Reassessing the Prospects of a Human Rights Safeguard Policy at the World Bank

Abstract

Despite 20 years of attempts to introduce human rights concerns into formal World Bank policy, and increasing recognition of the importance that human rights play in the its work, the World Bank has yet to adopt a comprehensive safeguard policy dealing with the relationship between its activities and international human rights law obligations. Two reasons have been given for this reluctance: the legal prohibition on political interference in the World Bank’s Articles of Agreement, and concerns about how effective or appropriate a safeguard policy relating to human rights would be in practice. In this article, I review the legal and institutional obstacles to the adoption of a human rights safeguard policy, and suggest that they can be overcome by using a dialogue-based form of safeguard policy that incorporates human rights obligations incumbent upon the Bank and borrower countries into the benchmarks for the development success of the project.

Keywords: human rights, World Bank, safeguard policy, conditionality, Articles of Agreement, constituent treaty