In the News

A World Bank watchdog detailed allegations of displacement, pollution and other serious harms at the company, and criticized the global development agency’s handling of the project.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project has become emblematic of the collision between grand development ambitions and grassroots suffering.

As the United States pulls back from global leadership, the recent European Investment Bank (EIB) group forum in Luxembourg came at a crucial time. As the world’s largest multilateral development bank, the EIB now has a chance to become a responsible development actor — but if and only if the institution properly addresses long-standing deficiencies of its Complaints Mechanism and commitment to accountability.

As public development banks gather for the Finance in Common Summit in Cape Town, civil society and community activists from across the world are demanding a shift to a community-led, equitable, and human rights-based development approach, that prioritise people and planet over profit.

In this episode, we sit down with Accountability Counsel, an organization that has been actively engaging with public development banks to push for greater accountability, transparency, and responsiveness to the communities they impact.

NGOs say the banks’ obligation to prevent and remedy harm “cannot be delegated.”

The U.S. development finance agency has invested nearly $50 billion in the past five years and tripled its staff as it has grown up, restructured, and grappled with its multiple mandates

Multilateral development banks have mechanisms to address and resolve community complaints. But stories from residents and civil society groups across Asia and the Caucasus show that even when such mechanisms are in place, accessing remedy is extremely challenging — if not impossible.

The World Bank Group’s new Corporate Scorecard fails to include indicators on accountability, a gap which is symptomatic of a broader failure by the WBG to internalise learning from its independent accountability mechanisms. Civil society remains concerned that Multilateral Development Banks’ ‘evolution’ processes risk deprioritising accountability in order to get money out the door more quickly.

IFC says it will evaluate development impact, potential for harm, and environmental and social considerations as it looks to leave projects. But will the new approach work?

The bank must take an honest look at its own troubling history on renewable energy projects — specifically, the projects it has funded that have harmed environments and communities, which have largely gone unaddressed.

Lack of community consultation and accountability frameworks undermining efforts to fund a just transition, campaigners argue.

Today, compliance researchers and herders say two-thirds of the mine’s commitments are complete and or in progress, but complain of slow progress with the remainder, including the all-important issue of access to clean water.

Investors must pay attention to the mining major’s negative social and environmental impacts, argues Julio Castor Achmadi, Communities Associate at Accountability Counsel.

The World Bank just marked its 80th anniversary. That’s as good a time as any to chart a new course on accountability by implementing expert and community recommendations to improve the way it handles reports of environmental and human rights harms.

Freshfields will look into whether IFC’s accountability arm, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, was “fully able to execute its compliance investigation mandate,” and whether IFC staff and management cooperated fully with its work.

Campaigners and residents near MHP’s flagship farm in central Ukraine say the company is hurting the environment and their quality of life, but continues to secure major loans without any oversight of such impacts.

As the EBRD looks to the year ahead, we urge the bank to take this opportunity to reframe its policies with human and environmental rights at their core.

In Oaxaca, Mexico, members of the Indigenous Chinanteco community used a dispute resolution process to prevent construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have cut off access to a culturally important spring.

Independent accountability mechanisms are a necessity in the field of international development finance where investments have far reaching consequences on the environmental, social, and human rights of already marginalized communities and domestic legal avenues to seek redress remain effectively shut.