A/HRC/36/40 The IFC invested millions … without taking into account serious labor and other human rights abuses in the sector…The IFC failed to identify and address basic risks, including the grossly inadequate living conditions for workers and child labor … IFC deficiencies have been in part due to its culture and incentives that measure results in financial terms, encouraging staff to “overlook, fail to articulate, or even conceal potential environmental, social, and conflict related risks.32 34. Moreover, in the past, IFC has failed to properly measure the risks of oil and mining projects, such as in the case of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline. In that case, a law intended to earmark oil revenues for education, health care and other social needs was gutted in Chad and the Bank ultimately had to suspend its loan to the country. 33 35. Although Cameroon has ratified most of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions regulating labour and workers’ living conditions, and World Bank clients are obliged to enforce Bank directives on occupational health and safety, violations of workers’ rights continue unabated. One example concerns China International Water and Electric Corporation, which participates in the Bank-financed Lorn Pangor Hydro Power Project, which has witnessed repeated complaints made to the Bank concerning environmental and social management problems. In January 2014, a report by the Cameroon Network of Human Rights Organizations called the human rights situation on the project site deplorable. The Electricity Development Corporation of Cameroon and the labour inspector have failed to compel the Corporation to respect labour legislation. 34 C. Circumventing rules by outsourcing 36. Beyond the direct harm caused by some World Bank projects, civil society advocates have pointed out that the Bank has been funding human rights-insensitive corporations indirectly, through intermediary banks. A discrete or “invisible” way of doing that occurred when IFC financed six Indian commercial banks that in turn financed abusive companies. As reported by Inclusive Development International: Recipients of indirect IFC funds include Vedanta Resources, NHPC Limited and Jindal Steel & Power, which have well-documented records of complicity in grave human rights violations and environmental destruction. These companies would have little chance of receiving direct assistance from the IFC. Yet by outsourcing its development funds to for-profit commercial banks, the IFC is … concealing its support from public scrutiny. In doing so, the IFC is providing little oversight in how its funds are used.35 37. Inclusive Development International has identified 68 Indian companies or projects implicated in serious harmful environmental impacts or abusive human rights practices that received funding from IFC intermediaries. As noted in the report, “we’re seeing a worrying trend — not just at the World Bank but other development banks too — of hands-off lending through third parties to projects they would never usually touch. At the same time, the Bank is washing its hands of the mounting human and environmental costs — to forests, rivers and communities”.36 32 33 34 35 36 See www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/08/world-bank-group-india-tea-investment-tramples-rights. See www.oxfamamerica.org/press/aid-group-lauds-new-world-bank-policies-on-indigenous-rightsand-oil-and-mining-transparency/. Bretton Woods Observer, Autumn 2016, p. 3. Available from www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/09/Observer_Sept_16_online.pdf. See www.inclusivedevelopment.net/new-report-reveals-the-world-banks-murky-financialentanglements-with-indias-most-irresponsible-corporations/ and www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Outsourcing-Development-India.pdf. See www.inclusivedevelopment.net/new-report-reveals-the-world-banks-murky-financialentanglements-with-indias-most-irresponsible-corporations/. 9