UN, WTO, World Bank and IMF

How many countries are in the United Nations?

193

How many UN’s sustainable development goals are there, how many are on track and what are three examples?

• 17 goals

• Such as no poverty, reduced inequalties and zero hunger

• Only 17% of the sustainble development goals are actually on track to be achieved

What is the UN’s role on social protection, what have been the changes from a decade ago to now and what does this actually include?

• Through its sustainable development goals 50% of the world are now under some form of social protection

• This is 10% more than a decade ago

• These includes welfare payments or health provision

How many UN peacekeepers are there today, how many operations are they deployed in and who is a major contributor?

• 76,000

• These are deployed across 11 operations around the world such as South Sudan and the Central African Republic

• Major contributors include Rwanda

How many UN peackeepers have there been across history?

• 2 million men and women have served as UN peackeepers since 1948

• This has been done in 78 different global operations

What was the UN failure in Srebrenica 1995?

• A UN force of Dutch soldiers were not provided air support they needed due to bureaucracy in the process of many stages all needing seperate approval and were underarmed leaving them vulnreable to the Bosnian Serb army

• This led to the safe zone for the Bosnian muslims being overun and 8,000 men and boys being systematically killed and women and children being relocated

What does the World Bank do?

• It provides grants and low interest loans

• Offers policy advice and technical assistance for developing countries

• Co-ordinates projects with the government

How many member countries are part of the World Bank?

• 188 members

• They manage the actions of the organisation

What are the main crictisms of the World Bank?

• The post war structure usually leaves Europeans running the IMF and Americans always running the World Bank with underrepresentation of different groups of people

• Also loans come with conditions often forcing countries to implement liberal economic policies such as privatasiation of state owned firms and often pressure to accept trade deals from countries like the USA, this causes the national soverignity of the country to decrease

What has emerged as a World Bank alternative and how does it differ?

• The BRICS development bank

• They provide loans to developing nations with no strings attached allowing countries undertaking these loans to still have their sovreignity and be the ones in charge of making economic policy decisions

What are 3 challenges the World Bank’s future?

Rival, self loan and more

• The BRICS development bank

• Countries issuing their own sovereign bonds to increase finance rather than loaning

• More foreign direct investment from advanced countries drains countries of capital

How much did the BRICS development bank and World bank loan in 2025/how many nations as well?

• The world bank lended $40.9 billion for 139 countries

• The new development bank (BRICS bank) lended around $5 billion

What is the role of the International Monetary Fund?

• To stabilise exchange rates

• To provide emergency loans to countries in need to prevent them collapsing and disrupting economic stability

What does the IMF actually do?

• The IMF produces reports on member countries economies and suggests areas of weakness / possible danger (e.g. unbalanced economies with large current account deficit/excess debt levels.. The idea is to work on crisis prevention by highlighting areas of economic imbalance

• It loans to countries in times of financial crisis

• Like the World Bank loans have conditions primarly countries implementing policies to reduce inflation, remove price controls and open themseleves up to free trade with other countries

• Also they offer policy and technical advice like the World Bank

How much loanable funds does the IMF have?

$300 billion

How much has the IMF arranged in bail-out packages since 1997?

The IMF has arranged more than $180 billion in bailout packages since 1997.

How much did the IMF do to help out Greeces economy in 2010/11?

In 2010/11 the IMF played a major role of a $30 billion dollars in the bailout to the Greek economy, which involved a total loan of up to $110 billion.

How does World Bank voting work?

The countries which contribute the most to the World Bank get the most powerful votes so the policies and actions are in their favour

What did the IMF do in Ireland in the 2010s?

• In 2010 Ireland requested an €85 billion bailout from the IMF and the EU. The IMF contributed around €22.5 billion, while the EU and other partners provided the rest. In return, Ireland had to follow a strict austerity and reform programme

• Now GNI capita in Ireland far exceeds the UK showing how the IMF loans can be succesful

Are the World Bank and IMF the same?

• No they act as twin orginisations created in 1944

• The IMF acts as a watchdog for global financial stability, overseeing currency rates and providing short-term loans to countries facing balance-of-payments crises.

• The World Bank focuses on long-term economic development and poverty reduction, providing loans and technical assistance for projects like infrastructure, education, and health

What does the WTO do?

• Provide rounds of talks for countries to negoitate and create trade deals

• Settles trade disputes through tribunals with a neutral third party providing a pathway for resolving conflicts

• These are to promote free trade and trade liberalisation across the world’s economies

What percentage of world trade does the WTO manage?

98%

Cricitims of world trade organisation?

• That the organisation favours MNCs over local development forcing developing nations to open up to markets while more powerful rich countries can maintain protectionist policies

• The trade dispute settlement process can undermine sovereignty and local laws

• Decisions take lots of time to occur

• When more powerful countries go against the rules it is not enforced at all

Cricitisms of the IMF?

• Imposing harsh measures to stablise economies can increase poverty and decrease social welfare

• Policy advice is often general and not tailored to each case

• A debt trap can be created where new loans are used to pay old loans

• Also emergeceny funds are plauged by corruption

What is a multi-scalar approach?

Where an organisation operates simultaneously at global, national, regional, and local levels

What is a mutli-scalar approach used by the UN?

Agenda 21

How does Agenda 21 work on an international, national, regional and local scale?

Global/International The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) oversees implementation, monitors national progress, and coordinates between multilateral organisations (e.g. UNEP, World Bank). Wealthier nations committed to transferring 0.7% of GNP as aid to help developing countries implement sustainable development goals.

National Governments produce National Sustainable Development Strategies (NSDS) and embed Agenda 21 principles into legislation, budgets, and policy. Examples include the UK's "A Better Quality of Life" (1999) and the Philippines Agenda 21, which adapt global objectives to national contexts and priorities.

Regional Regional authorities coordinate sustainability across local authority boundaries on issues that transcend individual councils — such as transport networks, water catchment management, and energy infrastructure — integrating targets into spatial planning frameworks.

Local Chapter 28 calls on local authorities to consult their populations and produce a Local Agenda 21 (LA21) by 1996 — a bottom-up approach to sustainability. Plans address locally relevant issues such as waste reduction, green space, air quality, and urban planning. In the UK, over 90% of councils adopted some form of LA21 by the late 1990s.

What is the resistance to Agenda 21?

• Some US citizens have seen the policy as an infringement on property rights

• This is by promoting ubran densification

• Some critics see Agenda 21 as the blueprint for a one government world where national sovreignity is undermined

What was the purpose of Agenda 21 and when was it established?

• To promote sustainable development

• Established at the Rio de Janeiro conference in 1992 and reaffirmed since such as the conference in Johannesburg

• Signed by 178 governments

What are the 4 sections of Agenda 21 and summarise?

• Section 1- Social and Economic Dimensions is directed toward combating poverty, improving health and promoting sustainable population.

• Section 2- Conservation and Management of Resources for Development includes maintaining biodiversity and ecosystems, preventing excessive deforestation and safe waste management to stop environmental degradation.

• Section 3- Strengthening the Role of Major Groups includes empowering women, youth, supporting NGOs and indigenous groups.

• Section 4- Means of Implementation includes finance, technology and education which are the ways these goals will be achieved.

What is an issue with Agenda 21?

It is a non-binding agreement so many of the promised pledges have not been fulfilled

What did the Agenda 21 lead to?

The formation of other treaties like the Kyoto protocol and the Paris Agreement but the US left this under trump

How much funding have the UN sustainable development goals guided?

They have guided the spending of $206 billion in annual Official Development Assistance.

How have the UN sustainable development goals impacted infrastructure?

• The goals drive investment into develop infrastructure

• This has contributed to how 95% of people now live within range of a broadband network