travels the world, investigating the global crisis as people are evicted to clear the way for investors and properties too often left empty. push a witness documentary on a just, you know, ah. ready hello, i'm marianne nazena and then a quick look at our main stories. now. the un secretary general is told if your peers prime minister does not accept his decision to expel 7 senior personnel. if your peers for ministry crimes, the officials being expelled from meddling in the internal affairs of the country, the un says it could effect humanitarian operations out more than 5000000 people in the war to take right region. the canyon government and our delegation certainly is, is not considering questions about perio state or what the responsibility of government

is. we're considering all the statements, including some of the communications from the foreign ministry by twitter. and we are continuing to actively be informed and trying to be responsive to the situation as we levels. but we have every hope that it will go in a positive direction. georgia, a former president, macau soccer really has been detained just hours after arriving back in the country for the 1st time in years. he posted a video on facebook saying we wanted to support wanted to support your position in saturdays election despite the risk of arrest robin for still. walker is in tbilisi . he was actually detained here in to the see having somehow escaped or the authorities since posting that video early this morning from by to me, which is on the coastal, which is on the coast here on, on the black sea, he made it to the police and he then said that he said he faced likely arrest. we

then had a statement from the prime minister saying that that arrest operation had been carried out. and we've now seen a smiling recall sacristy being taken into prison. we understand that prison is angry savvy. it's the town not far from the from tbilisi itself. i really that just kept an extraordinary dane, george and politics because michael sec s. v. a has made disappearance on the eve of municipal and merrill elections, which the opposition consider is really important because they hope that georgia public will come out tomorrow and vote decisively against the georgia dream government. so make off sectors really has picked this moment. now finally, after all these years to return and shake up the george and political sci residence in a small colombian town, st influx of myself, haitian migrants is pushing them out of housing. and i sandra amputee,

explains more on this from the cookie. panama has put a maximum of 500 people that they are accepting every day that can enter their country. and so both companies here in columbia are only selling or letting go of $500.00 people per day that us created a bottleneck where we are. and there are now 22000 migrants here trying to continue their journey. wow. mostly, asians are able to go many have to stay here for well over a month to be able to to then leave either migrants like for example, cubans and venezuelans are telling us that they simply are not sold tickets because find them. i said that they will deport them if their answer, their countries have very, very complicated situation. here. a lot of the migrants who are here are spending all their money they have for their trip due to be here. locals are doing price

gouging, increasing prices for the migrants. it's a very, very complicated situation and to try and stem the arrival of new migrants. now we understood that columbia authorities are also forcing bus companies at the border with the eck, whether to stop selling tickets to migrants trying to get here. the un humanitarian coordinator for lebanon is saying 88 in every 10 people there. and now living in poverty and around a 3rd or an extreme poverty countries, economic crisis is seen. the prices of food and fuel fall outstripped wages, the state ravaged by corruption. international aid is now bypassing the government to go straight to the people. the bottom line is a program coming out next they'll be more news coming up to you later on cleaning of course and use our 2100 g m t. oh

hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question after the latest scandal at the world bank. should that institution be trusted and should its plug be pulled? let's get to the bottom line. ah, once upon a time the world bank had an annual publication that ranked every country in the world according to the ease of opening and running a business. and it became a hugely successful and influential annual report. while now it's dead. the doing business report was supposed to be a useful tool for businesses and investors before jumping into uncharted waters. but as it became more important for governments that wanted to attract foreign direct investment, it also became were crucial to be rank highly. plus, there was that prestige element to big rank, highly as an attractive place for business. then boom, a recent investigation found the countries such as china, saudi arabia, and others,

were pressuring the bank to increase their scores. while other countries like chile and azerbaijan were having their scores pushed down for political reasons. so what does this tell us about the world bank and it's other reports, and if the mighty world bank is vulnerable to political and financial pressure, what should we say about smaller institutions in governments that are trying to fight corruption? they were talking with unit kelly, dean of the sanford school of public policy at duke university and author of score card diplomacy, grading states to influence their reputation and behavior. and for greece, who to are a former officer at the world bank and the office of the un high commissioner for human rights and currently the managing director at our leadership. thank you both for joining me today. and let me just start with unit. can you help us set the stage for what has happened in terms of the accusations that have blown about the world bank doing business report? sure, so the bank started publishing this report, you know, 2004. i became quite an influential report. many countries of trying to,

to move up in the rankings that you said. and over time, countries work with the bank on what kinds of reforms can be undertaken. and the pressure, as you've described, has built over the years. and there are some countries that have put pressure on the bank and in 20162018, there were some, some questions raised about some type of rankings. and last august, it was actually pause to that report was paused, so that an investigation could be undertaker about these 4 countries in particular and their rankings. and now, you know, recently at the investigation came out, and that with the bank reacted very fortunately, i actually saying we're going to discontinue the report altogether. so that's the stage. mean, well, let me ask you for bri, i mean, you worked inside of the world bank. what's wrong with measuring one country

versus another? what's wrong with looking at various criteria and trying to establish empirically not only how different countries compare, but what sorts of criteria help a political economy, a liberal market economy move forward. what are the flaws in that, in that formula? well, you know, steve, of course, professor kelly is more suspicious. he's the owner. i'm doing business rankings. but what i believe it's extremely important. call the war bank to make an assessment of the ease of doing business in country the in fact, worse than the war bank and do it. and that's why it's actually extremely unfortunate that the bank are to erase doing business initiative, which a lot of taxpayer money i've been spent to establish because of ernest, the core behavior at the top of the institution. but there is that because of the

fact that the board, which he the $170000000.00 a cost every year did not played so bill side role own issues within your management. and so, you know, i believe that the bang should continue to missouri during business, but unfortunately, because of, of issue during business of a big v as to neither p, it should be mentioned crystelina, georgia, eva who is 2nd in command at the world bank at the time now head of the international monetary fund has called the invest investigation simply untrue, ah, how. how much is the pattern that has been written about not only are in those who have been reporting on this case, but you know, the washington post just recently came out and just said, this is a big deal in a fully a full fledged editorial critique of the world bank and said we now have to take the world bank with a grain of salt. as we look at these reports, how much of what we're seeing in the doing business report, but brief,

do you think has been part of the problem of other work that the world bank has done? well, you know, i agree with you. it is a huge deal because where did, where did christian through the seriousness of teams did. you should like the world been in the i m f and the truth. you that, steve, you, you might remember that would be to offer in 2007 in which actually i think you kind of played a bit of a road and, you know, think then, thus been discussion about issued the 18th and retaliation of the war bank. and the recent command that mr month by the true president of the bank fed in which he said, well, we are going to have a hard look at, i'll get you. i know atx at our issue, the retaliation. that's not enough because all of his predecessor of medicine proclamation. and so we have to question issue the child who other shareholder facilities to be at the head with institution. what is the book doing in terms of

oversight? you know, when you have a stitching board, seems like that should not be happening. and so i think it's key to remember that this is not only about doing business. it's about the church of the institution. huh. unit you recently wrote a very fascinating, informative piece on a call. what happened at the world banks doing business report and, and to just give your report credit, you know, in terms of responding to the i, m f, managing director of madam at yoga. you said that she thanked that, staffed her for doing his quote bit for multilateralism. when the rankings on china were changed and i'm interested in your insights in this because your point is broader than the doing business report is i understand it. your book that, that your studies have shown that these ranking reports always lead to gaming and essentially always lead to cronyism if i'm getting it right. and my understanding your perspective on this correctly. so you asked earlier,

what's wrong with drinking countries and scoring them in different ways? and so i think there's absolutely nothing wrong. and it's actually a good idea. in many ways, i should make clear and i personally have made no comment about the misconduct of anybody in the world bank. i'm not privy to the investigation and comment on anybody's conduct but, but there are so many different ratings and rankings out there that this is really a phenomenon that's growing over the last 30 years. and you know that you a state department, right? countries on how they perform a human trafficking, we got a transparency in there, so many indices out there. and this is also not the only one the world is doing. and so i think that we have to ask ourselves whether just because something goes wrong in particular report, is that a reason to get rid of all these types of exercises? you know, there's so much information out there we can't consume at all. we can't process it

all, and that's why we love ratings and rankings. whether it's a us news and world report rating. you know, universities are, you know, whether it's the bank rating at the ease of doing business. and it is a way also for organization. sometimes we organizations to try to help define norms around certain things and to put pressure on countries and they see results. and so yes, not, no system is perfect. and there's a lot to be learned from the ratings and ranking systems that can be how a ways of exercising influence in local governments more broadly speaking. well, i mean, i really appreciate that perspective, illinois jump active for free from it. and as you know, the criteria you're asking about can really matter a lot. and some, some have been critics of this process. it both of the bretton woods institutions, the i met the world bank and said that the essentially the values that are trying to be generated often work at odds with fire mental issues with labor issues. ah,

we should our works on the broad issues of inclusion and diversity, l g b t q issues across the world. and that if those aren't somehow look at, you know, you can go to michael porter at harvard university, said you want to be a successful fast grow city. those places in the world that are pro l g b t are the ones that do best and you can look at the rankings. but that kind of a comparative scale on labor environment and other issues. at least people have quit, criticize and said they're not robust enough. that's why you had some pressure on countries like saudi arabia, francis for breach your thoughts. yeah, you know, i mean, of course, you know that i will give you a piece of the high commissioner for human rights. and i believe that the system, the ability of economies, the chas. so you are a b o senior who require yes for them to make progress on human rights. and you know, i was always very upset to see that cynthia, who was at the top of the chart in doing business despite the fact that the crewmen

that either sensate relationship and actually steve bold attributed to civic society. but one of the things that i, that i should mention, that there was progress. and in fact, the doing be the business re, booked. as soon as 2016 started including a very prominent gender lens to the doing business. and, and in a way, it's kind of sad to see that all of this, whoa, is now going to good ways because of misbehavior. i'd that had moved institution fast. i, you know, you know, please go ahead. yes. so, i mean, what you're referring to is the introduction of the women in the law into the business rankings. right. and, and we saw a saudi arabia really tumble, for example, when the women in the law right introduced into these rankings. and this goes precisely to the point that these weightings and rankings. we had discussions about value, discussion about what, what matters,

and when we talked about the global development index, and then we have the sustainable development. it is all about what should we be caring about? and so at the end of the day, it comes down to methodology and transparency and accountability, right? and when you have an index, unfortunately like the ease of doing business that, that i tried to put forward very scientific methodology. then this type of pressures are much more, it's much more susceptible to, to, to things going wrong because everything is being measured precisely as opposed to a lot of other ratings and rankings that use sort of a broad, subjective categories of doing, you know, these are doing realities under performing these are doing great. and so i think this question of norms and up transparency and accountability are really important . and i'm not sure that i'm not sure that the world that the ease of doing business report is going to be going to waste. i do think your bank will be looking at other ways of measuring the business,

the business environment. and we also now have women in the law. there's a separate index, it that so that's also not going to wait. you let me take this a step forward further because you just re something that i think as the core of something i been intrigued with. and that is, i don't know how to put it any other way. a kind of relative process where america's weight in the world continues to be important. but other nations are becoming vastly more important as well on a relative basis over time. and that means that the values in norms in china matter, the values and norms in india matter or brazil, or other large, you know, stakeholders in the global system. you can even go to countries as for brief, talked about singapore very small, they're small nations that really hit above their weight that have big impact. we were talking about the u. h. e, for instance, is one of those that influence. so i'm interested in the values tension over the donor countries,

the donor countries that sort of undergird the support for the bretton woods institutions. and to what degree we have a values clash evolving and we have our head in the sand about it. and so your thoughts on that and i'll go to pieces. well, yeah, so i do think we haven't values class, she normally see it with the mountain road initiative and other things like this. and i think back, you know, it's very interesting. i studied election monitoring a long time ago and initially all the election monitor organizations are very western. and then i started to see some russian organizations, some chinese efforts, other efforts to try to present out soon in monitoring organizations. and so in the same way in the, in the space around ratings and rankings, i suspect that we will see more and more cases where different countries are taking the lead and trying to, to, to present different values that should matter and rate and rank countries in

different race as a way of promoting their values just for reach your thought. yeah, you know, if you read the repo, the reason why jim keen improved the ranking of china is because he won't china to contribute to the capital increase that you're, the concrete would not contribute to that ships then surely to and then similarly the reason why improve the ranking of though your india is because so you're already paying reimbursable to technical assistance to the bank. and so one of the, one of the clear thought is that both the european and western country to disengage fine insurance from this institution. it's leaving room to china on other countries to take the place. and then the other thing that i wanted to point out to you is that i mentioned that the board sitting book didn't place oversight road. and one of the reason is because the quality of the executive director as been declining over time. and the reason why it has been declining is because europe and countries

and wisdom countries very often do not care about those institutions. and so china is coming in and saying, well, if you don't care about these institution, i'm going to feed that back to him. okay. you know, one of the other things have race that you and i have discussed before is that sometimes you have excellent, excellent staff within the system, the bureaucracy of these the, these institutions. but they're often over on visas that, that make them vulnerable to pressure from management that they are held hostage. much like we talk about other in human trafficking, people being held hostage by someone who is essentially of impressed them into service and threatening them with a being expelled from a country or something over their their password. i'm decision with a power relationship is between managers who you've just said are largely derelict in their governance responsibilities in some cases versus the staff who are

vulnerable in raising or challenging ah, the orthodoxies or the instructions are getting from managers. you know, the vast majority of the star 95 percent are incredibly dedicated and passionate people about the issue of development and eradicating extreme poverty. and so it's really sad to see that the reputation and credibility of the institution is being done by the senior management. but as you mention, you know, it's very difficult to dissent in an institution when you would be quickly exposed from the united states. if you dare to criticize a young innovation because of your visa studies. and that there is another element which is crucial is that the vast majority of the people that welcomed the doing business repo where shot them contractor. many people that will not something that would have a contract in the next 6 months. and therefore, they also could not express dissent. when you read the wilma henry book,

it's the atrocious to see the threat of retaliation that are clearly made by the staff of missiles, georgia, and the stuff of prison and came against the anybody that would dare talk about the changing the rating unit. let me ask you a similar question because i think your critique has gone more to the core of these ranking reports. and my question is to you is, is, is because you also said a few moments ago. they don't necessarily have to be this way than other things could be good. is there some way to manage or organize a report that would be resilient against these kind of pressures that had been outed and discussed? is there some formulation that you proposed that would get these kind of comparisons, which for brea said, they're going to happen again. they can play a useful role. but, but you said fundamentally, they become corrupt just about every time. well, the bank of course,

did try to have a firewall. i know many of the excellent people who work on their report and they, they were definitely supposed to be firewall. so that's one way of trying to to do it. but the pressure is, you know, we're talking about countries like china and russia, the pressures i met, not the 1st time they try to put pressure on whether or not they even should be ranking. like 7 or 8 years ago. they were trying to say, yeah, you can have the data, but don't rank, you know, so different. this is a mess. pressure, you know, always is to have these things done by organizations that are not themselves, the powerful organizations that have the member state, per se. so, you know, with there's something that's a small, a fund that has something called a transparent report and they make the transparency of how all the big agencies, a new plan all over the world are how transparent they are with their spending. and

you know, it's very powerful tool, but it's, it's, it's a separate because it's a small and you know, doing it, but nothing is ever going to be perfect. and so i think at the end of the day, we have to say, are these readings and rankings worth it? and then when something comes out, you know, can you find ways to address it and improve it? certainly, united states trafficking in persons report has that political pressures in the past, but it's, it's still going strong and it's important because. 2 it's difficult to exert pressure on countries. it's difficult to get about the types of reforms in human rights in other areas. and if there are ways of saying this country, you know, is treating women better. this country has a greater percentage of women in parliament, etc. these are tools that are allowed to get along, and so it is, we hope that we won't throw the baby out with the bathwater and that will take a good look. the ease of doing business with has done a lot of good work,

but maybe it is an opportunity now to look at some of the things that were being measured by the bank. you know, very d regulatory in nature. and many people think that's the way to go, but the regulatory pressure is also has effects on unable rights. for example, i'm environmental issue. so maybe we can take a step back in and come to an even better solution. but it's fascinating. you know, i, i, i feel like this discussion is one we should have been having years ago in this way to kind of look at these questions. and i guess, you know, one of the points of interest specs and, and perhaps humility, that i think of as an american america has been sprawling the world try to tell other countries, you know, how to organize that after the 20082009 financial crisis. i think her real questions on america's, you know, a qualifications to counsel about crony capitalism. i think after january 6th, the insurrection in the u. s. capitol, it's harder for americans to talk about how to manage democracy, right? what should be on the rights of various parties within a, within a system?

we're not, we're not trained. that's the us side of this quite equation. and i just like ask you for breeze, you know, in, in, in, in closing, you know, what should our north star b, should we have a kind of, alec heart ism like, you didn't just sort of describe that. we're no longer looking at any political system, per se, as the model, and we need to have an ala carte selection across the board that constantly can be, is that the honest way to do this? well, you know, i think a merchant there will approach that is completely impartial, even this is our right because, you know, this time it was china and so d r a b are applying pressure. but you could imagine that you know, that they're doing the exact same thing and therefore it is important that the things that you should remain impartial, that, that. busy that the debate, but don't feel that the bald plate fluidity that they will rule of all the countries coming together, that they both agree on the roots of the game and,

and therefore, i think, you know, to me, it, you know, it's important to realize that this is not the end of the world bank or the math that remains critical. but the, we probably have to have a hard look at the church of institution. who do we up pointed ahead of the institution and broader, more importantly, is the stitching board playing it for the side rule here? let me just, yeah, please go ahead unit. if i'm a, i mean these are doing this, this is not the only one out there. i mean, it is, there is a free for a lot, and there are many produces a different rankings in the space. there's no competitive, nothing. the heritage foundation has an index right to go from there should monitor . i mean, that's many different ones out there and so cultivating broad universe of different types of measurements i think is beneficial. well, thank you for that. we'll, we'll leave it there for now. but it sounds like we've got more work to do on many of these lists. unit kelly professor at duke university of received our former

officer at the world bank in the united nations. thank you so much for being with us today. thank you for the nurse. so what's the bottom line? a lot of people think this world bank scandal is bad news for globalization. why should government do the hard work of weeding out corruption and creating he cannot mclee efficient and fair systems if there's an easier way to look pretty to other countries and big financial power houses? the answer really is the government's aren't that stupid. they always knew that the numbers were prone to manipulation, even if they loved the be in the top 10 or the top 20. the real problems here are hypocrisy and credibility. the world bank is a powerful washington based institution that influences the movement of billions of dollars and constantly counsels other countries on how to properly sculptor economies and societies. but the world bank is vulnerable to crony capitalism. then so 2 are much smaller institutions and countries. and that's the bottom line. ah,

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where we will and leach our potential bo twana. all pride. your destination lou ah, hello, i'm marianne demise in london. look at the main stories now. the un secretary general has told the ethiopian prime minister, it does not accept his decision to expel 7th senior personnel. if you have his former 3 crimes, the officials being expelled for meddling in the internal affairs of the country. the u. n says it could affect humanitarian operations that help more than 5000000 people in the war torn take ry region.