Many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) people in the World Bank’s client countries face a variety of social, political, and legal barriers that prevent them from accessing economic opportunities. These barriers exclude LGBTQI+ people from some government-funded programs, including social protection and health services. As a significant funder of government services, the World Bank can play an important role in addressing barriers to LGBTQI+ people’s access to economic opportunities. However, without inclusive policies and practices, the World Bank risks the exclusion of LGBTQI+ individuals from its projects and the reinforcement of inequalities in its client countries.
The World Bank’s ESF and the Directive require the Bank to consider and address the barriers LGBTQI+ people face in access to project benefits. However, previous research from BIC has shown that the Bank rarely includes any information in project documents that specifically addresses the potential risks of discrimination or exclusion of LGBTQI+ people from its projects. Over the past year, BIC worked with LGBTQI+ civil society organizations from seven countries: Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Phillipines, and Uganda, to develop a policy brief that further assesses the barriers to LGBTQI+ inclusion in World Bank projects. Our work has found three trends that may limit LGBTQI+ people’s ability to access project benefits.
- Lack of differentiated measures to prevent discrimination against LGBTQI+ people.
- Community concerns engaging the government on project design and implementation.
- Community concerns engaging the project-level government grievance redress mechanism.
To address these barriers to LGBTQI+ inclusion in World Bank projects, the Bank should:
- Support the design of projects in ways that preemptively mitigate the risk of discrimination in access to project benefits and actively supervise these measures during implementation.
- Better socialize the availability of alternatives to government-led grievance mechanisms.
- Design stakeholder engagement to account for the country’s context of risk of discrimination against LGBTQI+ stakeholders.
Read the full report here.