The Rethinking Bretton Woods Project at Center of Concern

Democracy, Transparency, Accountability

Since 1995, the Center of Concern’s Rethinking Bretton Woods Project has been researching, educating, and advocating to promote reforms of the international financial system, its rules and institutions, including the “Bretton Woods institutions” – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The RBW Project works with allies and partners in the Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité (CIDSE) network and other civil society groups across Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America to cooperate on policy research and analysis and engage in joint international advocacy work to lobby for reforms to the economic policies and internal governance of the major international financial institutions.  More specifically,  the RBW Project advocates for specific reforms to democratize global finance by improving the degree of inclusion and participation by civil society, and enhancing the degree of transparency and accountability of international financial institutions to better ensure they contribute to the public interest and increase social and economic justice at the local, national and international levels.

Many of the world’s most important international financial institutions were first designed many decades ago, and their internal governance structures reflect the norms of an earlier era. Today the RBW Project and its partners believe these organizations must be reformed and modernized in order to bring them into compliance with 21^st century standards of democracy, transparency and democratic accountability.