International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group – Annual Meetings Final Report

Executive Summary

The International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group Annual Meetings for Fall 2021 were held from October 11 to 17, 2021 with physical sessions taking place in Washington, DC and most attendees doing so virtually from across the world. There were also Civil Society Policy Forum meetings which took place in the two weeks leading up to the conference, which some of our delegation attended. In addition, upon invitation of the Global Green Growth Institute, members of our delegation attended events taking place during Global Green Growth Week, which occurred from Oct 25 to 27, 2021. Delegates were divided amongst different virtual events according to interest and availability, to ensure a general coverage of all events as they occurred.

Key successes came from the fact that our delegation was successful in networking and representation terms through our stakeholder engagement sessions, which were wide-ranging and very informative. In particular, the engagement work that we did with the Global Green Growth Institute will hopefully set up a longer term partnership between the GGGI and YDC, and allow us to provide useful feedback to their management to inform their incorporation of youth perspectives into their broader work.

Some challenges our delegation encountered were due to the digital nature of the Meetings this year.  By nature, some of the more informal and serendipitous benefits of the in-person summits were lost. In particular, the ability to network and have side conversations with delegations and organizations from other countries was much more limited, both due to the digital environment and time zone constraints. Despite our best efforts, attempting to “break into” a space like the IMF/WBG and make connections as a civil society organization is difficult under the current digital environment. We do hope that future delegations will be able to return to an in-person or hybrid format, as the public health situation allows for.

Our delegation also met with a number of stakeholders external to the meetings, in order to inform our participation and better understand the international economic policy environment and Canada’s place within it. Amongst these were meetings with officials with Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Global Green Growth Institute, Scotiabank, the Canadian Embassy in Washington and Canada’s delegation to the International Monetary Fund.