For the second time, the IFC is bucking recommendations to offer money as reparations to people hurt at a chain of schools it invested in, Bridge International Academies. Thanks in part to The Intercept’s reporting, the World Bank Board delayed a vote on an IFC action plan that did not include compensation.
Millions of Sudanese are fleeing a warzone—and exposing the world’s bankrupt response.
Rio Tinto’s Madagascar Mine Promised Prosperity. It Tainted a Community.
As Israel’s war against Hamas rages on, Palestinian women bear the heaviest burden.
Whistleblower: The World Bank Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse at a Chain of For-Profit Schools It Funded
Women helped bring down the country’s Islamist dictator—and are still stuck with fundamentalism.
She leads a team of 100 at a non-profit with operations across Africa and says climate has been seen through a male perspective for too long.
For six months, The Intercept’s Ryan Grim and I investigated horrendous child sex abuse allegations at Bridge International Academies, a chain of low-cost, for-profit private schools started by two former Harvard graduates and funded by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Pierre Omidyar, as well as the International Finance Corporation, the lending arm of the World Bank.
Thailand has long been one of the world’s major sex tourism destinations. Estimates of sex work’s contribution to GDP vary widely because the industry operates almost entirely underground. But in 2015, the black market research company Havocscope valued it at $6.4 billion per year—about 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP that year.
Despite earning billions annually, the industry is effectively illegal, controversial among Thais, and highly stigmatized. Now, the debate over sex work is spilling into public forums, with a progressive lawmaker introducing a bill in parliament to legalize it. Its proponents argue that criminalization has deprived sex workers of basic labor rights and protections enjoyed by other workers, making them more vulnerable to health risks, harassment, exploitation, and violence—while making sex work itself no less visible.
December 9th was International Anti-Corruption Day. Fuller Project contributor Neha Wadekar attended the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), a gathering in Washington, D.C., that brought together heads of state, civil society, business leaders and investigative journalists.
The conference drew some of the world’s most prominent anti-corruption voices. Among them was Maria Pevchikh, Chief Investigator at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a non-governmental organization founded by Alexei Navalny, the leading political rival of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Read our interview with Maria here.