In the News

Human rights successes are hard-won, require the coordinated efforts of many people working in solidarity — often across backgrounds, sectors, and even international borders—and are often overlooked by mainstream media, which focuses on the disastrous here, now, and clickable.

To help staff make better decisions, the International Finance Corporation is introducing a new incentives framework, which will reward achievements in development outcomes. The new framework may be a welcome step, but the World Bank Group, which includes the IFC, has said incentives will reward staff on their ability to mobilize private sector funding. It’s critical that the IFC include in their rewards scheme recognition of staff that respect human rights.

Is a World Bank funded project stifling agency and voices of its female employees? As diplomats, civil society organizations, governments and businesses gather in Geneva to talk about the role of business to respect and protect human rights, a company – backed by the World Bank – is failing at both. Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL), the second largest producer and supplier of tea in India, is a joint venture of the Tata Group and the World Bank’s private sector side, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

On 27 November, throngs of people attended the first day of the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. The three-day forum will see participants from business, government, and civil society have heated debates – over hot cups of tea and coffee – on how to protect human rights in a business context.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) describes itself as a champion of integrity and transparency, working with its Latin American and the Caribbean member countries to strengthen governance and rule of law at local and national levels. As a public institution committed to sustainable development, it has endorsed the principle that “environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens.” However, as the residents of Fontibón, a neighborhood in Bogotá, Colombia, recently learned, the bank does not universally apply these standards to its own activities.

The idea that nonprofits should develop a theory of change has been widely embraced in recent years, and funders have helped drive the momentum. In fact, many funders now require that nonprofits submit a theory of change document with grant requests for all the reasons Paul Brest outlined in his seminal article, “The Power of Theories of Change.”

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This landmark international document, though imperfect, contains important provisions for countries to protect the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.

Kolkata – Ahead of the annual general meetings of Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (AAPL) a Tata and World Bank owned tea company that runs 25 tea estates in Assam and Bengal – to be held in Kolkata on Tuesday a group of human rights activists have called for more participation of tea workers.

Tending camels in the Gobi desert — moving them to fresh grazing pastures in the spring and summer, and to shelter in the winter — has been a way of life for families in Mongolia for thousands of years. But cycles of freezing winters and dry summers — a natural phenomenon which the herders call the “dzud” — are ravaging the already inhospitable terrain with increasing frequency as a result of climate change, leaving millions of livestock dead from cold or starvation.

In July, the House Financial Services Committee moved a bill containing reforms to foster accountability at the World Bank, where the United States is the largest shareholder. The bill concerns the United States’ contribution to the International Development Association, through which the World Bank makes loans to poor countries.  

Multinational businesses operate across a spectrum of regulatory environments and in diverse community settings. Failure to consult these communities and respect their rights in core operations can prove costly for international investors, the companies in which they invest and multinational corporations. Companies can save money and time and curb reputational risk by ensuring that human rights are an integrated part of their operations and investor due diligence.

A community of traditional nomadic herders has reached an historic set of agreements with Oyu Tolgoi LLC (OT), a Rio Tinto copper and gold mine, and the local government to resolve complaints the herders had related to the mine’s impact on the community and its herds. While these agreements do not resolve all negative impacts of the mine, the commitments, which include strategies to improve water access, to mitigate fractured pasturelands, and to support and diversify the economic activities of the community, represent a significant step forward for the herders. The agreement was negotiated with the help of the Office of the Compliance Advisor/ Ombudsman(CAO) at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is an investor in Oyu Tolgoi.

In Peru, communities felt they were being harmed by an oil company. In Mexico, people were dealing with the effects of a hydroelectric project. Those were the first cases lawyer Natalie Bridgeman Fields took, helping communities seeking compensation from large-scale developers.

Communities in Sindhuli, Nepal, affected by the World Bank-funded Khimti Dhalkebar Transmission Line (KDTL) have cause to celebrate. Since 2009, they have been raising their concerns about the health, safety and economic impacts of the project, and asking for adequate consultation, information disclosure, and mitigation of impacts.

The Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School has released a paper raising concerns about procedural changes at the World Bank’s Inspection Panel. As the independent accountability mechanism housed within the Bank, the Panel provides an avenue for affected communities to raise their concerns about harm suffered as a result of Bank projects. The report, Deferring Accountability: Delays at the World Bank Inspection Panel, examines changes that the Panel has made to its complaint mechanism during the last decade and a half. In several cases, the Panel has introduced delays in the registration and investigation of complaints, both on an ad hoc basis and through revisions to its Operating Procedures in 2014.

When the Inter-American Development Bank invested US$242 million in a garment factory complex in Northeast Haiti, it did not account for the project’s threat to food security – the ability of local families to reliably access sufficient, nutritious food. In a region and country that suffers regular food crises, that oversight had grave consequences.

Few places in the world exude a sense of timelessness as Lamu, an island off of Kenya’s northern coast home to the oldest and best preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa. Lamu’s old town, a UNESCO World Heritage site and an epicenter of Indian Ocean trade for centuries, is a maze of narrow winding streets that cut through neighborhoods of limestone and coral houses, past elaborately carved mahogany doors and several dozen mosques and churches. Only a handful of motor vehicles are allowed on the island; transportation is mainly the domain of donkeys or men pushing wooden carts through the tropical swelter.

Natalie Bridgeman Fields, who is the founder and executive director of a nonprofit called Accountability Counsel, isn’t so sure. Accountability Counsel is one of several small nonprofits–others include the Bank Information Center, EarthRights International, SOMO and Inclusive Development International–that work to make sure that the World Bank, and other financial institutions and global companies, respect the rights of the poor to help shape the development projects that affect them.

After years of repeatedly raising issues with the World Bank about accountability, Natalie Bridgeman Fields finally had her chance to speak with its president, Jim Kim. She approached him at the Skoll World Forum, following a screening of Bending the Arc, a documentary that follows his path from co-founding Partners in Health to taking one of the most influential positions in development finance. But the conversation did not go as she had hoped.

In September 2016, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) for the World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), issued a striking report on the Bank’s investment in Indian tea plantations part- owned by the massive Tata conglomerate and employing more than 30,000 workers. For a decade, the Bank had been involved with Tata in a project to spin the plantations off into a separate company.