• Critiques and evaluations

Critiques and evaluations

Conditional lending remains a controversial aspect of World Bank lending. These conditions have often placed an undue burden on developing countries and at the same time have undermined human rights and the environment. This policy brief discusses the evolution of conditionality at the World Bank and the current landscape of programme conditions and project safeguards. It suggests a number of ways ways in which lending standards could be improved, which it claims could have far-reaching implications for the international aid system.

The authors describe how project safeguards were first implemented by the World Bank in the 1980s in response to pressure from civil society organisations (CSOs). However, they argue, measures to protect the environment and human rights are narrow in their scope, have been inconsistently applied and lack enforcement. There is a fear that these safeguards will be further eroded as the World Bank implements a country systems approach.

Programme conditions include policy, process and outcome conditions for World Bank lending. In 2005, the World Bank committed to 'good practice principles' (GPPs) which included ownership, harmonisation, customisation, criticality, and transparency and predictability. While recent evaluations have concluded that conditions are falling, the paper notes that both the British government and CSOs have questioned this assertion.

The paper concludes by recommending a number of principles for more responsible lending, which include the following:

• country leadership: a shift from policy conditions to outcome conditions
• universality: a move away from creditor-specific conditions toward safeguards which apply across all bilateral and multilateral financial transactions
• accountability: including transparency and participation of stakeholders in the setting, monitoring and enforcement of programme conditions and project safeguards

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