World Bank Advocacy
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The World Bank is a multilateral development bank that uses a number of methods to give financing, loans, grants, technical support and other services to its borrower governments. The World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA) are the public-sector financing institutions of the Bank that are part of the larger World Bank Group.
For over 50 years, World Bank projects and programs have often resulted in communities being displaced from their land, losing the natural resources upon which they depend, and being driven deeper into poverty. Yet the mandate of the Bank is poverty alleviation. Accountability Counsel’s work to hold the World Bank accountable for its human rights and environmental impacts consists of four issue areas.
Our work supporting communities in Papua New Guinea regarding their complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel is a challenge to a palm oil expansion project that failed to properly consult with indigenous people and which will drive smallholder farmers deeper into poverty.
We are working with civil society partners to ensure that the World Bank Group’s “Program-for-Results” Financing, or “P4R” does not undermine the rights and protections for communities around the world.
Accountability Counsel is dedicated to the defense and strengthening of the World Bank Inspection Panel, the only mechanism available to hold the World Bank to account for the human rights and environmental impacts of Bank projects.
In August 2010, Accountability Counsel authored a report with the support of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) titled “A Call For Reform of World Bank Group Agribusiness Policies and Practice: A Proposal to End Violations of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples’ Rights.” Read more about our Agribusiness Accountability work here.
In 2010, the World Bank Group (WBG) approved 392 new public sector projects with a lending portfolio in excess of U.S. $58 billion. Large-scale infrastructure, energy and extraction projects, which are disproportionately implicated in reported rights violations, are increasingly financed across the International Finance Institutions (IFIs). Allocations in these areas comprised 46% of the WBG public sector budget in 2011.