A/HRC/41/39/Add.2 VII. International community and corporate actors 78. The international community is deeply involved in efforts to address poverty in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, chiefly through funding a plethora of Government and civil society-implemented projects and by advising the Government on sustainable development. Much of the foregoing analysis therefore has relevance to its work, and donors have themselves promoted ill-conceived development agendas and programmes that have resulted in considerable harms. It has both the responsibility and the opportunity to promote international standards and norms and to uphold the rights of the poor and marginalized and those negatively affected by development projects. 79. International actors should resist the temptation of short-term gains, quota filling and formal project completion if it involves accepting problematic conditions which undermine long-term impact and sustainability. They ought to be wary of approaches that prioritize smooth relations over the provision of meaningful analysis. Failure to provide robust feedback and engage in a genuine dialogue does a disservice to the Lao people and the Government. It can lead to a failure of vision, a focus on the wrong criteria, misplaced satisfaction with incremental improvements and the effective exclusion of the Lao people from key aspects of the development dialogue. A. United Nations 80. The Special Rapporteur was consistently told that the United Nations itself, as opposed to its various agencies, was widely perceived as acting as an arm of the Government, had failed to be a voice for the vulnerable, let alone for human rights, and had promoted an overly optimistic picture of the country’s successes, while sidestepping most of the issues that it deemed “sensitive”. The vaunted United Nations policy of “human rights up front” looks more like a “human rights out of sight” policy in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. 81. With the appointment of a new resident coordinator and a new UNDP resident representative, the United Nations should consider how it can change that perception and play a more constructive role in promoting the values endorsed by the Organization and its Member States. Its funds and agencies should ensure that their actions comport with international standards and guidelines, such as the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. B. International financial institutions 82. International financial institutions have played a significant role in shaping the country’s development. In 2017, the International Development Association of the World Bank was the largest known provider of official development assistance ($76.74 million), followed closely by the Asian Development Bank ($56.34 million).65 World Bank projects cover many key policy areas, such as public finance management, land, agriculture and hydropower, and its financial commitments have risen in recent years, to $130 million in 2018 and to $83.73 million in the first four months of 2019 alone. 66 83. The World Bank has been an enthusiastic promoter of hydropower as a central route to economic development, since the 1990s, and continues to be optimistic about the future 65 66 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “ODA recipient countries: Lao People’s Democratic Republic”, Tableau interactive charts. Available from https://public.tableau.com/views/OECDDACAidataglancebyrecipient_new/Recipients?:embed=y&:di splay_count=yes&:showTabs=y&:toolbar=no?&:showVizHome=no. World Bank, projects in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Available from http://projects.worldbank.org/search?lang=en&searchTerm=&countrycode_exact=LA.