Between August 14 and October 5 2013 the Bank Information Center held a series of seven children’s consultations in six countries on the World Bank safeguards. The countries in which consultations have been carried out include: Peru, Yemen, India, Cambodia and Uganda. The World Bank is currently reviewing its social and environmental policy standards, and is engaging in a consultative process to seek input from multiple stakeholders on potential changes to the safeguard policies. However, it has made no effort to seek out the voices of children in this process. Thus, BIC, in cooperation with children’s rights organizations around the world, initiated a consultation process to solicit input from children on the World Bank safeguards. In each consultation the children shared concerns about issues facing their communities and made recommendations for ways the World Bank could prevent projects from negatively impacting children. These included:
- Conducting child impact assess
ments before beginning projects - Consulting with children at all stages of the project process
- Requiring that projects respect human rights and children’s rights
- Ensuring that when families are displaced, relocation sites have sufficient access to schools and health centers
- Shifting from a reliance on nonrenewable energy to a focus on renewable energy
- Preventing deforestation
- Better monitoring a country’s implementation of a project to ensure that policies are complied with
For more information on each of these consultations and individual recommendations please see our consultation page.