Amid escalating transition minerals mining, the expected 2025 review of IFC’s Performance Standards must result in a new approach.
Performance standards
Private Sector
News
IFC ignores concerns about investments in financial intermediaries
IFC disagrees with concerns raised by CAO about its capacity to assess whether its investments through financial intermediaries have a positive development impact.
Private Sector
Commentary
Submission to the World Bank Consultation for the Business Enabling Environment (BEE) Project
A coalition of CSOs have delivered a submission to the World Bank raising the BEE is just a rebranding exercise that does not address longstanding issues in the Bank's engagement in private sector advice.
Private Sector
News
New CAO Kamalanga report: five years of IFC non-compliance
CAO has released another report critical of IFC’s compliance with its own performance standards, highlighting lack of action and continued harm to affected communities.
Private Sector
Analysis
What is the social impact of the World Bank’s support to regulatory reform? Don’t ask the Bank
World Bank Group’s Independent Evaluation Group highlights that the Bank's support to business regulation reforms fails to capture the social impact of regulatory reform
Private Sector
Analysis
IFC: Learning lessons or institutional amnesia?
In response to the IFC’s shaming over its involvement with Dinant corporation in Honduras, the institution produced a “lessons learned” document. However, it has been rejected by campaigners, who are demanding more fundamental reform.
Private Sector
News
Civil society letter re: the IFC and lessons learned
A letter from civil society in response to the IFC's lesson learned briefing
Private Sector
Analysis
IFC funding to financial intermediaries: unfit for purpose
An IFC investment in ANZ Royal Bank has been criticised after the bank was implicated in a “massive land grab” in Cambodia. Further cases from Guatemala and Honduras reinforce calls for IFC to rethink its investments in financial intermediaries.
Private Sector
News
Response letter to the head of IFC Jin-Yong Cai re: IFC investment in the financial sector
This letter was written to respond to an IFC 6 January 2014 reply to a November 2013 civil society letter about the International Finance Corporation’s action plan to reform lending to the financial sector. The 26 groups signed on to the letter believe the IFC’s action plan is inadequate and urge the head of the IFC to do more to address the audit’s findings.
Land
News
Complaint filed against IFC funded Lafarge mining operation
Khasi indigenous people in Indian state of Meghalaya have filed a complaint with the CAO over illegal land infringement by French multinational Lafarge's Bangladeshi cement plant.
Featured briefings
12 December 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2024
12 December 2024
Missing in action: accountability is noticeably absent from the World Bank Group’s new Corporate Scorecard
The Corporate Scorecard’s accountability gap is symptomatic of a broader failure on the part of the WBG to fully internalise, integrate and learn from the work of its accountability mechanisms.
16 October 2024