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To best advocate for people harmed by internationally financed projects, we engage with stakeholders at all stages of the development process. This ranges from on-the-ground strategy sessions with communities that are impacted by projects, to advocacy meetings with development finance institutions, and everywhere in between. We travel the globe to ensure that these institutions respect the human and environmental rights of the communities affected by their investments and that their independent accountability mechanisms facilitate meaningful solutions for these communities.

Ms. Shakti Sahanubhuti – name changed to protect identity – is a proud Indigenous landholder from Sindhuli district in central Nepal. She and her community – including Indigenous peoples, Dalits, women and other marginalized groups – are concerned about the health, safety, and economic impacts of the World Bank funded Khimti Dhalkebar Transmission Line (KDTL), implemented by the Government-run Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). After significant delays, the KDTL project became operational earlier this year, but community concerns about the project remain unaddressed.

The International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), Accountability Counsel, and OECD Watch are pleased to announce the launch of a new project: Advancing and Strengthening the OECD NCP Peer Review Process.

In a positive, impressive decision, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has agreed to sit down with farmers harmed by one of their projects – the Caracol Industrial Park in Northeast Haiti – to discuss their concerns and potential solutions as part of a facilitated dialogue.

San Francisco – Accountability Counsel, a legal organization that advocates for people harmed by internationally financed projects, today announced that Gary Cookhorn, managing director of Fortress Investment Group, will join the organization’s board of directors. Cookhorn is a veteran of the global finance and investment sector having served in leadership positions at international development institutions. Cookhorn’s roles included the divisional chief financial officer with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the head of the Loan Services Group at the World Bank.

Accompanied by Oyu Tolgoi Watch and Accountability Counsel, herders in the South Gobi used the IFC’s complaint office to negotiate agreement.

As Accountability Counsel works to be a unifying force among advocates for accountability, we are investing in our programs to support others around the world who advocate for communities on the margin. Our research program is expanding to include in-depth case research, data aggregation and the management of a public accountability mechanism case database. This expansion allows advocates better access to case information and documentation on bank and mechanism decisions. Leading this expansion is Accountability Counsel’s new Research Director Samer Araabi.

Sign our petition to tell airport operators and investors to act. *Para una versión española, vea a continuación* On 5 June 2017, the independent accountability office of the Inter-American Development Bank confirmed that the bank did not do enough to protect neighboring communities from serious harm when it funded the…

As advocates who accompany communities around the world as they seek to defend their human and environmental rights, Accountability Counsel condemns in the strongest possible terms the Trump administration’s stated attempt to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. The Trump administration’s galling failure to defend this historic…

When nomadic camel herders in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert filed a complaint about the impacts of two large mines on their way of life, they thought they knew what to expect from the complaint office that received their case. Known as the Project Complaint Mechanism (PCM), it accepts complaints from communities harmed by projects financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and investigates whether those projects have met the bank’s social and environmental standards. The herders expected a thorough investigation: one that would document the harm they had experienced and draw conclusions about compliance with international standards based on that evidence. Four years later, their experience has fallen far short of these expectations.

Affected communities. Civil society organizations. World Bank staff and Executive Directors. Governments. Private sector companies. The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, and the accompanying Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF), are an avenue where all of these actors can get together to discuss pressing issues in international development financing. Accountability Counsel actively participated in this year’s Spring Meetings and CSPF, held in April, and pushed our message that accountability must be a priority for everyone involved in order for development to be effective.

At the heart of all of Accountability Counsel’s cases are community members who were denied their basic right to participate in decisions that critically impact their lives. We have cases all over the world, representing diverse communities with vastly different life experiences, yet all of Accountability Counsel’s cases present this…

All too often, community voices are excluded from decisions that affect their lives and their environment. And so they were in Haiti, when the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) provided funding to build the Caracol Industrial Park – a large garment factory complex, including a heavy oil power plant – a short distance inland from Caracol Bay, a US $3.2 trillion mangrove and coral reef ecosystem that is now part of Haiti’s Three Bays National Park.

Our attorneys, Lani and Stephanie, recently returned from Caracol, Haiti where they supported the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè, a collective of hundreds of Haitian farmers, in their complaint against the Inter-American Development Bank. As we have previously reported, in 2011, more than 400 farmers and their families were forced…

Accountability Counsel’s Policy Director, Kindra Mohr, led a discussion with partners from the Bank Information Center (BIC), the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Coalition for Human Rights in Development, and the International Accountability Project (IAP) for the Amazon Watch lunch event on “Challenges and Opportunities in Development Finance.”…

Communities in the Fontibón locality of Bogotá, Colombia have been fighting for years to protect their health and their families from the extreme noise pollution generated by El Dorado International Airport. They organized as Comunidades Unidas to engage with airport operators, authorities, and investors to seek improved noise mitigation in…

On International Women’s Day 2017, Accountability Counsel is celebrating women around the world who are fighting to protect their human rights and their environment. Women like Marie Marthe Rocksaint, Ilna St Jean, and Vigénise Bien Aimé – smallholder farmers displaced from their land in Haiti to make way for the…

In response to years of advocacy by Accountability Counsel and our partners, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has made significant improvements to its Environmental and Social Policy Statement (ESPS), its main human rights and environmental safeguard policy. OPIC has been the subject of two Accountability Counsel community-led complaints about…

Nearly 40 advocates from around the world gathered last week to share lessons learned, find ways to contribute to each other’s work, and to support each other in the difficult labor of defending environmental and human rights. This year’s International Advocates Working Group retreat, hosted by Accountability Counsel in the…

By Natalie Bridgeman Fields, Founder & Executive Director The Trump administration has taken so many steps to undermine protections for human rights and the environment in the past week that it’s hard to keep up, let alone challenge these affronts to justice. We all have a job to do to…