Glass Half Full? The state of accountability in development finance

Study | 27 January 2016

Real development respects human rights and is shaped by the people it is designed to benefit. However, development projects financed by development finance institutions in many cases has been associated with the dispossession of land, loss of resources, diminished livelihoods and environmental degradation. Accountability mechanisms in theory aim to ensure that people who have been harmed by these projects receive adequate remedy. As this report shows, however, these accountability mechanisms to a large extent fail to fulfil this function, not least because they operate in a constrained environment constructed by the institutions that administer them.