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World
Bank-Civil Society Initiative (WB-CSI)
In September of 1999,
the World Bank and IMF announced that henceforth the poverty reduction
strategy paper (PRSP), a document to be worked out in consensus by
a borrowing country government and its citizens, would form the centerpiece
of national planning and that Bank and Fund lending would be guided by
the document’s parameters. The announcement was made in response
to the Jubilee movement’s worldwide advocacy for cancellation of
developing-country debt, and to advocates’ insistence on an end to
Bank- and Fund-imposed conditionality. The PRSP ostensibly responds to
that demand by placing the country, rather than the lending institutions,
“in the driver’s seat,” and by making poverty reduction
a central goal of new lending.
Over four years later,
there is now a wealth of experience in PRSP countries (only those countries
poor enough to be eligible for concessional lending are required to prepare
a PRSP). Several InterAction members have accompanied their civil society
partners in the global south as they seek to capitalize on the policy
change that PRSP represents. The opening up to civil society participation
required by PRSP processes has mobilized and galvanized a number of groups
and yielded important experiences. At the same time, the persistence of
“business-as-usual” -- not only in the way many PRSPs are drawn
up but perhaps more crucially in the way that actual lending programs
proceed -- has fomented frustration on the part of civil society.
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