Human Rights House and PINK Embassy join consultative meetings with the World Bank

On October 6-11, Human Rights House (HRH) and PINK Embassy / LGBT Pro Albania, joined the annual meeting between the World Bank in Washington, a process facilitated by the American NGO, Bank Information Centre. The latter works to monitor the performance and activities of the World Bank and lobbies with it for issues related to human rights, the environment etc. The meeting was held to discuss the Bank’s safeguards for LGBTI people, women and other social groups, who are directly affected by the institutions’ investment practices and policies.

This consultation of activists from all over the world with top officials of the Bank, aimed to assess the Bank’s investment impact on the environment, society and marginalized groups such as LGBTI people, women, indigenous people etc. Specifically, the participating organizations and more than 300 others from all over the world oppose the current safeguards draft of the Bank because they do not fulfil international standards and undo more than 30 years of evolution in social policy, which sets a precedent among national, regional and global actors.

At a time when the Bank has declared its intention to expand lending money for huge and often dangerous infrastructure projects it fails to understand that strong safeguards are very important to make sure that profits from these projects are distributed more fairly and that their costs are not paid by poor and marginalized groups. By weakening the current measures it will be impossible for the Bank to end extreme poverty and it will not be able to promote a more equal development.

Organizations refuse the way these measures have been prepared and consider them to be exclusive and non-transparent. The review and update process of the document did not include contributions from civil society organizations, independent experts and scholars, indigenous groups, labour unions and other communities affected by these projects.

Because of the above, organizations asked for a wide consultation process so that international standards are more effectively implemented. This process needs to be based on empirical research which guarantees the safety of marginalized groups and the continuity of investments and projects.

In conclusion organizations asked for the bank to intervene with specific steps to protect the rights of employees, guarantee human rights, address climate changes, protect communities from losing their property or leaving their homes, protect children from forced labour,  protect forests and people whose lives depend from them, protect people with disabilities,  effectively protect women and LGBTI persons and promote their inclusion in major development projects, expand the agenda of areas and activities and to increase investment standards and projects developed by beneficiary countries etc.

The demands of activists present in the meetings with the World Bank were endorsed by more than 300 human rights organizations from all over the world. Meanwhile participating organizations held a manifestation in front of the Bank in relation to the above topics.