World Bank undermines decades of progress on building protections for the rights of indigenous peoples

On Wednesday 20th of July 2016, a sub-section of the Executive Board of the World Bank met to approve a draft text called the ‘Environmental and Social Framework’. The text will now proceed to a full Board meeting in August where it is likely to be approved with little or no change.

The Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) is intended to contribute to the so-called ‘twin goals’ of the Bank: eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. It defines the approach that the World Bank will take to assess and minimise negative impacts from World Bank investments, and promote social and environmental goods.

Specifically for indigenous peoples, it defines the mandatory minimum standards that the Bank views as necessary to “foster full respect for the human rights, dignity, aspirations, identity, culture, and … livelihoods” of indigenous peoples.1 It replaces the current troubled Bank safeguard for indigenous peoples, Operational Policy 4.10.2

With lofty ambitions to ‘shared prosperity’ and ‘full respect’ for human rights, it is a significant disappointment to see in the new draft that the Bank has failed to set high standards for protecting the rights and interests of indigenous peoples. The Bank has instead released a complicated, confusing and fundamentally weaker set of standards.

Read our full analysis in English, and in Spanish.