Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Human Rights policies at World Bank
If translated into policy, the legal approach to human rights would slam head-on into another bureaucratic barrier: the Bank's incentive system. According to one Bank official quoted in the report, employees get their "brownie points" based on successfully getting a loan out the door rather than a project's long-term results. "Staff are promoted based on the numbers of loans they get approved, and the amount of money in those loans," Sarfaty states. "Since [the loan-funded] projects often take many years to yield results, promotion is not tied to favorable long-term outcomes."
The result: Staff members resist policies that are perceived to slow down loan activity. For example, the Bank has a number of operational "safeguard" policies, which are designed to avoid detrimental social and environmental impacts of lending. (Although there is no safeguard policy yet on human rights, several existing policies address human rights-related issues, like involuntary resettlement.) Sarfaty found that the loan approval-focused incentive system indirectly resulted in non-compliance with the Bank's safeguard policies.
"Although employees are required to apply the policies in borrower countries, they do not consistently do so in practice," she writes. "The Bank promotes its safeguard policies as indicative of its concern for environmental and social goals, but its implicit incentive system suggests that these goals are not primary. In fact, most employees perceive the policies as impediments to lending because they add constraints to tasks and thereby reduce efficiency and opportunities for promotion."
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The result: Staff members resist policies that are perceived to slow down loan activity. For example, the Bank has a number of operational "safeguard" policies, which are designed to avoid detrimental social and environmental impacts of lending. (Although there is no safeguard policy yet on human rights, several existing policies address human rights-related issues, like involuntary resettlement.) Sarfaty found that the loan approval-focused incentive system indirectly resulted in non-compliance with the Bank's safeguard policies.
"Although employees are required to apply the policies in borrower countries, they do not consistently do so in practice," she writes. "The Bank promotes its safeguard policies as indicative of its concern for environmental and social goals, but its implicit incentive system suggests that these goals are not primary. In fact, most employees perceive the policies as impediments to lending because they add constraints to tasks and thereby reduce efficiency and opportunities for promotion."
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