ABSTRACT
This chapter maps out the main human rights issues and responsibilities facing financial lenders. Financial lenders are defined here as institutions whose primary function is the provision of loan capital for public or private economic purposes. They include multilateral lenders, specifically the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), collectively referred to as the International Financial Institutions, and private commercial banks. The chapter focuses on financial lenders as financial lending has significant social and environmental, as well as economic, impacts — a matter well recognised among such lenders. It addresses the main issues relating to human rights and financial lending in the light of the new UN Framework on business and human rights. There is no express reference to human rights responsibilities in the constitutive instruments of the WBG organisations or the IMF. Thus Article I of the World Bank’s Articles of Agreement places economic reconstruction and development at the heart of the Bank’s purposes.
