March 2017
Elana Berger, BIC’s Social Inclusion and Accountability Manager, will testify before the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee this Wednesday at a hearing titled, “Examining Results and Accountability at the World Bank.”
Elana’s testimony will focus on the Uganda Transport Sector Development Project (TSDP), which led to devastating impacts on girls in a local community as a result of the “boomtown effect” often associated with infrastructure projects such as roads. She will also discuss specific reforms the World Bank should adopt to prevent and mitigate such impacts in the future, including better supervision and monitoring of projects, enhanced efforts to engage affected communities and civil society throughout the project cycle, and implementing recommendations of the newly created Gender Based Violence (GBV) task force that was created in the aftermath of the project’s cancellation.
The Financial Services Committee has oversight responsibility for U.S. participation in the World Bank, and for authorizing the U.S. pledge to the Bank’s fund for low-income countries—the International Development Association (IDA). The hearing is meant to assess the World Bank’s accountability for development results by examining its impact on project beneficiaries and communities, and to address ways that the Bank can improve on project execution, implementation of safeguards, and improving institutional incentives that affect the delivery of positive outcomes for the poor.
The other witnesses who will testify are: Sasha Chavkin from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists; Dr. Jean Ensminger with Edie and Lew Wasserman Professor of Social Science at the California Institute of Technology; and Scott Morris who is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development.
The hearing will be held on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 at 10:00 AM in 2128 Rayburn HOB. The hearing will stream live from the House Financial Services website; and video from the hearing will be posted to the committee’s YouTube page after the hearing, here.