ABSTRACT
While providing low-interest loans and grants to countries that seek to develop their infrastructures, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are committed to sustainability as embodied in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which supports the protection of cultural heritage. Additionally, while their Member States are bound to their human rights’ treaty obligations, MDBs, as international organizations, are also subject to international law and may be held accountable for human rights’ violations, including those pertaining to cultural rights and cultural heritage. However, the impacts of their lending on sustainability and human rights have not always been uniquely positive. In recent years, scholars, NGOs and project-affected people have sought to draw attention to the human rights impacts of projects funded by MDBs, and called for the enhanced accountability of those organizations. Although most MDBs have developed policies to ensure that tangible forms of cultural heritage are protected, the protection of intangible forms of cultural heritage remains a work in progress, even if it is increasingly the subject of the Banks’ operational practice and policymaking. As the protection of intangible cultural heritage in the operations of MDBs has largely eluded the attention of legal scholarship, this contribution addresses this knowledge gap. It includes a selection of MDB-supported projects, in which the conduct around the protection of intangible cultural heritage was challenged. With a view to offering recommendations, the chapter further examines the most recent sustainability policies adopted by MDBs, including the World Bank, to identify possible gaps in the way they address intangible cultural heritage.
