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How the World Bank’s biggest critic became its president | World Bank | The Guardian

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After years of working with the poor, Jim Yong Kim thought he could lead the World Bank to fight global suffering. Then the organisation turned against him. I n a shanty town perched in the hilly outskirts of Lima, Peru, people were dying. It was 1994, and thousands of squatters – many of them rural migrants who had fled their country’s Maoist guerrilla insurgency – were crammed into unventilated hovels, living without basic sanitation. They faced outbreaks of cholera and other infectious diseases, but a government austerity program, which had slashed subsidised health care, forced many to forgo medical treatment they couldn’t afford. When food ran short, they formed ad hoc collectives to stave off starvation. A Catholic priest ministering to a parish in the slum went looking for help, and he found it in Jim Yong Kim, an idealistic Korean-American physician and anthropologist. In his mid-30s and a recent graduate of Harvard Medical School, Kim had helped found Partners in Health, a non

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim at a child and mother care centre in New Delhi, India, June 2016. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP After years of working with the poor, Jim Yong Kim thought he could lead the World Bank to fight global suffering. Then the organisation turned against him. By Andrew Rice Supported by About this content Thu 11 Aug 2016 01.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Oct 2022 12.06 EDT Share Prefer the Guardian on Google I n a shanty town perched in the hilly outskirts of Lima, Peru, people were dying. It was 1994, and thousands of squatters – many of them rural migrants who had fle

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