In the wake of recent crises, the international community embarked on a range of initiatives to strengthen the international financial architecture. While there is no agreed definition of what constitutes international financial architecture, it refers broadly to the framework and set of measures that can help prevent crises and manage them better in the more integrated international financial environment. Several aspects of the agenda for crisis prevention and crisis resolution deal with weaknesses in the international financial system that potentially contribute to the propensity and magnitude of global instability, hence requiring collective action at the international level. But there is widespread recognition that global financial stability also rests on robust national systems and hence requires enhanced measures at the country level as well.

The World Bank Group's role in this agenda is determined by its mandate of poverty reduction, its familiarity with and involvement in developing countries given its role as a global development institution, and its comparative strengths on social and structural issues:

• First and foremost, the World Bank is helping countries assess the social and structural sources of vulnerability and address underlying policy and institutional weaknesses.
• Second, the World Bank is contributing to efforts to strengthen economic and financial governance at the global level in its areas of comparative advantage, and to help bring developing country experience and perspectives to the discussions that are underway on reform.
• Third, the World Bank is helping countries respond to and manage the consequences of financial crises.

Three important initiatives are underway with the IMF pertaining to international financial architecture (see links and topics on this web-site): (a) the Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes; (b) the Financial Sector Assessment Program; and (c) the preparation of Public Debt Management Guidelines and a complementary Practitioner's Manual on the development of domestic markets for government debt. The World Bank also has strengthened partnerships with the relevant standard setting bodies and other institutions in the areas of corporate governance, accounting and auditing and insolvency regimes to forge a consensus and catalyze concerted actions. In addition, the World Bank is especially concerned with managing the social dimension of economic crises, and supporting social protection to help poor people manage the effect of economic shocks.