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This Human Rights Day, we are honoring the communities and advocates at the frontlines of struggles to protect their human rights and environment. Human rights defenders like Seliana Marcelus (pictured above) and Ilna St. Jean (pictured below) in Haiti whose organizing has resulted in historic progress toward restoring the farming…

Discussions taking place at this week’s Power Summit must focus on addressing the concerns of project-affected communities and Indigenous Peoples on whose lands hydropower and transmission line projects will be built, said Accountability Counsel and Lawyers’ Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples (LAHURNIP) today. The Power Summit 2019, organized by the Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal, is being held from November 21 – 22 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Today we are thrilled to share our new tool, the Accountability Console, with the world. After years in the making and as a result of community-driven demand, this tool provides communities, investors, policy-makers, and researchers with the world’s most comprehensive data on all Independent Accountability Mechanism (IAM) complaints. These complaints…

As Chinese commercial banks and state institutions finance projects overseas, communities negatively affected by these projects lack avenues to raise grievances. But this may soon change. In a positive move, a new policy framework released today may shape standards Chinese investments follow and accountability options for local communities.

We’re thrilled to announce that our short film “”When the Dust Came In: Mongolian Herders Negotiate Their Future with a Massive Mine” will be featured at the Annual San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival. Our film, directed by the talented filmmaker Abhi Singh, will be shown first in the festival’s signature shorts program, Coast to Coast, beginning at 6:45pm on November 10, 2019. If you’re in the Bay Area, we hope you will join us!

When development institutions like the World Bank Group (WBG) talk about their “risk-management services,” as President David Malpass did in his speech at the WBG Annual Meetings that just concluded, the risk being managed is that of losses to governments and corporations that benefit from public development finance. Accountability Counsel and many of our colleagues participating in the Civil Society Policy Forum, held during the Annual Meetings, highlighted the WBG’s duty to urgently reframe thinking about risk. Rather than financial loss, the WBG should think about risk in terms of the people, and the environments they depend on, that the bank exists to serve.

Accountability Counsel and 74 global partners submitted a joint statement to the World Bank Group’s Board of Directors, expressing concerns about the lack of transparency and external stakeholder engagement in the accountability framework review of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). This process includes a review of IFC/MIGA’s independent accountability mechanism (IAM), the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO).

This week, the World Bank Group announced the review of the IFC and MIGA’s environmental and social (E&S) accountability. The announcement is here. The external review will include evaluation of “the role and effectiveness of the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent accountability mechanism for IFC and…

Nomadic herders in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert are fighting to protect their way of life and livelihoods while living alongside the massive Oyu Tolgoi mine. In 2017, they reached historic agreements with the mining company and local government to address the impacts of the mine. Our new short film shares the collective work that led to these agreements and the path forward to ensure that the promises translate to a sustainable future for local herders.

Amidst a decade of profoundly gratifying moments I’ve experienced since founding Accountability Counsel, a pinnacle was this month’s gathering in Washington, D.C. with our board, staff team, and global partners from seven of the 50 countries in which we’ve worked. We came together to celebrate a decade of Accountability Counsel, to reflect, and to draw inspiration from one another as we launch our second decade.

Community members and activists have bravely and tirelessly resisted plans to construct a 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the Lamu coastline, in Kenya, despite intimidation, repression and smear campaigns. They have left no stone unturned in their efforts to hold the actors responsible for this disastrous project accountable. Yet a group of investors, led by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), has narrowly avoided responsibility for its contributions to date. Steps must be taken to close this accountability gap.

Seventy-nine civil society organisations and partners have submitted a joint statement to the Equator Principles Association (EPA) and signatory banks today, expressing disappointment that the current review process of the Equator Principles does not go far enough to strengthen accountability and ensure access to remedy. With the EPA currently revising the fourth iteration of the Equator Principles, the “EP4” review should be a moment of ambition for advancing accountability in project finance.

On this International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the need to put Indigenous Peoples at the center of conservation efforts could not be clearer. Evidence is mounting that Indigenous stewardship of natural resources is key to combating the climate crisis and protecting the biodiversity that sustains the planet. Meanwhile, Indigenous Peoples the world over are increasingly seeing access to their lands and resources restricted by top-down conservation projects that violate their rights. In Southeast Myanmar’s Tanintharyi Region, international organizations, financial institutions, and government have the opportunity to reverse this harmful approach to conservation that ignores Indigenous voices and rights.

The United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) independent watchdog visited Myanmar last week to investigate a large conservation project posing grave risks to Indigenous communities in Tanintharyi Region, which has seen decades of armed conflict during Myanmar’s 70-year civil war.

Last week, members of Accountability Counsel’s Communities, Policy, and Research teams attended a series of meetings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire centered around international finance institutions and their accountability offices, also known as independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs).

En celebración del Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente, Accountability Counsel habló con Gabino Vicente, un líder de la comunidad indígena Chinanteco en Oaxaca, México, quien tomó medidas para garantizar la protección de un arroyo que estaba amenazado por el proyecto hidroeléctrico Cerro de Oro, financiado internacionalmente.

In celebration of World Environment Day, Accountability Counsel spoke to Gabino Vicente, a Chinanteco Indigenous community leader in Oaxaca, Mexico who took action to ensure protection of a freshwater creek that was threatened by the internationally-financed Cerro de Oro hydroelectric project.

For the first time in nearly four years, the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) has the ability to make deals over $10 million following the confirmation of three EXIM board nominees this month. As this renewed spending power opens the door for EXIM to support larger – and potentially riskier – projects, the export credit agency needs a strong accountability framework to minimize those risks and effectively address harm when it occurs.

In 2016, Accountability Counsel worked collaboratively with 10 other civil society organizations to evaluate how the accountability system for development finance is – and is not – working. The result of this major research project was Glass Half Full? The State of Accountability in Development Finance. We are pleased to share the Mandarin Chinese version for the first time today.

Civil society organizations welcomed the new grievance mechanism policy for the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Most development banks have a grievance mechanism, also known as an independent accountability mechanism, to receive complaints from people harmed by activities they finance. Once operational, the new Independent Project Accountability Mechanism (IPAM)—which will replace the EBRD’s current grievance mechanism, the Project Complaint Mechanism—will be removed from the operational structure of the bank and have senior-level leadership and a direct reporting line to the bank’s Board of Directors.