Posted by Sasja Bokkerink, Oxfam Novib.

Attending the Annual Meetings and working with Oxfam International is new to me - I joined Oxfam Novib two weeks ago, after having worked for Jubilee Netherlands for many years. It was actually quite impressive to watch the smoothly working team in action. Preparation beforehand was professional and to the point, aiming at concrete results. Tonight we had our final meeting and concluded that most of the results we aimed for were met. Press coverage has been very well thanks to two very well organised press stunts, one on voice and the other on education - and of course the boycott of the IMF / World Bank civil society programme (because of the government 'blacklisting' over 20 pre-accredited campaigners) helped very well in drawing the eye of the world's press to Singapore.

It's quite a big circus, these meetings, even though the People's Forum was held in Batam as the Singaporese government did not want it to take place in Singapore and most meetings took place in one huge conference centre, the Suntec building. The many many Singaporese that were working for the World Bank and IMF meetings were however extremely nice and well instructed.

Furthermore, the issue of education has been discussed extensively. Conditionality was focused on - thanks to the UK's brave step to hold back multilateral aid because it's unhappy with the progress made by the Bank in examining the negative impact of economic conditions. And the team made timely responses to the issues of IMF votes and quota's, which was discussed at Sunday's IMF Interim Committee as well as the Bank's new anti-corruption strategy, which was discussed at the World Banks Development Committee Meeting today.

Tonight most of our team are travelling home and I am looking forward to joining my kids for breakfast tomorrow!