IMF and World Bank centre profit over lives as Middle East conflict casts a shadow over Spring Meetings

The 2026 IMF and World Bank Spring meetings are taking place in Washington, D.C., against a backdrop of a rise in the cost of living and basic commodities caused by the US-Israel war on Iran. ActionAid warns that the Global North’s grip on these two institutions is enabling a humanitarian catastrophe in the Arab region as well as many low- and middle-income countries across the world. 

While the bombardments have devastated millions of lives on the frontlines, Global South countries, already struggling with sky-high debt burdens, are now facing a new wave of inflation driven by volatile energy prices.  

There is an urgent need to pivot away from the policies that force governments to cut public spending to essential services in favour of debt service repayments at all costs.  

 Niranjali Amerasinghe, Executive Director of ActionAid USA, said, 

“The United States continues to play a destructive role in global affairs at this meeting. From the hyper focus on maintaining their own economic power, while perpetrating catastrophe in the Middle East, to insisting that climate change is not part of IMF and World Bank mandates, the administration is standing firm in its ‘might makes right foreign policy’.” 

“At the same time, the World Bank's participation in the Gaza Board of Peace, which is enabling further suffering, is shameful. You cannot claim to be an institution of development while being a silent partner to destruction.”  

ActionAid is concerned that the IMF’s policies are leaving vulnerable people exposed to starvation and poverty while ensuring that governments’ debt repayments to wealthy creditors remain uninterrupted. 

Roos Saalbrink, Global Economic Justice Lead at ActionAid International, says: 

“The problematic, Global North-dominant decision-making structure of the IMF is once again proving to be a barrier to demands for action from Global South countries. Their focus on narrowly targeted support instead of universal measures to address energy shocks is denying people their basic rights. Once again, the IMF centres economic growth over human lives, dignity, and wellbeing.” 

“We need to shift economic decision-making processes away from exclusive and unequal institutions toward more inclusive, transformative and democratic institutions, such as the UN Tax Convention process which is now being negotiated and a proposed UN Debt Convention.”   

Tinebeb Berhane, the Head of Africa Region at ActionAid International, said, 

“Fuel prices have increased exponentially across Africa, further worsening the livelihoods of populations that were already grappling with systemic economic hardships. In Malawi, for instance, fuel prices have surged by over 34%, posing significant challenges to food security, transport, and basic survival. This conflict has become a catalyst for deepening poverty that the world cannot afford to ignore." 

ActionAid notes that ultimately, the IMF is not fit for purpose to respond to this sort of crisis. Urgent progress needs to be made towards transforming the global financial system. For decades, the institution has not really changed its guidance in practice at the country level, imposing the same old-fashioned and failed policies from the days of structural adjustment in the 1980s.    

To address the current challenges, the IMF and World Bank need to support countries impacted by the war and spillovers with unconditional non-debt creating finance and suspend all debt payments to all lenders from countries directly impacted by the military attacks and those affected by the increase in energy, fertilizers and food prices.