Concerns about the World Bank Inspection Panel’s Pilot Program Affirmed

Accountability Counsel is concerned to learn that, eight months after filing a complaint, communities forcibly evicted by a World Bank project in Nigeria are still appealing to the World Bank’s accountability office, the Inspection Panel, to register their complaint. Rather than registering the complaint immediately, the Panel moved the case into its new “Pre-Registration Pilot” program, which we have been tracking due to concerns that it undermines accountability and fails to protect communities.Although we are not directly involved in the case in Nigeria, we fear that a recent memo from Nigerian complainants to the Inspection Panel describing serious abuses associated with the implementation of the Pilot in that case affirms the problems that we have been anticipating. More information about the risks associated with the Panel’s new Pilot is available here.