Mr. Wolfensohn made the commitment in a meeting with non-governmental organizations in Prague this morning.
In recent years, the Bank has increasingly emphasized the importance of issues such as the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, transparency, and governance. In a question put to Mr. Wolfensohn at the ngo meeting, an FIDH representative acknowledged this trend, but questioned the absence to date of any explicit reference to binding international human rights treaties.
In response, Mr. Wolfensohn mentioned collaboration with Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and promised that he would work with Bank staff to include human rights in their policy documents, and that the next time he meets with NGOs, they would see the product of this effort.
HRW and FIDH cautioned that in order to make this commitment effective, the Bank needs to make use of international human rights texts - a step that Mr Wolfensohn did not specifically mention. The organizations argued that World Bank and IMF operations should be consistent with international human rights law, to which their shareholder states have committed themselves in ratifying legally binding international human rights treaties.
HRW and FIDH further recommended that in order to operationalize this commitment, the Bank should take the following steps:
– Incorporate human rights standards among conditionality requirements
– Develop internal Bank staff capacity to assess compliance with international human rights conventions and covenants, including in connection with Bank evaluation processes.
– Integrate reference to human rights law in Bank policies and programs
– Strengthen Bank collaboration and coordination with UN agencies that have related mandates (UNDP, WHO, UNCTAD, UNHCR...), and in particular with UN and regional human rights bodies.
HRW and FIDH endorsed Mr Wolfensohn`s statement this morning about development and the fight against poverty: "it is all about rights". But the organizations underscored their expectation of prompt and thorough practical implementation of this vision.
"Existing international human rights law offers the only comprehensive framework for doing this," stated FIDH’s Christine Habbard.