The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has embarked on a wholesale reform of its compliance mechanism, guided by the Board of Governors’ desire to increase the transparency, accountability, and effectiveness of the Bank’s performance. The revamping of the IDB compliance mechanism is long overdue, but the proposal for its new incarnation as the “Consultation and Compliance Review Mechanism” (it was formerly known as the Independent Investigation Mechanism, or IIM) suffers from grave deficiencies that compromise the independence and effectiveness of the mechanism.
In March 2006, the Bank Information Center (BIC) and a number of affiliated civil society groups sent an open memo to IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno that pointed out at least nine specific weaknesses in the CCRM as it now stands. The groups have yet to receive a response from the Bank. Review the memo to President Moreno.
The public consultations around the CCRM have also been deficient. Following public consultations in the spring of 2005, in which civil society organizations (CSOs) presented their suggestions and comments on the mechanism, the IDB Legal Department undertook to modify key aspects of the functioning of the CCRM. Since then, the mechanism proposal has been under consideration by the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors. Yet apart from assurances from the Bank that the March 2006 memo to President Moreno has been made available to Board members, there is little guarantee that its criticisms will actually be taken into account. The provisions for the CCRM probably constitute the most important policy in the IDB safeguards framework, in that it drives compliance with all the other policies. Still, the consultation process for it has been of far lower quality and accessibility when compared to that surrounding the newly approved Environment policy, for example.
Read the draft of the Consultation and Compliance Review Policy that was made available for public comment in February 2005. | Also available: Español (IDB website)
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This page was last modified on November 13, 2009.