Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are instruments used by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to enable developing countries to qualify for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. The international financial institutions (IFIs) claim that developing countries and their national governments are primarily responsible for the design and implementation of the PRSPs, but evidence suggests this is largely superficial, says research from the University of Oxford’s Queen Elizabeth House which finds that local people, communities or organisations often have only minimal input. The research says civil society participants mostly consist of a mix of NGOs which are not necessarily representative either of society as a whole or of the poor in particular.