After conducting an extensive advocacy campaign during the last Annual Meetings (2023) of the IMF and WBG in Marrakech, the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) continues its efforts and engagements by launching a targeted virtual campaign surrounding this year’s IMF-WBG Spring Meetings, which are taking place from April 17-19, 2024 in Washington DC. This latter campaign will focus on two key pillars:

1. A reflection on our experience in Marrakech and the CSO engagement process with the IMF and WBG, more generally.

Read this blog article “ “The Road to Marrakech” Ended on a Rolling Hill: What About the Spring Meetings and Beyond? ” by ARI’s Senior Fellow and Social Protection Program Director, Farah Al Shami, to learn more.

“Our participation in the Marrakech meetings, exchanges with a large number of CSOs, and detailed articles about civil society’s experience in these meetings, such as the one published by Meshkal, suggest that CSOs’ concerted efforts were met by the organizers with supremacy, exclusion, and perfunctoriness. With the Spring Meetings-2024 happening in two weeks in DC, it is imperative to reflect on the experience from Marrakech, drawing on lessons learned and best practices for the coming meetings and beyond.” 

2. Launching our recent research on Egypt and the IMF.

Egypt is the second biggest debtor of the IMF in the world. Despite the notorious social and economic repercussions that IMF programs and interventions have had in the country, an $820 million bailout for its ailing economy has lately been approved by the international financial institution. IMF loan programs and their accompanying conditionality are especially affecting Egypt’s monetary system, food security, and social welfare, which is found to be at the core of the recent economic crises that have hit the country.

A. In light of this, ARI is releasing a consolidated edited volume titled "Egypt's Successive Economic Crises: The IMF's Impact and Pathways to Just Monetary, Food, and Social Policies." This volume is a compilation of three research papers tackling the role of the IMF in Egypt's latest crises and their consequent social repercussions.

  • The first paper revolves around the impact of the IMF on Egypt's monetary policy in recent years and the latter’s consequences at the level of fiscal policy as well as the level of poverty and income distribution.
  • The second paper taps into the impact on food and agricultural policies and, subsequently, on hunger and food security.
  • The third paper delves into the impact on social spending, especially in the education and health sectors, and the ineffectiveness of tangential solutions by the IMF and the World Bank.

The edited volume also includes a synthesizing and analytical introduction, with a clear set of policy recommendations, which can constitute a handy tool for advocates participating in the upcoming Spring Meetings.

B. ARI is launching this edited volume in a virtual parallel event to the upcoming Spring Meetings’ Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF). Learn more about this public webinar and register to attend by visiting this page.

 

On this occasion, ARI’s Arab Region Hub for Social Protection is pleased to offer you the second issue of its News Digest, around “Financing Mechanisms for Universal Social Protection.”

Read the digest to better understand how inclusive social protection schemes can be funded through an internal redistribution of resources and how the fiscal space can be created through many alternatives to foreign aid, debt, and austerity.

 

Finally, In the framework of the Global Campaign for the Right to Social Security, ARI and its partners cordially invite you to join our session at the Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF), titled "Examining the Progress of the World Bank's Commitment to Universal Social Protection." Join us if you are in DC. You can also attend online. 

You can read the joint statement of the global campaign here.

As an initiative of the global campaign, 96 organizations wrote to the World Bank and IMF Executive Directors to ask them to move away from failed social safety net approaches and deliver on the right to social security for all. Read the letter here.

You can sign the global campaign’s letter to IMF and WB Executive Directors by filling this form, before Friday April 12th EOD.