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In this month’s edition of the Console Newsletter, Research Fellow Anthony Williams continues our series in understanding community harm through their article about labor issues in complaints to IAMs. Representing five percent of all complaints, labor issues raise concerns about violations of appropriate labor standards related to the project, including issues regarding compensation, workplace conditions, retaliation, and child or forced labor. 

Mediators are impartial third parties who help facilitate the dispute resolution process. Given the significant power imbalance between communities and bank clients, a mediator’s role in an IAM dispute resolution process is often critical to reaching an agreement.

Accountability Counsel led the International Advocates’ Working Group in coordinating CSO Day at the 19th annual meeting of the Independent Accountability Mechanism Network. Participants gathered in New York and virtually to discuss the continued evolution of accountability mechanisms in key areas, including monitoring, addressing reprisals, and facilitating remedy for project-affected communities.

Accountability Counsel, supported by EarthRights International, filed an amicus brief to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to support transparency and stakeholder engagement at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The brief argues against the DFC’s decision to exempt itself from the Government in the Sunshine Act, which requires federal agencies to open their meetings to the public. We highlighted the importance of transparency and stakeholder engagement in decision-making for project-affected communities and their advocates.  

We spent months investigating why complaints in the Middle East-North Africa fall short and what can be done to improve accessibility and efficacy of IAMs for impacted communities, in the MENA and beyond.

FPIC & Rights Forum, LAHURNIP, and Accountability Counsel released a statement to welcome the letters from the UN human rights experts who expressed serious concerns about ongoing human rights violations and retaliations against indigenous communities and members of FPIC and Rights Forum in Lamjung District, Nepal.

Accountability Counsel, along with 56 other organizations, submitted recommendations for making the World Bank’s accountability process more effective for communities harmed by World Bank projects.

Drawing on over 20 years of complaint and project data across the region, and first-hand accounts from nearly a dozen communities across five countries, our new report, co-authored by Accountability Counsel and the Arab Watch Coalition, finds that communities in the MENA face disproportionately severe limitations on access to accountability and remedy from harm.

The MENA region has the fewest complaints to IAMs, and extremely low rates of those complaints reaching outputs from the process. Our upcoming report, Our Last and Only Resort, set to launch next week, details important findings about why complaints in the MENA region fall short relative to other regions. The report draws on research from 20 years of complaint and project data, and nearly a dozen interviews with groups in the MENA about their experiences in IAM complaint processes. This article provides a look at the complaint and project data that first waved a red flag about the implications of uneven IAM complaints for communities experiencing harm from projects in the MENA.

Many projects claim to help the environment, but what kinds of harmful impacts are hidden beneath the guise of eco-friendly objectives?

167 complaints have been filed about infrastructure projects in South and Southeast Asia. What can they tell us about types of community harm, the role of private and bilateral investment, and the increasing presence of Chinese finance in the region and around the world?

Individuals, communities, and NGOs file complaints to international finance institutions (IFIs) for harm caused by IFI-funded development projects. In compiling these complaints into the Accountability Console database, our research team tries to ascertain and categorize the issues or concerns raised for each complaint. Of all these complaints, six percent detail…

FinDev Canada, Canada’s development finance institution, recently held consultations on draft procedures for its new independent accountability mechanism. Accountability Counsel provided comments on the document, and commends FinDev Canada for developing a robust accountability framework.

Accountability Counsel and Inclusive Development International recently submitted recommendations to ensure that accountability and remedy are key components of the revised U.S. National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct.

Civil society organizations are calling on the African Development Bank (AfDB) to stop funding projects that exacerbate the climate crisis, damage the environment, and cause human rights violations. This call is being particularly amplified this week as the AfDB is holding its Annual Meetings in Accra, Ghana But communities most affected by the impacts of climate change, and civil society groups supporting them, will not have a seat at the table. Once again, crucial decisions on multi-million-dollar projects affecting their lives will be made without them.

Les organisations de la société civile exhortent la Banque Africaine de Développement (BAD) à mettre fin au financement des projets qui exacerbent le changement climatique, nuisent à l’environnement et causent des violations des droits humains. Cette doléance est réitérée cette semaine lors des Assemblées Annuelles organisées par la banque à Accra, au Ghana.

Members of FPIC and Rights Forum, a network of Indigenous and local communities who have been affected by the development of a transmission line project in Lamjung District, Nepal, demand that the European Investment Bank stop turning a blind eye to human rights violations associated with the project and follow through with its commitments on protection and sustainable development.

Nearly one out of five of all complaints filed to accountability offices raise issues related to livelihoods. We use two separate coal power plants based in Gujarat, India and Bargny, Senegal as case studies of how communities fight for the restoration of their livelihoods.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Indian fishing communities who sued the International Finance Corporation over environmental and livelihood damage caused by an IFC-financed coal power plant. While the Supreme Court’s decision means that the communities’ legal case in the United States may be over, it does not mean that the IFC can walk away from its responsibility to ensure that harms to this community – and other communities impacted by IFC financing – are effectively remediated.

Dispute resolution processes can be an opportunity for communities to reach creative solutions to the harm they are facing from development projects. But how often do they result in agreements, and how often do these agreements result in real remedy?