Preventing Violations: The Promise of Due Diligence for the International Financial Corporation

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), as a legally and financially independent member of the World Bank Group, aims to end extreme poverty worldwide and enhance financial prosperity by providing capital and guidance to private-sector entities in developing countries. The IFC has an advanced and much-admired Sustainability Framework that imposes 'due diligence' obligations on its clients in relation to social and environmental risks by means of eight Performance Standards. Nevertheless, the IFC has been the target of significant criticism owing to the fact that many of its projects have been implicated in serious human rights violations. This report argues that serious human rights abuses of this kind have occurred because the current Sustainability Framework does not adequately integrate consideration of human rights into the IFC?s due diligence processes