festival, we celebrated resistance against the IMF and World Bank’s failed economic model. The Global South Speakout on the IMF/WBG’s Role in the Climate Crisis saw climate justice and environmental groups discussing the responsibility of these institutions in accelerating the climate and development crises.
In our efforts to realize gender and climate justice, we participated in a dynamic roundtable discussion, Realizing Gender and Climate Justice: IMF Impediments and Alternatives, presenting a feminist systemic vision for structural transformation and challenging the IMF’s role in instrumentalizing climate action and gender inequality. Through knowledge-sharing and networking in Claiming our Feminist Futures, we co-organized a session offering women’s rights and economic justice organizations the opportunity to build connections across geographies and movements, alongside Bretton Woods Project, WEDO, ActionAid International, Gender Action, Oxfam, MENAFem, and Akina Mama wa Afrika.