In October, Mongolian herdsmen took a complaint to the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman, the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) accountability mechanism, against the Oyu Tolgoi mine being considered for World Bank support.
Displacement
Land
Background
Halting the global land rush: protecting land rights and promoting food security
This event discussed how to invest in agriculture in a responsible way, including research on the scale of the global rush for land, and explored potential solutions to the problem, including the role that the World Bank can and must play.
Environment
News
Unearthing the IFC's links to mining abuses
As mining projects in South Africa and Peru face violent opposition, critics are questioning the stakes held by the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the World Bank's private sector arm) in the corporations at the centre of the controversies. New IFC funding for mining projects in Mongolia and Guinea is also causing alarm, leading to a call for a return to the recommendations of the 2005 Extractive Industries Review.
Accountability
News
No IFC audit despite new Peru oil spill
In May, the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO), the accountability mechanism of the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the Bank's private sector arm), closed the Maple Energy case, despite a new oil spill in April.
Accountability
News
New claims of rights abuses in World Bank-funded 'land grabs'
As the World Bank held its Annual Conference on Land and Poverty in April, campaigners accused it once again of facilitating and legitimising 'land grabs' that harm local communities.
Environment
Commentary
An easy call: IFC should quit MRL mining project
The IFC should terminate its support to MRL's Philippine mining venture for not following their guidelines, and more than that, for ignoring the Philippine law concerning indigenous peoples.
Accountability
Commentary
Accountability squandered?
Despite a 2011 victory in Cambodia, where a mass eviction in the centre of Phnom Penh was halted and remaining affected families finally gained legal title to the land they had been wrongly denied under a World Bank project, recent arrests have put justice in jeopardy and led to calls for a continued lending freeze by the Bank.
Accountability
Background
Lessons from IEG's Cluster Review of IFC-supported Extractive Industries Projects
Minutes of IFC and extractives meeting, Washington DC, 21 April 2012
Land
Background
Notes of meeting between Stewart James, Alternate UK Executive Director to the World Bank, and NGOs
Civil society organisations met UK Executive Director to the World Bank and staff from the Department for International Development to discuss agriculture, land grabs, food security, the safeguards review process, the selection of the next World Bank president, the doing business indicators, and the debt sustainability framework.
Accountability
News
The World Bank and extractives: a rich seam of controversy
As World Bank projects fail to reduce corruption in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), International Financial Corporation (IFC) investments in extractives are provoking complaints and protests around the world.
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The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.