Demystifying Development Banks – Tools for Environmental and Human Rights Defenders

Human rights and environmental defenders around the world are fighting to ensure that development projects like infrastructure, energy, and agriculture investments respect the human rights and priorities of local communities. One critical tool in this fight is knowing how to leverage the public banks that finance these development projects to access information, influence development proposals, prevent harm, and hold corporations and governments accountable.

“Demystifying Development Banks” is a multimedia presentation from a recent webinar hosted by the Coalition for Human Rights in Development. In the presentation, experts from Human Rights Watch, Foundation for Development of Sustainable Policies – FUNDEPS, ENDS, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations – SOMO, and CEE Bankwatch provide a basic overview of the connection between development finance and threats to defenders, explain how development banks work and how to get information about development projects and discuss strategies that can be used to influence development processes to reduce human rights risks, to secure protections for defenders or to respond to attacks.

The multimedia presentation is available online and the presentation slides can be downloaded here.