The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development.

[5] World Bank projects cover a range of areas from building schools to fighting disease, providing water and electricity, and environmental protection, and as such, they are linked to most of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In its early years, the bank made a slow start for two reasons: it was underfunded, and there were leadership struggles between the US executive director and the president of the organization.

UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for "reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa".

Under the changes, known as 'Voice Reform – Phase 2', countries other than China that saw significant gains included South Korea, Turkey, Mexico, Singapore, Greece, Czech Republic, Hungary, Brazil, India, and Spain.

[5] World Bank projects cover a range of areas from building schools to fighting disease, providing water and electricity, and environmental protection, and as such, they are linked to most of the Sustainable Development Goals.

To ensure that World Bank-financed operations do not compromise these goals but instead add to their realisation, the following environmental, social, and legal safeguards were defined: Environmental Assessment, Indigenous Peoples, Involuntary Resettlement, Physical Cultural Resources, Forests, Natural Habitats, Pest Management, Safety of Dams, Projects in Disputed Areas, Projects on International Waterways, and Performance Standards for Private Sector Activities.

Robert B. Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, said when the loans were announced on 15 December 2007, that IDA money "is the core funding that the poorest developing countries rely on".

Instead, the bank has taken an instrumental approach to the issue, in which inequality policies were seen as useful as long as they contributed to reducing (extreme) poverty or promoting average economic growth.

[5] Also, the bank engaged with the SDGs selectively; efforts to integrate the goals into organizational practices remained limited; and their inclusion in country-level processes is primarily voluntary.

In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank announced a $12 billion plan to supply "low and middle income countries" with a vaccine once it was approved.

It aims to fund investments that address critical gaps in pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response capacities at national, regional, and global levels, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries.

[72] The terms of the PEF, which is financed by bonds sold to private investors, prevent any money from being released from the fund until 12 weeks after the outbreak was initially detected (23 March).

Climate change is one of the single biggest challenges facing development, and we need to assume the moral responsibility to take action on behalf of future generations, especially the poorest.

[74]A World Bank report into climate change in 2012 noted that (p. xiii) "even with the current mitigation commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly a 20 percent likelihood of exceeding 4 °C by 2100."

"[81] EU finance ministers joined civil sector groups, including Extinction Rebellion, in November 2019 in calling for an end to World Bank funding of fossil fuels.

[87] The following table lists the top 15 DAC 5 Digit Sectors[88] to which the World Bank has committed funding, as recorded in its International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications.

[89] The World Bank has long been criticized by non-governmental organizations, such as the indigenous rights group Survival International, and academics, including Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises, and its former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz.

[93] Stiglitz argued that the free market reform policies that the bank advocates are often harmful to economic development if implemented badly, too quickly ("shock therapy"), in the wrong sequence or in weak, uncompetitive economies.

[96]: 133–141 In the 1990s, the World Bank and the IMF forged the Washington Consensus, policies that included deregulation and liberalization of markets, privatization and the downscaling of government.

[97] James Ferguson has argued that the main effect of many development projects carried out by the World Bank and similar organizations is not the alleviation of poverty.

[109]: 68  The World Bank responded with structural adjustment loans, which distributed aid to struggling countries while enforcing policy changes in order to reduce inflation and fiscal imbalance.

Some of these policies included encouraging production, investment and labour-intensive manufacturing, changing real exchange rates, and altering the distribution of government resources.

By the late 1980s, some international organizations began to believe that structural adjustment policies were worsening life for the world's poor, due to a reduction in social spending and an increase in the price of food, as subsidies were lifted.

Among other allegations, Klein says the Group's credibility was damaged "when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour 'flexibility' in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq".

Reports of a controversial $94,000 bonus awarded to the Bank's CFO, Bertrand Badré (2013-2016), at his request on top of a tax-free salary of $379,000, while significant staff cuts and austerity measures were being implemented, drew criticism from within and outside the organization.

This bonus, revealed by Senior Country Officer Fabrice Houdart amidst a broader effort by Kim to implement cost-cutting reforms, sparked debates over transparency, ethics, and the organization's commitment to its own principles, further exacerbating concerns about trust and leadership within the World Bank.

[122] According to reports citing a recording of a 2018 staff meeting shared by a whistleblower, World Bank staff were informed Robert Malpass, a recent economics graduate of Cornell University and the son of David Malpass, then US Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs and later President of the World Bank Group, would be hired as an analyst in July of that year.

Before Malpass became president, his son Robert had joined the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a branch of the World Bank Group that lends money to private sector businesses and whose USD 5.5 billion funding from a USD 13 billion World Bank capital increase was secured by the US Treasury at the time that David Malpass was the Treasury's undersecretary.

[125] On 9 August 2023, the World Bank announced it was suspending new loans to Uganda because it claims that a new anti-homosexuality act, enacted in May 2023, contradicts its core values on human rights.