Banque Mondiale

The World Bank and IMF must step up their support for developing countries who are struggling with spiking food prices along with the fallout from Europe’s fiscal crisis, Oxfam said ahead of the annual meeting of the institutions in Tokyo this week.

Kristin Davis, Angelique Kidjo and Paul Theroux and others join the call on World Bank to temporarily freeze land deals in developing countries.

Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people, or the equivalent to the number of people who go hungry in the world today.

Oxfam today calls for greater scrutiny and control of the funding for development channeled through financial intermediaries such as private equity funds, banks and credit agencies.

International agency Oxfam welcomed the selection of Jim Yong Kim as World Bank president, but said the sham appointment process had damaged the institution.

Reacting to the announcement that World Bank President Robert Zoellick will step down at the end of his term on June 30th, a global coalition of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader, and for developing countries to determine the selection.

Oxfam welcomes the World Bank’s call that UK-based New Forests Company (NFC) must open up to a full investigation into claims of bad practice in its Uganda forestry projects.

Robert Zoellick / the food crisis:

Oxfam spokesperson Luc Lamprière said: 

World leaders have an historic opportunity to reform the global economy to ensure that the one in six people who live in extreme poverty benefit from economic recovery, international agency Oxfam said today ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul.

Oxfam spokesperson Mark Fried said: