In the News

Asian Development Bank president Masatsugu Asakawa makes the case for the bank to “do more and act faster.” We note that he doesn’t make the case for doing better.

“IFC thinks of the borrowers as its client, and not the communities affected by its investments. They think their job is to protect the client at all costs but they are a development bank, not CitiBank,” says David Hunter, Accountability Counsel board member.

Some progress but a very long way to go — that seemed to be the broad consensus after last week’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings held in Africa for the first time in 50 years.

Gregory Berry, Policy Associate at Accountability Counsel, highlights the importance of local community input into climate and biodiversity projects.

Accountability Matters spoke to the AM Secretary and civil society participants about some of the challenges they face and their expectations of the Annual Meetings.

A report released by civil society groups on Tuesday said that in seven years the AIIB was yet to accept a single complaint from people adversely affected by its investments.

In the midst of a complex web of crises, spanning climate change, biodiversity depletion, constraints on civic space and mounting debt burdens, civil society organizations and human rights defenders from over 50 countries have united their voices to call for immediate and impactful action from public development banks.

Accountability Counsel’s Gregory Berry outlines the responses, concerns, and flaws of the newly announced European Sustainability Reporting Standards.

Yes, the World Bank should lead a transformation in development finance, but only if that transformation includes increased accountability to the communities it impacts.

An investigation into the IFC’s funding of Cambodia’s troubled microfinance sector has implications far beyond the country’s borders.

The Asian Development Bank’s ambitions have no chance of success without an increased commitment to safeguards and accountability, a new op-ed argues, because projects aimed at mitigating climate change can – and do – go wrong.

It has been a year since the CBIRC issued the Green Finance Guidelines, which stepped up requirements for Chinese banks and insurers to manage ESG risks, including by establishing complaint channels for affected communities. However, to date, no Chinese bank has launched a bank-level complaint mechanism or announced a plan for developing one.

As the Asian Development Bank (ADB) commemorates its 56th year of operations in Asia, the NGO Forum on ADB and its allies raised concerns about the potential dilution of key safeguard commitments.

Complainants coming forward are seeing their communities being uprooted to make way for things like new roads, dams, and power plants. They are often powerless compared to those who have a financial stake in the projects’ success, and many face harsh retaliation for speaking out.

This week, 4,577 individuals from around the world demanded that the International Finance Corporation guarantee justice for communities harmed by international development projects.

A delegation of the Region of Vinnytsia in Central Ukraine recently visited various agricultural and rural development projects and facilities in the Region of Lüneburg in Low Saxony, Germany, in order to gather ideas for recovery and reorientation of farming and food supply in times of war.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would spend a record $8.3 billion to respond to the compounding crises of war, climate change, stumbling economies, and infectious disease. Unfortunately, this increased spending has not been accompanied by an increased commitment to accountability.

An aggressive startup set out to disrupt African education, supported by social impact investors. Now it’s plagued by a sexual abuse investigation.

The IFC has released a new policy to govern how it responds when projects go wrong and seriously harm people or the environment, but advocates lambasted its “shocking” failure to go far enough or address past problems.

In tackling some of humanity’s most pressing crises, the next World Bank president must be an accountability champion. That means not only respecting the rights of local communities, but also remedying harm caused by World Bank projects when it occurs.