The research examines the World Bank Group’s Development Policy Loans (DPLs) to the Philippines from March 2020 to June 2023 and their attached conditionalities to show how these impinge on women’s rights, and undermine sovereignty and democratic ownership over development.

IBON International’s analysis shows that the WBG’s DPLs to the Philippines perpetuate systemic violence against women by promoting resource plunder, exacerbating debt burdens, and worsening the exploitation of women’s labour, along with direct forms of violence such as militarisation, state reprisals, and gender-based violence. It also exposes the intrusive and powerful influence of the WBG’s policy directions over national economic policies. It is timely to look into the risks of DPLs to women’s rights as the WBG intends to further instrumentalise DPF to impose debt and conditionalities on the global South in line with its new 2024-2030 Gender Strategy.

See Appendix for the list of World Bank loans covered by the research.