New book examines human rights and holding the Bank to account

News|Bretton Woods Project|19 March 2009|url
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The World Bank's responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill human rights has long been a topic of concern. With the release of a new book Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights: The role of multilateral organizations by Desmond McNeill and Asuncion Lera St. Clair, this discourse has once again been revisited.

The book was launched in London on 3 March at the London School of Economics (LSE) with a presentation from Desmond McNeill, co-author of the book and research professor at the University of Oslo. Comments were offered by Robert Wade, professor of political economy and development at LSE as well as Peter Frankental, economic relations programme director at Amnesty International UK.

In his presentation, McNeill highlighted how, despite rhetoric, issues of ethics and human rights have, for very varying reasons and in differing ways, been effectively prevented from impinging on actual practice, giving examples from UNDP, the World Bank, UNESCO and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Turning to the World Bank, he pointed out that while Bank staff have some awareness of rights and the moral aspects of their work, the institution's focus on an economic framework along with its claims of being apolitical has constrained the ways in which the Bank thinks and speaks about such matters. Human rights are only spoken of in instrumental terms, such as focusing on how human rights will contribute to economic growth, due to the technocratic and economic framing often used to depoliticise issues. He focused on an example of such constraints, drawing attention to a debate that took place around the issue of equity and development in the 2006 World Development Report (WDR), the Bank's flagship publication. The WDR was called Equity and Development, and was the first time the Bank had put any word close to human rights on a masthead publication.

In his comments, Wade further fleshed out the internal debate that took place around the publication of Equity & Development. The WDR team's initial intention was to write about 'inequality and development', but several Executive Directors on the Board objected, saying that since 'inequality' was a political concept and since the Bank was apolitical, the title was inappropriate. The team hit upon the distinction between 'inequality', referring to 'outcomes', and 'equity', referring to 'opportunities'. 'Expanding opportunities' was not 'political', it argued, and with this revision the Board approved.

As part of this Wade also argued that at the moment there is little research that proves that human rights and the rule of law have an impact on poverty reduction, the focus of the Bank's mandate. He argued that this lack of empirical evidence on the 'instrumental' effects of measures to promote human rights leaves the moral case. But the Bank feels that this, too, like 'inequality', takes it into 'political' territory. Some member states consider that human rights as understood in the West are a western notion, not appropriate to their culture and state-society compact. Again, as with inequality and equity, the Bank tries to fudge the issue in order to satisfy the conflicting demands of its various constituencies.

In his remarks, Frankental focused specifically on the International Financial Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private sector arm, drawing attention to the fact that the IFC is not only the fastest growing body of the Bank in terms of distribution of funds, but is also being seen as the engine of the Bank's work. A joint secretariat has been established between the IFC and the International Development Association highlighting that the Bank's lending to poor countries will be closely aligned with the private sector. While this in and of itself is not problematic, the necessity for the IFC to compete against other lenders in the global market makes it difficult for the IFC to impose any standards, that would make its loans more costly for corporate clients.

Frankental further drew attention to the fact that the IFC's performance standards therefore do not as a whole embody human rights standards and are set forth with the qualification that the standards are only applicable 'if technically and financially feasible'. In conclusion Frankental asserted that the Bank's relationship to the market must be rethought if it is to become a moral entity and may lead to the need for a strategy that places less emphasis on private sector investment because of the lack of ethical underpinnings of companies and the market.

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Published: 19 March 2009 , last edited: 20 March 2009

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