Press Center

From the article: The Trump administration continues chipping away at the multilateral institutions it derides as “globalist,” preparing to nominate as soon as Wednesday David Malpass, a World Bank critic, to become the next president of that very institution. Malpass, currently the undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department and a former chief economist at Bear Stearns investment bank, has faithfully echoed President Donald Trump’s denunciations of multilateralism run amok, taking aim at institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Criminal Court. -- “It’s the attitude people had 25 years ago, informed by a policy stance he had while working in the Reagan administration,” said Scott Morris, an Obama administration Treasury official who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “He still sees the institution through that lens.” Between his criticism of the bank’s practices and culture and his drive at Treasury to reduce U.S. financial contributions to the World Bank, “it’s hard to spin him as a friendly leader for the institution,” Morris said. -- Others noted that, while China may not need the money made available by the World Bank, those loans can nudge Beijing in directions that are broadly beneficial. Many of the World Bank loans, noted Morris of the Center for Global Development, are directed at efforts to reduce carbon emissions in China, the world’s biggest polluter. “China doesn’t necessarily need the money, it’s more the incentives those loans create,” he said. At the same time, the World Bank has worked with China on President Xi Jinping’s signature project, the $1 trillion or more Belt and Road infrastructure program, in order to boost financial transparency and improve the quality of the projects that Beijing is underwriting—an effort that Malpass has been critical of. “Malpass will certainly affect the relationship with China—what role will his World Bank play?” Morris asked. “He actually does want to shrink the institution and lend to fewer countries,” Morris said. “So where would they go for alternative sources of financing? China is at the top of the list.”

From the article: NEW DELHI — The Democratic Republic of the Congo is currently facing the most severe Ebola outbreak in its history, with over 400 deaths confirmed since August, according to the World Health Organization. Much hope is pinned on a new vaccine — not yet licensed, but described by WHO as “safe and protective” — which has so far been used to immunize more than 60,000 people deemed most at risk of infection. But one key group is denied access: Since the vaccine has not been tested for use during pregnancy, it is not being offered to pregnant women. -- Carleigh Krubiner, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and one of the lead authors of a recent report on maternal immunization, noted that pregnant and breastfeeding women are often at greater risk of exposure to the virus, because of caregiving responsibilities and proximity with children. “There's significant fear that's been documented among women [in DRC] who are unable to receive the vaccine and know they're at disproportionate risk of exposure just given some of the social roles,” she told Devex. -- Even as recently as the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016, opportunities to “gather more robust data on pregnancy,” which could have helped to protect pregnant women the next time around, were missed, Krubiner said. “There were recommendations to include pregnant women in those trials, especially given the risk-benefit calculus at the time, and ultimately for a whole host of reasons those recommendations were not taken up,” she said. “The cost of doing this research versus the cost of essentially denying women access to something that could be highly beneficial, there's really no comparison. We can't afford to leave this group unprotected.” -- “The development community [as funders and advocates] really does hold a lot of power to reshape the agenda in a way that is much more inclusive to address the needs of pregnant women and their babies,” Krubiner said. While a small but rising number of vaccines are now being developed specifically for use during pregnancy, pregnant women are still rarely included in the development of vaccines targeted at more general populations. But with increasing attention being paid to vaccine research for epidemics — through initiatives such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a public-private coalition that aims to speed up vaccine research, and WHO’s blueprint for research and development — there is an opportunity for change, Krubiner said. “There's a lot of effort right now to try and bring to market new and innovative vaccines so that the next time there is an outbreak of Lassa fever or Nipah virus or even Ebola we will have more tools at our disposal … All of those efforts that are happening now can be leveraged to proactively include pregnant women in the response,” she said. “I think we have a moment right now to learn from our past failures and to really change, to shift the paradigm.”

From the article: President Donald Trump will select David Malpass, currently the undersecretary of treasury for international affairs, as the US nominee to lead the World Bank, the Washington Post and Politico have reported. -- Justin Sandefur, an economist at the Center for Global Development, an influential think tank working on global poverty and development, put out a statement arguing that other World Bank stakeholders should attempt to block Trump’s pick. While the US has traditionally chosen the World Bank head, formally the position is selected through a vote of bank shareholders, and other countries could indeed band together to reject Malpass. @JustinSandefur on the US's nominee for @WorldBank president - view Tweet here W. Gyude Moore, the former minister of public works for Liberia (and thus someone with deep experience in one of the developing countries where the World Bank is most needed), compared nominating him to nominating an arsonist to be a fire chief. “An incorrigible arsonist will now be our fire chief. Man spends his adult life denigrating multilateralism and now has the "pleasure" of running one of it's pillars. When does it end?" - view Tweet here