A report by NGOs in Chad, Cameroon and the US finds that the World Bank’s Implementation Completion Report (ICR) for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is seriously at odds with the findings of official project monitors.
Indigenous peoples
Rights
Background
Chad-Cameroon pipeline: implementation, challenges and lessons learned
Minutes of meeting on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline
Environment
News
Indian forestry project violates safeguards
An Indian forestry project is found to violate Bank safeguards.
Rights
News
Bank directors bound by rights obligations
A report by a coalition of German NGOs finds that Germany extra-territorial obligations extend to its role in multilateral development banks.
Environment
News
CAO fails to reduce conflict in Peru
A report by Friends of the Earth finds that the 'roundtable dialogue' set up by the World Bank's Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) has been unable to fulfil its objectives to intervene effectively in conflicts between the IFC-supported Yanacocha mine company and affected communities in Cajamarca, Peru.
Rights
News
World Bank on human rights: “active support” but no politics
In October the Swedish minister of foreign affairs launched a Nordic trust fund for justice and human rights, and the World Bank Institute devoted its latest edition of Development Outreach, to human rights and development
Accountability
Analysis
The IFCs lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project
In September 2006 the IFC published its first issue of a new publication entitled Lessons of Experience. However, the IFC's lessons drawn from the external compliance monitoring group in the Chad-Cameroon project read more like a tool to market the concept of external monitors to IFC clients than lessons meant to design a more effective role for the external monitor in improving implementation of social and environmental commitments.
Rights
News
The IFC at fifty: All that glitters is too much gold
As the International Finance Corporation (IFC) marks its golden anniversary, the institution claims to serve "as a catalyst for innovative, market-based solutions for reducing poverty and addressing environmental and social challenges". The reality fails to justify such a glittering perspective. Problem gold mine projects in Ghana, Peru and Kyrgyzstan and serious weaknesses in its recent human rights impact assessment programme undermine the future credibility of an institution that is increasin
Environment
News
Sustainability dismantled
World Bank president Wolfowitz announces his move to disband the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) network within the Bank. It will be merged with the Bank's infrastructure department and report to the current head of the infrastructure department, Kathy Sierra.
Environment
News
Barrage of criticism over IFC safeguards review
A number of new reports have come out in criticism of the IFC's recent revision of its lending standards.
Featured briefings
6 April 2023
World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings 2023
5 April 2023
The IMF at the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The need for governance reform
As the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time the IMF’s shareholders use the opportunities provided by the anniversary and growing calls for reforms to the international financial architecture to redesign the IMF’s governance structures and programmes to ensure they are consistent with the commitments outlined in 1948 and with international human rights law.
5 April 2023
The global financial architecture and the international debt crisis: An urgent call for reform
Influence of unreformed international financial institutions and creditor interests in debt solutions in low- and middle-income countries plagued by delay and ineffective when undertaken.