The Bank Information Center promotes three overarching principles for the international financial institutions (IFIs): accountability, participation and transparency. The IFIs are rarely held accountable for their actions.
This accusation is particularly pronounced with respect to the environmental, social, and cultural impacts of project investment and structural adjustment lending.
In recent years, experiences with several major IFI-funded projects revealed fundamental flaws in the institutions’ implementation of their own policies. Inspired by these incidents, civil society and some national governments pressured for the creation of independent accountability mechanisms that would help ensure, at a minimum, that MDB activities were in compliance with their own policies.
In 1993, the World Bank led the way by establishing an Inspection Panel, a body charged with investigating claims from project-affected peoples regarding projects financed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The Panel investigates allegations of the Bank’s violation of its own policies, procedures and loan agreements.
Several of the regional development banks including the Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, followed suit and established similar mechanisms.
While these independent recourse mechanisms for project-affected communities are an important and positive step, BIC recognizes the important limitations in the ways they currently operate. BIC is therefore critically engaged in discussions around the future of these public accountability mechanisms and is actively working to establish even stronger incentives to ensure accountability.
Read more about the accountability mechanisms at individual institutions.