Timely access to information is critical to the success of development projects. It allows stakeholders, especially project-affected communities, to engage in informed discussion, provide input on project design and implementation, and present concerns and grievances when a project is likely to cause harm or violates the institution's environmental and social standards. At the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private sector lending arm, the current Access to Information Policy has been in place since 2012. Under this policy, the IFC commits to share information about its institutional processes, policies, and projects unless that information falls under one of the policy’s 12 exceptions to information disclosure.
For each proposed direct investment, the IFC makes project information available through a Summary of Investment Information (SII) and an Environmental and Social Review Summary (ESRS) at least 30 days prior to project approval. Project information on the IFC’s website is only available in English, making it inaccessible to non-English speakers. Additionally, the IFC does not typically list specific IFC project team members and their contact information on the relevant project pages, so stakeholders cannot directly raise concerns or engage with project supervisors.
In practice, the information that the IFC proactively discloses is not sufficient for civil society and project-affected communities to meaningfully engage with a project. The IFC does not routinely disclose full versions of project documents for all investments on its website, relegating accountability for disclosing detailed project information, including impact assessments, to its client companies, and leaving affected communities in the dark about potential project risks. For example, in the IFC-sponsored Hidrovias do Brazil (HDB) project, the IFC failed to identify impacts on Indigenous Peoples during project appraisal, so the IFC and HDB did not apply Performance Standard (PS) 7 and the project-affected Indigenous groups were not consulted during project design and implementation. In conversations with the IFC, the IFC claimed that PS7 was applied in the project, but that was never reflected in the ESRS, nor have relevant impact studies been posted, and thus there is no way for communities to know that the IFC deemed PS7 applicable.
In BIC’s experience, the IFC also does not consistently update project statuses on its disclosures website in a timely manner, making it difficult for communities to know if the IFC is still involved in the project. For example, when BIC shared our partner’s report on the IFC’s failure to enforce the Performance Standards at the Kipoi copper mine with the IFC, we only then learned that the IFC had already completely divested from the company a year before without sharing this information with the community nor reflecting this change on their website. Likewise, complainants in a case with the IFC’s complaint mechanism, the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO), discovered that the IFC had divested from the relevant investment in Titan Cement Egypt via an announcement on the Egyptian stock exchange, while the status remained active on the IFC’s website.
Limiting the disclosure of project documents, points of contact, decisions to divest, or other information that communities need to meaningfully engage with a project severely undermines transparency and leaves communities stranded. For the IFC to improve its information disclosure and be more accountable to the communities it serves, the IFC should:
For more information on our work regarding the IFC, visit our website.
