Human Rights Watch released a 59-page report on Monday, concluding that the World Bank “has closed its eyes to the risk to the human rights of the very people it seeks to benefit.
“The World Bank pays tens of billions of dollars every year to support development efforts around the world,” said Jessica Evans, senior advocate on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch. “But it needs to stop undermining its efforts by making sure it isn’t contributing to human rights abuses.”
The report draws mainly on three case studies, two from Ethiopia and one from Vietnam, to illustrate the Bank’s failure to acknowledge or mitigate the human rights risks of programs it undertook in these countries.
It sees the World Bank’s safeguards review, a two-year process that began in October 2012, as an ideal opportunity to improve this framework to prevent this type of oversight in the future. Such work is a key part of BIC’s Safeguards Campaign.
Access the official press release from Human Rights Watch here.
The full report, entitled “Abuse-Free Development: How the World Bank Should Safeguard Against Human Rights Violations”, can be accessed and downloaded here.
Original image by flickr user World Bank Photo Collection (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0)