David B. Hunter – författare

This collection of essays provides diverse perspectives on the promise, challenges, effectiveness, and future of the World Bank Inspection Panel and similar independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) found at many multilateral development banks, bilateral financial institutions, United Nations agencies. These IAMs provide local communities the opportunity to defend their human rights and protect their environment when threatened by internationally financed development decisions. Contributing their perspectives are current and past IAM members and staff, top World Bank lawyers, civil society advocates, and leading academics who have studied the mechanisms since their very beginning.

Five essays set out the general principles of international law that are applicable to the IFIs and consider how these are or should be evolving to produce IFIs that are respectful subjects of international law and accountable to all relevant stakeholders for their compliance with international law. Six more focus on selected aspects of the IFIs’ operations that both raise important and challenging international legal issues and that have substantial impacts on both the different stakeholders in the operations of the IFIs, and on the sustainability and success of the operations. Introductory and concluding essays frame the volume. The many issues raised include the following: • IFIs’ impact on economic policies in Member States; • IFI operations as private financial transactions; • IFIs as key players in the creation of international law; • IFIs as promoters of the international capitalist system; • IFIs as bearers of human rights obligations under international human rights law or as participants in the UN system; • consequences of an IFI’s breach of its own internal policies or directives; • IFI immunity; • IFI capacity to sue and to be sued in national courts; • ability of various claimants to sue IFIs in domestic courts; • environmental and social rights and interests of third parties affected by IFI financing; • right of indigenous people to give their free, prior, and informed consent to IFI operations that affect them; and • IFIs’ treatment of workers’ rights.