Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Publication Information
59 Tex. Int'l L.J. 2 (2023).
Abstract
Reparation, as a formal matter of victim redress and legal responsibility of the party responsible for victim harm (especially through violations of human rights, environmental and labor laws, among others), can also take place outside the formal processes of adjudication characteristic of international, regional, or national courts. The World Bank Inspection Panel is one such non-judicial entity that has nevertheless played a central role in communities’ pursuit of redress against any harms experienced from World Bank-funded development projects around the world. As an entity created by the World Bank Group in 1994 under a mandate of impartiality and independence from Bank Management, the World Bank Inspection Panel has discharged its institutional functions as a redress mechanism that devises recommendations to redress any project harms to Requesters (e.g. local communities that file complaints with the Panel), which operate reparatively by serving as the basis for Bank Management’s adjustments of project design or implementation to address such harms. In this paper, we qualitatively examine six World Bank Inspection Panel cases, illustrating the evolution of the Panel’s thinking on reparation design to provide redress for project harms, and also present quantitative analyses of trends in the expansion of the Panel’s progressive actions to provide redress for project harms to Requesters. The steady evolution of reparation design as contained in the World Bank Inspection Panel’s reports since 1994 lends purchase to the World Bank’s Accountability Mechanism which now incorporates the World Bank Inspection Panel and provides other dispute settlement mechanisms.
Recommended Citation
Diane A. Desierto, Anibal Perez-Linan, Anshu R. Singh, Gabrielle Penna & Emma Ryan,
The World Bank Inspection Panel’s ‘Reparative’ Spectrum: Case Studies and Data Trends on Reparation Design,
59 Tex. Int'l L.J. 2 (2023)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1593
