Last week, we asked our ONE members to write a message to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) new chief, Christine Lagarde, and tell her to keep her promises to the world’s poorest people.

Almost 100 ONE members from all over the world participated in this action, our second assignment from the ONE Act a Week series.

Here are some of our favorite messages from our members:

You can read the rest of the notes here. If you want to take it to the next level, send the IMF this tweet with a link to your messages:

.@IMFNews, ONE members wrote messages to Ms. Lagarde, asking her to keep promises 2 poor. Read them here: http://bit.ly/rjZWE1

Thank you to everyone for participating in our first ONE Act A Week. Nearly 240 people from around the world sent messages of encouragement to the African Leadership Academy students featured in our “The Future of Africa” video. We’ll be sending your notes to those students soon. Here’s a few of my favorite messages that we received:

Your task for this week? Tell Christine Lagarde to keep her promises. In case you missed the news, Ms. Lagarde, former finance minister of France, is the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the IMF’s first female managing director, Ms. Lagarde will have one of the most powerful positions in global finance.

During her candidacy, she promised to enhance the IMF’s responsiveness to the needs of low-income countries, especially those in Africa, and promote diversity in the organization. But let’s make sure she keeps her word. Your assignment is to read the following articles and documents about Christine Lagarde, then leave a statement declaring that you are hereby holding her accountable for her efforts to fight global poverty.

Article 1: A short bio of Ms. Lagarde and current news clips
Article 2: Her statement to the IMF board
Article 3: Our petition to the IMF

Submit your statement here:

Next week, we’ll put your declarations in a document for you to tweet to the IMF’s Twitter handle, @IMFNews. How’s that for taking action on what’s happening in the news?

You have one week to complete this assignment.

Almost 48,000 ONE members signed our petition urging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to run an open, transparent and merit-based process for their top position — but now the results are in. This week, the IMF’s executive board announced that they have chosen Christine Lagarde of France to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the managing director of the IMF.

As the IMF’s first female managing director, Ms. Lagarde will have one of the most powerful positions in global finance. She will be in charge of working with the IMF’s member nations to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability and reduce poverty around the world, among other things. Her candidacy has won the support of several key African nations, including the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Before coming to the IMF, Ms. Lagarde was the finance minister of France, one of Europe’s most powerful economies, and has been at the forefront of containing Europe’s debt crisis. This experience will serve her well, as she’ll be expected to guide the IMF through these tough economic times at the same level as her predecessor.

“I will make it my overriding goal that our institution continues to serve its entire membership with the same focus and the same spirit,” she said in her first official IMF statement. “As I have had the opportunity to say to the IMF Board during the selection process, the IMF must be relevant, responsive, effective, and legitimate, to achieve stronger and sustainable growth, macroeconomic stability, and a better future for all.”

And when she says “future for all,” she also means Africa — which we were very pleased to hear. In her statement to the IMF board as a candidate, she said that one of the IMF’s key guiding factors should be to enhance its responsiveness to the needs of low-income countries, especially those in Africa.

She has also made it known that the IMF should strive to be even more diverse. “There should be appropriate and proportionate representation at staff level to express and respect both diversity and universality,” she said during her candidacy.

We welcome Ms. Lagarde for her efforts to fight global poverty — but she should know that we’ll be watching her to make sure that she keeps the promises she made to Africa, diversity and the world’s poorest people.

Ever since the May 18th resignation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speculation has swirled over who will be chosen to replace him as the head of the IMF. You may have even signed our petition already. ONE and other organizations like Oxfam and ActionAid are campaigning for an open, merit-based process when this important choice is made. The IMF itself endorsed this process, agreeing in 2009 “that the heads and senior leadership of the international financial institutions should be appointed through an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process,” so this should be a no-brainer, right? The unwritten rule that the IMF’s managing director is European, while the president of the World Bank is American, puts the IMF at a disadvantage by disqualifying many qualified candidates.

It’s important that whoever is chosen to lead the IMF, they be qualified to face the challenges the IMF will tackle in the very near future — from the debate over how to deal with Greece’s economic crisis to completing a series of ongoing reforms meant to boost the voice of emerging countries in the IMF.

With so much going on in Europe and elsewhere, it’s important that issues that affect developing countries are prioritized. At the Pittsburgh G20, developing countries were promised more equitable representation in the IMF, and the IMF committed to governance reforms.

Commitments made by the IMF in November 2010 include reforms of the representation of “dynamic emerging market(s) and developing economies” to increase by 6 percent while at the same time preserving the voice of the poorest developing nations. These reforms will be fully implemented by fall 2012 and it is critical that the new managing director embraces the changes and continues to advocate for the world’s poorest countries. In addition, the new head should continue to push an agenda of transparency and rigorous evaluation to assess the impact of IMF policies on developing countries.

Finally, one of the first tasks for the new IMF head will be to endorse that windfall profits from the IMF’s gold sale be mobilized to support the world’s poorest countries. In April 2008, the IMF decided to sell more than 400 tons of the Fund’s gold. Due to skyrocketing gold prices, the IMF earned $2.8 billion more than it expected. That $2.8 billion should be used to give low-income countries low or no-interest loans, keeping in mind their debt sustainability.

The world may have an answer as soon as this week to the IMF question. Regardless who is selected next to lead the IMF, we hope that they are chosen in an open, merit-based process and keep the developing world firmly on the IMF agenda.

Photo of the Washington, D.C., IMF building courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

By now, I’m sure you’ve received our email about our latest petition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We’re urging them to run a fair, transparent and merit-based process as they choose a new boss.

It seems like a no-brainer, but the vetting process for the world’s biggest financial institutions — the IMF and the World Bank — have been run as a sort of “gentleman’s agreement.” In complete layman’s terms, the US usually chooses the head of the World Bank, and Europe usually chooses the IMF’s leader. This process completely unfair, and as the Economist says, a “disgrace.” It simply closes out qualified candidates from all corners of the globe.

Being the head honcho of the IMF is one of the most important jobs in the world. You must be able to work with 187 countries to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, keep employment rates high, sustain economic growth and reduce poverty around the world. It’s a big job and should be given to the right person.

Please take a moment and tell the IMF executive directors to run a fair, transparent and merit-based process while looking for a new head of the IMF so that the best candidate, regardless of nationality, wins this crucial job.

Here are three of the highlights:

1. Africa gained another seat at the World Bank. With this weekend’s election of Dr. Renosi Mokate, former deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Africa gained a third seat on the World Bank’s 25-member executive board. This means that for the first time in the Bank’s history, developing countries now hold the majority of seats on the board, which is in charge of approving aid packages and overseeing projects. Boosting the voice and representation of developing countries within the World Bank and IMF was a key commitment made by the G20 last year in Pittsburgh, and has been a focus of reform efforts being undertaken by the World Bank over the past two years. On the IMF side, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced on Friday that a reform package for the IMF – which includes decisions on quotas and the size and composition of the executive board – is near completion, despite some “divergent views” that still exist among countries.

2. Zoellick made a final pitch for IDA. The annual meetings happened during the International Development Association’s (IDA) 16th financing round, with individual donors expected to announce their pledges by the end of the year. World Bank President Robert Zoellick used the meetings to issue a final plea for donors to support the IDA, which will need a 6 to 25 percent increase in resources to use for grants and interest-free, long-term loans for the world’s 79 poorest countries. He rattled off a long list of results that could be achieved by a robust IDA replenishment (including immunizations for 200 million children, health services for 30 million people, 80,000 km of roads, and training for 2 million new teachers), and stressed the IDA’s comparative advantage in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He said “It is critical not to see these goals [the MDGs] as independent, but to connect the dots that show their inter-relationship. And the IDA is maybe the only concessional funding system that offers grants or no-interest loans to allow countries with a sense of ownership to connect their development efforts with donor efforts from other countries.”

3. The World Bank launched an “International Corruption Hunter’s Network.” In addition to making the case for more resources, the Bank also announced a new initiative to help ensure that development finances are used wisely. The International Corruption Hunter’s Network (ICHN) (which sounds straight out of a James Bond novel, as Larry Elliot points out), aims to pool together the expertise of individual agencies that are working to stamp out corruption around the world. This initiative follows up on similar efforts made by the Bank in recent years, including the launch of the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR) and last year’s cross-debarment agreement with four other multilateral development banks — which means that entities debarred by one bank may be sanctioned for the same misconduct by the four others (or, as Zoellick put it, “Steal and cheat from one, get punished by all.”) These are all critical steps in helping ensure that resources for development are maximized and used efficiently so that they can make an impact in developing countries.

If you want to dig into meetings a bit more, you can read the final communiqué issued by the Development Committee (a joint body that advises the World Bank and IMF leadership on development topics), and check out webcasts from the weekend’s panels and roundtable discussions.

The first change that came from the meetings was an agreement by member states to increase the World Bank’s lending resources by $86 billion. This is the first capital increase the bank has made in nearly 20 years, and it comes at a critical time. Because of it, the World Bank will be able to uphold its current agreements and continue lending money, in spite of the setbacks of the economic crisis.

The other significant change is the redistribution of voting power among member states, giving more power to developing countries. This redistribution increased the power of developing countries by three percent, to over 47% of the total power shared by member states. China’s influence in particular increased among member states as it was promoted to third among shareholders, behind the United States and Japan and ahead of Germany. India’s influence also increased to 7th, while Brazil, Russia, and Turkey were given more power as well. Many Western European countries who have traditionally dominated international finance, such as the UK, Canada, and France saw their influence decline due to the redistribution.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick endorsed the changes by saying that, “the shift in voting power is crucial for the Bank’s legitimacy. It recognizes that we need to consign outdated concepts like ‘Third World’ to the history books. He continued, “Today, the world is moving towards a fast new evolving, multipolar world economy.” These changes represent a turning point in the distribution of power within the World Bank. The promotion of developing countries and the reallocation of power from traditional leaders show that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are successfully changing their policies and structures in order to more accurately represent the evolving world economy.

This is despite the IMF’s own analysis finding that “the global financial crisis greatly compounds the policy challenges confronting the region as it strives to consolidate its economic gains and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”.

ONE’s European Director Oliver Buston responded by highlighting the need for the IMF to take account of Africa in their recommendations:

“Countries in Africa that did nothing to cause the crisis are estimated to have lost $130billion due to falls in trade, FDI, remittances and bank lending. The IMF should make clear in their final report to the G20 in June that some of the revenue raised from their proposal on financial activities will be directed to Africa. Africa should not be forgotten when it comes to securing a global recovery.”

ONE will use the next few weeks before the G20 in Toronto to press Africa’s case for inclusion in the IMF’s final report and help ensure that hard won progress on reducing extreme poverty is not undermined.

You can read the IMF’s press release here.

Here’s a rough transcript:

Amanpour: Let me just go quickly to something else you mentioned. The loans. Both the IMF, you’ve proposed a $100 million loan, has said that that will be interest-free, at least until the end of 2011. The World Bank has said that they will stop or not demand payments on their loan of $38 million for the next five years. But many are calling for debt relief for Haiti. Why shouldn’t Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere have its debt relieved and wiped out?

Strauss-Kahn: That’s absolutely right. We are not allowed in the IMF to make grants, we make loans. But there is no repayment scheduled before five years from now. And I’m advocating the fact that in this five years’ time, we will have time to build a debt cancellation for Haiti. It’s impossible to ask a country like Haiti to repay debt when they are in the situation we have seen. So, it’s not only an economic problem now, it’s more humanitarian question and also partly a philosophical problem. Can humanity avoid to help a country in such a situation? My answer is no. We have to help them immediately with what we have as a tool. The only tool I have is a loan, no repayment for five years, no interest rate, that’s for immediate need. But then we have to build something stronger and of course debt cancellation in my view has to be part of it.

And here’s the video.