In the News

Even with careful planning, impact investments can cause unanticipated harm to people and places and undermine impact goals. Recent examples include large-scale renewables projects and for-profit schools. Even a small number of impact investments that are seen to harm rather than help communities jeopardize the field, Accountability Counsel’s Kindra Mohr writes in a guest post on ImpactAlpha.

Sixty investors, who collectively manage more than $350 billion in assets, signed on to the IFC’s new impact investing principles, which are intended to bring greater transparency, credibility, and discipline to the impact investing market. In a joint submission Accountability Counsel authored, civil society groups that focus on strengthening accountability within international financial institutions said they welcomed the principles, but called for a stronger emphasis on accountability.

CSOs and the CAO respond to IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou’s statement calling for a stronger approach to accountability. Accountability Counsel’s Policy Director Kindra Mohr is quoted about the need for the IFC to respond to long-standing issues of non-compliance and harm from existing CAO cases to make the IFC’s commitment matter in practice.

Displaced from their land by multinational mining companies, nomadic herders defied the odds to preserve their heritage for future generations. Additional framing can be found on our Communities case page.

In late February, the US Supreme Court ruled against the claim by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector arm, to absolute immunity from suit in the US. The case was brought by a community of Indian fisherfolk, represented by EarthRights International and the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, which sued the IFC for harm caused by the $450 million IFC-financed Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant in Gujarat, India.

When a group of uprooted Haitian farmers and the human rights workers advising them sought to understand the environmental impact of an industrial park, they turned to the American Association for the Advancement of Science to enlist the expertise of a water specialist through its On-call Scientists program.

In this article, Teresa Welsh discusses four DFI-funded projects that resulted in harm towards local communities and lessons learned for lenders, including two cases – Liberia & Mexico – in which Accountability Counsel supported affected communities to achieve remedy.

In this Nature article, Vijaya Ramachandran discusses last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on the case of Jam vs. IFC, noting it as a wake-up call for all international development agencies. Ramachandran also offers four suggestions on how the IFC — and the World Bank Group as a whole — can be held accountable.

In this NPR article, Tim McDonnell reports on the historical U.S. Supreme Court 7-1 ruling on Jam v. International Finance Corporation, and what it means for international financial institutions as well as local communities who have been harmed by bank-funded development projects.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision that the World Bank does not have absolute immunity from prosecution is unlikely to trigger a flood of lawsuits but it could bolster calls for the institution to strengthen its internal accountability mechanisms. In this article, Accountability Counsel’s Policy Director Kindra Mohr and our colleagues at EarthRights International and Namati discuss the reforms needed for a strong and effective accountability framework.

This article covers the Ngäbe-Buglé communities’ fight against the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Dam in Panama, including their complaint to the United Nations Development Programme’s accountability office, the Social and Environmental Compliance Unit (SECU). Accountability Counsel provides context on SECU and the independent accountability office landscape in the article. More information about our recent advocacy to ensure that SECU and its counterpart, the Stakeholder Response Mechanism, are effective avenues for remedy and accountability can be found on our Policy page.

In this article, the Assam Tribune covers our case in Assam highlighting the CAO monitoring report which found that the International Finance Corporation and Tata Group plantations have failed to deliver on commitments to address serious health and safety concerns facing the 155,000 people that live and work on tea plantations it owns in India’s North East.

In this CNN article, Swati Gupta covers the gendered impacts of serious health and safety issues rampant on tea plantations in Assam, some of which are owned by IFC and Tata Global.

Bönder får rätt i marktvist på Haiti, miljontals träd har planterats i Myanmar och entreprenörskap i Ghana tar itu med plastskräpet. Det är några av januaris hoppfulla nyheter.

In this article, Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava highlights the findings of the World Bank’s official investigator in which the IFC had failed to address the health and safety concerns of thousands of workers and their families living in Tata group’s tea plantations in India’s Northeast. Accountability Counsel will continue to support and advocate for tea workers in Assam.

In this article, Janine Mendes-Franco tells the story of a recent victory in Haiti involving a collective of farmers, who were adversely impacted by a bank-financed industrial park, and won a settlement with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Haitian government. Accountability Counsel supported the Haitian farmers throughout the negotiation process and will continue to support the implementation phase.

AC’s Founder & Executive Director Natalie Bridgeman Fields is featured as a guest in the latest episode of The Impossible Network podcast.

In this BHRRC article, AC’s Lani Inverarity reflects on the historic agreement reached by a group of Haitian farmers last month, and how the 2010 earthquake anniversary now holds the possibility of transformation and renewal.

In this article, Tom Ricker describes the historic agreements reached by a collective of farmers in Northeast Haiti to restore livelihoods that were lost when they were displaced for an industrial park. Accountability Counsel supported the Haitian farmers to reach these agreements through a dialogue with a development bank that financed…

In this article, Teresa Welsh highlights the recent victory in Haiti where a group of farmers, who were adversely impacted by a bank-financed industrial park, won a settlement with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Haitian government. Accountability Counsel supported the Haitian farmers throughout the negotiation process and will continue to support the implementation phase.