BIC Toolkits for Activists: Issue 1
19 November 2003
Getting Access to Information from the World Bank: The Fundamentals
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The Bank recognizes and endorses the fundamental importance of accountability and transparency in the development process. Accordingly, it is the Bank's policy to be open about its activities and to welcome and seek out opportunities to explain its work to the widest possible audience.
World Bank Policy on Disclosure of Information
If you want to know what loans the World Bank is planning for your country, if you are concerned about a specific Bank-financed project, or if you have been asked to "participate" in a bank-financed operation or process, having access to basic Bank documents is essential. Your understanding of how a Bank operation or economic strategy will impact your country's environment, economy, and society needs to be based on relevant information. Unfortunately, the majority of this information is produced and controlled by the Bank or your government. Without access to information, you could be left in the dark about Bank-financed operations that could have profound environmental and social impacts.
The World Bank produces a multitude of documents throughout the life of a project or policy loan, but rarely informs affected citizens about what documents are available and how they can get them. Local Bank offices are frequently missing important documents that are supposed to be publicly available, and at times, Bank staff are unresponsive to citizen requests for information. More importantly, information is most often written in English, which makes Bank documents virtually inaccessible to locally affected people.
This Toolkit is designed to help you understand what documents are available from the World Bank, when they are available, and how to get them. It details what information is usually included within the bank documents. It also provides details about what bank information is typically not made public (those documents are often extremely useful to citizens) and how you might go about obtaining them. Our aim is to promote a fundamental democratic principal: that citizens have the right to know what is being planned for their communities in order to make informed decisions about development processes that affect their lives.
This Toolkit is divided into 5 sections
I. Access to Information: A Citizen's Right
II. What Information is Publicly Available and How To Get It
III. For Further Information/Logistics for Obtaining Information from the World Bank
IV. Pull out Quick Reference Sheet
V. Update
This toolkit is based on 5 documents
- World Bank Policy on Disclosure of Information, March 1994 (Appendix I)
- World Bank Procedures: Disclosure of Operational Information (BP 17.50) (Appendix II)
- World Bank Office Memorandum, Jan Wijnand, November 24, 1993 (Appendix III)
- World Bank Office Memorandum, Jan Wijnand, June 20, 1994 (Appendix IV)
- Expanding Access to Bank Information (August 31, 1993)
This toolkit was prepared by Kay Treakle as part of the Bank Information Center's Toolkits for Activists: A User's Guide to the Multilateral Development Banks. The Bank Information Center (BIC) is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides information and strategic support to NGOs and social movements throughout the world on the projects, policies and practices of the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). BIC advocates for greater transparency, accountability and citizen participation at the MDBs. BIC is supported by private foundations and organizations that work in the fields of environment and development, and is not affiliated with any of the MDBs.