What Responsibility for International Organisations?

Abstract

Are international organisations (IOs) responsible given their general immunity under international law? The Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have taken on “democratic” norms like accountability, including establishing the Independent Accountability mechanisms (IAMs) that assess whether they have contributed to environmental and social harm. The chapter distinguishes responsibility from accountability, where the former is part of accountability, but has been understood by IOs in a negative compliance sense. I argue that the IAM process is delinked from positive understandings of responsibility because IOs operate as bureaucracies with preferences for efficiency and meeting contractual obligations. It provides an example of how a typical “mega-loan for a mega-project”, the IFC financed Pangue Dam in Chile, led protestors to make a claim to the World Bank Inspection Panel to demand accountability. Given the Inspection Panel had no remit over the IFC, this in turn led to the creation of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO). The case is intriguing because the IFC's CAO went beyond its mandate to take responsibility to provide redress for the people harmed by the project. The case demonstrates that IAMs can hold the IFC to account but that responsibility requires positive actions that go beyond bureaucratic incentives and contractual obligations.