A group of 28 experts from the U.N. Human Rights Council sent an open letter Monday to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, sharply criticizing the bank’s treatment of human rights in its draft safeguards.
“The bank’s proposed new safeguards seem to view human rights in largely negative terms, as considerations that, if taken seriously, will only drive up the cost of lending rather than contributing to ensuring a positive outcome,” the experts said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Devex before it was officially published Tuesday on the OHCHR website.
In the largest public condemnation issued by the council against the World Bank to date, the document added that “it is fair to say that the vast majority of development actors, from the European Investment Bank to the U.N. Development Program, have expressed a clear commitment to human rights in their policies, thus making the [World] Bank an increasingly isolated outlier in this regard.”
About the author
Molly Andersmollyanders_dev
Molly Anders is a former U.K. correspondent for Devex. Based in London, she reports on development finance trends with a focus on British and European institutions. She is especially interested in evidence-based development and women’s economic empowerment, as well as innovative financing for the protection of migrants and refugees. Molly is a former Fulbright Scholar and studied Arabic in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco.
