Development finance institutions must be held accountable when the projects they fund result in human rights violations and environmental destruction.
Overview
Communities around the world are demanding accountability. Far
too often, the reality on the ground at project sites is a far cry
from the practices outlined in official bank policies, and from the
situation conveyed in project reports... more >> Protecting local people and environment requires strong policies
As a result of decades of grassroots campaigns and international advocacy efforts, today many multilateral banks and private companies have official safeguard policies that outline the institution's rules and requirements for protecting local people and the environment. However, many of these policies are weak and not actually implemented on the ground. When institutions violate their safeguard policies, the impacts are disastrous for project-affected communities. Institutions must be accountable to their policies, and safeguard policies and practices across all the institutions must be dramatically strengthened.
Local people need mechanisms to hold institutions accountable
When local people's rights are violated by destructive projects, they need a way to denounce these harms, find solutions, and hold the institutions involved accountable. A major advance in the global struggle for development justice and accountability was the creation of independent, citizen-based accountability mechanisms at the World Bank and other development finance institutions in the early 1990s. When the accountability mechanisms were first established, civil society was hopeful that the mechanisms would bring justice to people on the ground and created much-needed systemic change within the institutions. While these hopes have been realized in several cases, there remains a strong need to strengthen these mechanisms and local people's ability to access them.
Our Approach
IAP has played a vital role in promoting accountability at the international development finance institutions--and in raising the profile of accountability as an vital foundation for global justice. IAP founder Dana Clark was instrumental in the advocacy efforts to create the World Bank Inspection Panel, and has provided legal support to multiple community struggles in Asia, Latin America and the Pacific in filing claims with accountability mechanisms. In 2003, she co-edited the book Demanding Accountability: Civil Society Claims at the World Bank Inspection Panel, and has authored numerous articles in legal journals.
IAP continues to provide essential support to struggles for accountability around the world. We work with grassroots, national and international civil society organizations to promote principles of justice and accountability, including efforts to demand effective remedial measures for failed development projects. Our work in this area respond to the need to:
- Help civil society to understand and effectively utilize citizen-driven accountability mechanisms at international financial institutions (IFIs).
- Ensure that systems of accountability are fully effective, including mechanisms for ensuring remedial measures and policy compliance.
- Call attention to gaps and failures in accountability, both institutional and project-specific, and make suggestions for how these failures should be addressed.
- Empower affected communities and their allies to assert their rights effectively, through site visits, strategic advice, advocacy support, and information dissemination.
- Strengthen long-term working relationships between colleagues in the global south and the global north who are working on interlinked issues of human rights and the environment, including facilitating and participating in international networks.
- Stop the externalization of project costs onto local people and the environment, which includes challenging particular problem projects and also the development paradigms and policy frameworks that allow destructive projects to happen.
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