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social justice
Why It Matters That Male and Female Economists See the Economy Differently
In a significant new study published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Canadian economist Mohsen Javdani reveals that gender shapes views on power, equality, and inclusion in ways politics alone can’t explain.
Sep 14, 2025
Men and women might check the same box on election day, but they see the economy through different lenses. Just ask professional economists.
That’s the striking implication of a new study by Mohsen Javdani, associate professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, who surveyed over 2,400 economists across 19 countries. His research reveals that gender shapes how they understand economic issues in ways politics alone can’t explain—and warrants attention from policymakers and campaigns alike.
Javdani wasn’t just chasing numbers; he was looking for patterns in what economists believe and focus on. What he found: Women in the field (still underrepresented) are more likely to challenge traditional theories, promote equality and social justice, and push for a more inclusive economics. They tend to lean further left than their male colleagues, who are more often centrists or right leaning.
Probably no surprise there.
But here’s the twist: Even when the men and women shared the same political beliefs, they still interpreted economics differently. Right-leaning female economists, for example, were more likely than their male peers to question orthodox ideas and emphasize equality and inclusion. Javdani’s data suggests that as economists shift right politically, men abandon progressive views more quickly than women do.
Simply put, political labels often try to explain it all, but they miss a big piece: Gender is at work behind the scenes.
If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
So, just pack the room with more women and expect the conversation to shift? Not so fast.
Javdani points to earlier research by Giulia Zacchia and others, showing that numbers alone don’t cut it, especially if the loudest voices still echo the same old male-dominated, market-centered dogma. Without structural changes and real efforts to open the field to new ideas, the issues women tend to bring to the table, like labor protections, inequality, and a more hands-on role for government, keep getting sidelined. New faces, same soundtrack. Female economists are out there pushing for redistribution, calling out bias, and demanding better, but if no one’s listening, the system stays stuck.
This isn’t just academic—what’s at stake is a real understanding of how the economy hits women, what they contribute, and why their labor keeps getting undervalued.
Javdani’s study breaks new ground by showing how politics can blur—but never erase—the gender gap in economic thinking. As he writes:
While moving rightward on the political spectrum is consistently associated with weaker support for progressive and equity-oriented positions, the decline is less steep among women. In several cases—particularly among right- and far-right-leaning economists—women remained more supportive of positions emphasizing inequality, structural disadvantage, and concern about corporate power.
For anyone trying to grasp how voters think about the economy, this research is very suggestive.
Javdani study samples only economists, but it is difficult to believe that the differences he documents do not extend far more broadly, and that if we want to understand economic opinions at the ballot box, we have to look beyond party lines and pay attention to gender.
A recent NBC News poll, for example, shows a wide gap between conservative young male voters and their liberal female counterparts on issues like financial independence, debt, and home ownership. And a new Gallup survey reveals meaningful differences in how male and female respondents view capitalism and socialism—with men viewing capitalism more positively than women, and the reverse for socialism.
But significantly, there are also large gaps among men and women in the same political categories. A March 2025 Pew analysis found Republican women were more than twice as likely as Republican men to see employer bias as a major cause of the gender wage gap (43% vs. 18%). Meanwhile, polling by Navigator Research shows American women are consistently more pessimistic about the economy than men, across race, income, and party lines. This stems from how women experience the economy day-to-day—focusing on costs like groceries, rent, and healthcare rather than abstract numbers like GDP or the stock market.
As a result, women tend to strongly support policies that directly ease these burdens, from paid family leave and the Child Tax Credit to cracking down on corporate price gouging.
Yet much economic messaging still treats the economy as gender-neutral—a costly oversight for anyone hoping to connect with voters. Javdani’s research points to a missed opportunity: If right-leaning women are more receptive to progressive economic ideas than their male counterparts, then campaigns that speak directly to these women could unlock a powerful, untapped base for fairness and inclusion.
Talking about economics like gender doesn’t matter is like playing checkers in a chess game. When you meet people where they actually are, not where your ideological playbook says they should be, you stop talking past each other, and start building something real, like an economy that works for everybody.
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Beware Rich Men Quoting the Bible to Punish the Poor
The Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references.
Sep 10, 2025
It was a moment somewhat like this, 30 years ago, that turned me into a biblical scholar. In the lead-up to the passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, political and religious leaders quoted scripture to justify shutting down food programs and kicking mothers and their babies off public assistance. Those leaders, many of them self-described Christians, chose to ignore the majority of passages in the Bible that preached “good news” to the poor and promised freedom to those captive to injustice and oppression. Instead, they put forward unethical and ahistorical (mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations of biblical texts to prop up American imperial power and punish the poor in the name of a warped morality.
Three decades later, the Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references. In July, there was the viral video from the Department of Homeland Security, using the “Here I am, Lord. Send me” quotation from Isaiah—commonly cited when ordaining faith leaders and including explicit references to marginalized communities impacted by displacement and oppression—to recruit new agents for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, a job that now comes with a $50,000 signing bonus, thanks to US President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s former pastor went even further in marrying the Bible to anti-immigrant hatred by saying, “Is the Bible in favor of these ICE raids?… The answer is yes.” He then added: “The Bible does not require wealthy Christian nations to self-immolate for the horrible crime of having a flourishing economy and way of life, all right? The Bible does not permit the civil magistrate to steal money from its citizens to pay for foreign nationals to come destroy our culture.”
A month earlier, during a speech announcing the bombing of Iran, President Trump exhorted God to bless America’s bombs (being dropped on innocent families and children): “And in particular, God, I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
And in May, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican congressional representatives formed a prayer circle on the floor of the House as they prepared to codify the president’s Big Beautiful Bill. Of course, that very bill threatens to cut off millions of Americans from lifesaving food and healthcare. (Consider it a bizarre counterpoint to Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 and providing free healthcare to lepers.)
The Antichrist
And if that weren’t enough twisting of the Bible to bless the rich and admonish the poor, enter tech mogul Peter Thiel, cofounder of Palantir and the man behind the curtain of so much now going on in Washington. Though many Americans may be increasingly familiar with him, his various companies, and his political impact, many of us have missed the centrality of his version of Christianity and the enigmatic “religious” beliefs that go with it.
In Vanity Fair this spring, journalist Zoe Bernard emphasized the central role Thiel has already played in the Christianization of Silicon Valley: “I guarantee you,” one Christian entrepreneur told her, “there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.”
Indeed, his theological beliefs grimly complement his political ones. “When you don’t have a transcendent religious belief,” he said, “you end up just looking around at other people. And that is the problem with our atheist liberal world. It is just the madness of crowds.” Remember, this is the same Thiel who, in a 2009 essay, openly questioned the compatibility of democracy and freedom, advocating for a system where power would be concentrated among those with the expertise to drive “progress”—a new version of the survival of the fittest in the information age. Such a worldview couldn’t contrast more strongly with the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus demonstrates his preferential option for the poor and his belief in bottom-up strategies rather than top down ones.
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
More recently, Thiel has positioned himself “right” in the middle of the Republican Party. He served as Trump’s liaison to Silicon Valley in his first term. Since then, he has convened and supported a new cohort of conservatives (many of whom also claim a right-wing Christianity), including Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s Director of Policy Planning Michael Anton, AI and crypto czar billionaire David Sacks, and Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected the second time around. Thiel is also close to Curtis Yarvin, the fellow who “jokingly” claimed that American society no longer needs poor people and believes they should instead be turned into biofuel. (A worldview that simply couldn’t be more incompatible with Christianity’s core tenets.)
Particularly relevant to recent political (and ideological) developments, especially the military occupation of Washington, DC, Thiel is also close to Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of Palantir and founder of the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank behind a coordinated attack on the homeless now sweeping the nation. That’s right, there’s a throughline from Peter Thiel to President Donald Trump’s demand that “the homeless have to move out immediately… FAR from the Capital.” In July, Trump produced an executive order facilitating the removal of housing encampments in Washington, a year after the Supreme Court upheld a law making it a crime, if you don’t have a home, to sleep or even breathe outside. And Thiel, Lonsdale, and the Cicero Institute aren’t just responsible for those attacks on unhoused people and “blue cities”; they also bear responsibility for faith leaders being arrested and fined for their support of unhoused communities and their opposition, on religious grounds, to the mistreatment of the poor.
On top of this troubling mix of Christianity and billionaires, however, I find myself particularly chagrined that Thiel is offering an oversold four-part lecture series on the “antichrist” through a nonprofit called ACTS 17 collective that is to start in September in San Francisco. News stories about the ACTS 17 collective tend to focus on Christians organizing in Silicon Valley and the desire to put salvation through Jesus above personal success or charity for the poor. That sounds all too ominous, especially for those of us who take seriously the biblical command to stop depriving the poor of rights, to end poverty on Earth (as it is in heaven), and defend the very people the Bible prioritizes.
For instance, Trae Stephens (who worked at Palantir and is partners with Thiel in a venture capital fund) is the husband of Michelle Stephens, the founder of the ACTS 17 collective. In an interview with Emma Goldberg of the New York Times, Michelle Stephens describes how “we are always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized… I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”
In an article at the Denison Forum, she’s even more specific about her biblical and theological interpretation of poverty and the need to care for those with more rather than the poor. She writes, “Those who see Christ’s message to the poor and needy as the central pillar of the gospel make a similar mistake. While social justice movements have done a great deal to point out our society’s longstanding sins and call believers to action, it can be tempting for that message to become more prominent than our innate need for Jesus to save us.” Such a statement reminds me of the decades-long theological pushback I lived through even before the passage of welfare reform and the continued juxtaposition of Jesus and justice since.
A Battle for the Bible
Of course, such a battle for the Bible is anything but new in America. It reaches back long before the rise of a new brand of Christianity in Silicon Valley. In the 1700s and 1800s, slaveholders quoted the book of Philemon and lines from St. Paul’s epistles to claim that slavery had been ordained by God, while ripping the pages of Exodus from bibles they gave to the enslaved. During the Gilded Age of the 19th century, churches and politicians alike preached what was called a “prosperity gospel” that extolled the virtues of industrial capitalism. Decades later, segregationists continued to use stray biblical verses to rubber-stamp Jim Crow practices, while the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell, Sr., helped mainstream a new generation of Christian extremists in national politics.
Over the past decades, the use of the Bible to justify what passes for “law and order” (and the punishing of the poor) has only intensified. In Donald Trump’s first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border with a passage from the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea soon after in this way: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.” And in his first speech as speaker of the House, Mike Johnson told his colleagues, “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority,” an echo of the New Testament’s Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul writes that “the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”
We must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so.
Over the past several years, Republican politicians and religious leaders have continued to use biblical references to punish the poor, quoting texts to justify cutting people off from healthcare and food assistance. A galling example came when Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), rebutting a Jewish activist who referenced a commandment in Leviticus to feed the hungry, quoted 2 Thessalonians to justify increasing work requirements for people qualifying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). And that was just one of many Republican attacks on the low-income food assistance program amid myriad attempts to shred the social welfare system in the lead-up to President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history and a crowning achievement of Russell Vought’s Project 2025. Arrington said: “But there’s also, you know, in the Scripture, tells us in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3:10 he says, uh, ‘For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ And then he goes on to say, ‘We hear that some among you are idle’… I think it’s a reasonable expectation that we have work requirements.”
And Arrington has been anything but alone. The same passage, in fact, had already been used by Reps Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.) to justify cutting food stamps during a debate over an earlier farm bill. And Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) used similarly religious language, categorizing people as deserving and undeserving, to argue against a healthcare plan that protects those of us with preexisting conditions. He insisted that only “people who lead good lives” and “have done the things to keep their bodies healthy” should receive reduced costs for healthcare.
Such “Christian” politicians regularly misuse Biblical passages to blame the impoverished for their poverty. There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
A Theology of Liberation for a Time Like This
Such interpretations of biblical texts are damaging to everyone’s lives (except, of course, the superrich), but especially the poor. And—though you wouldn’t know it from such Republicans—they are counter to the main themes of the Bible’s texts. The whole of the Christian Bible, starting with Genesis and ending with the Book of Revelation, has an arc of justice to it. The historical equivalents of antipoverty programs run through it all.
That arc starts in the Book of Exodus with manna (bread) that shows up day after day, so no one has too much or too little. This is a likely response to the Egyptian Pharaoh setting up a system where a few religious and political leaders amassed great wealth at the expense of the people. God’s plan, on the other hand, was for society to be organized around meeting the needs of all people, including describing how political and religious leaders are supposed to release slaves, forgive debts, pay people what they deserve, and distribute funds to the needy. The biblical arc of justice then continues through the prophets who insist that the way to love and honor God is to promote programs that uplift the poor and marginalized, while decrying those with power who cloak oppression in religious terms and heretical versions of Christian theology.
My own political and moral roots are in the welfare rights and homeless union survival movements, efforts led by poor and dispossessed people organizing a “new underground railroad” and challenging Christianity to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christ. Such a conviction was captured by Reverend Yvonne Delk at the 1992 “Up and Out of Poverty Survival Summit,” when she declared that society, including the church, must move to the position that “poor people are not sinners, but poverty is a sin against God that could and should be ended.”
Delk’s words echo others from 20 years earlier. In 1972, Beulah Sanders, a leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest organization of poor people in the 1960s and 1970s, spoke to the National Council of Churches. “I represent all of those poor people who are on welfare and many who are not,” she said, “people who believe in the Christian way of life… people whose nickels and dimes and quarters have built the Christian churches of America. Because we believe in Christianity, we have continued to support the Christian churches… We call upon you… to join with us in the National Welfare Rights Organization. We ask for your moral, personal, and financial support in this battle for bread, dignity, and justice for all of our people. If we fail in our struggle, Christianity will have failed.”
In a Trumpian world, where Christian extremism is becoming the norm, we must not let the words of Beulah Sanders be forgotten or the worst fears of countless prophets and freedom fighters come true. Rather, we must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so. Now is the time. May we make it so.
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Finally, a Development Financial Institution Has a Policy for Remedying Harm
This milestone is not only a leap forward for International Finance Corporation but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world.
May 31, 2025
In a historic moment, the International Finance Corporation became the first development finance institution, or DFI, to adopt an explicit policy on remedy. On April 15, IFC published its Remedial Action Framework, formalizing a commitment to address environmental and social harms caused by IFC-supported investment projects.
This milestone is not only a leap forward for IFC but also a hopeful sign for communities harmed by development projects around the world. The Remedial Action Framework (RAF) is a cornerstone in a broader shift at a moment when the World Bank Group is planning to undertake a major overhaul of the environmental and social accountability systems on the public and private sides of the institution. The RAF sets the stage for a profound institution-wide commitment to avoid and remedy harm at the entire World Bank. Whether the grievance mechanisms and accountability systems of the institution change, or amendments to the environmental and social policies occur as part of this overhaul, the principles and drive for this cultural shift at the institution must now be rooted in the notion that remedy is possible at the World Bank.
As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it.
The IFC/Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) framework is the result of years of advocacy, discussion, and perseverance by numerous stakeholders both outside and inside the institution, as recognized in the RAF itself. The strenuous efforts from civil society organizations (CSOs) and project-affected people from around the globe stemmed from firsthand experience of harm as well as technical recommendations and proposals to ensure that the remedy is centered on the rights and the needs of those who have been harmed.
The RAF is a fundamental part of an approach that will focus on remedy but will also make considerations about when and why to exit a project responsibly, as established in its Responsible Exit Approach issued in October 2024.
How the IFC/MIGA RAF Works
It is particularly meaningful that the RAF acknowledges that, like all development institutions, IFC and MIGA must play a role in the “remedial action ecosystem.” This recognition signals a full understanding of the core tenet of international law, namely that institutions should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts when they have contributed to harm.
The RAF aims to provide a structured approach to address harm arising from the environmental and social (E&S) impacts of projects supported by IFC/MIGA. While the emphasis on the differentiated roles that IFC/MIGA and their clients play in providing remedy for harm remains, the support by IFC and MIGA for these remedial actions is a central part of the equation, focusing on:
- Prevention and Preparedness
- Access to Remedy
- Contribution to Remedial Action
The RAF will apply to all IFC-supported investment projects and all investment projects covered by MIGA political risk insurance guarantees. It makes distinctions for IFC/MIGA’s support for remedial actions, asserting they will vary depending on each case, stemming from factors such as the type of investment, proximity to harm, and other factors. Reaching an understanding of how these factors will be considered will require more detail than what is included presently in the RAF.
IFC/MIGA’s contribution to remedy will entail the use of influence and leverage to encourage clients to take remedial action, as well as providing support for enabling activities, such as fact-finding, technical assistance, and community development activities. Ultimately, the extent and effectiveness of these contributions will depend on the levels of engagement and participation from those seeking remedy.
While the RAF does contain references to institutional risks associated with providing direct funding for remedial actions by IFC/MIGA, it also acknowledges that the primary focus on enabling activities is meant to minimize these risks.
Notably, the RAF was approved on an interim basis, pointing to the importance of its three-year piloting phase to implement the approach. Practical application and enforcement of the RAF will certainly be the biggest challenge, but the inclusion of regular interactions with stakeholders, updates, and a final assessment to be conducted with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) to incorporate lessons learned to perfect the final policy is positive.
Prevention and Preparedness
The RAF emphasizes sustainability frameworks and the value of strengthening prevention and preparedness and facilitating remedy through grievance mechanisms, echoing a long-standing demand from civil society that avoiding harm must be prioritized over managing its aftermath. It is admirable to finally have IFC recognize the crucial need to identify and manage E&S risks and potential impacts to avoid harm in the first place, but this too will require a change in operations and culture at IFC so that every aspect of IFC’s operations is seen through an environmental and social lens—a shift that aligns with a human rights-based approach.
Assessing a client’s preparedness and capacity to properly identify and mitigate environmental and social risks and to provide access to remedial actions in the event of harm is one of IFC/MIGA’s primary roles. If IFC/MIGA are committed to the complementary roles required for remedial action implementation, then this primary role becomes ever more salient and fixed to its new mandate.
The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment.
And as IFC begins the process of updating its Sustainability Framework, it is the perfect time to capture the principles and thrust of the Remedial Action Framework and Responsible Exit Approach in a manner that enhances broad adoption and integration of the approach to remedy at the entire institution.
Although the RAF does not mention the Responsible Exit Approach—including a reference to IFC/MIGA’s leverage over a “former client”—it nods to its relevance by recognizing the challenges faced when clients are not willing to address situations of harm. Planning with clients to ensure a responsible exit from all projects—and leveraging the role of IFC/MIGA in contributing to remedy through enabling activities—remains fundamental.
Accessing Remedy
Based on the background provided in the RAF, one would assume that the framework is the result of the 2018 external review of the E&S accountability of IFC and MIGA, including the role and effectiveness of the CAO. Yet, civil society organizations that have been advocating for accountability and remedy for decades would quickly point to problematic projects such as Alto Maipo, Titan Cement, and Tata Tea, recalling the numerous communities who filed complaints proving the inadequacy of the system. For many of them, the ultimate catalyst for the turnaround would be the Tata Mundra case. This case—and the landmark Jam v. IFC litigation by Indian fisherfolk—highlighted the gaps in accountability when IFC dismissed the CAO’s findings and recommendations to bring the project into compliance and to provide remedy for communities.
Considering this history with the CAO, it is all the more notable that IFC/MIGA has embraced access to remedy as part of the holistic approach to remedial action within the RAF. They recognize the vital necessity of putting in place effective, reliable, and independent grievance mechanisms to address complaints raised by project-affected people when things go wrong.
IFC/MIGA emphasizes the client’s creation of an effective project-level grievance mechanism while maintaining the existence of IFC’s internal grievance mechanism—the Stakeholder Engagement and Response office—and the CAO. Together, these mechanisms make up the diverse cadre of options with varied levels of outcomes and results. By acknowledging the opportunity to capture lessons from the RAF’s initial implementation to inform updates to IFC/MIGA Sustainability Frameworks and the upcoming CAO Policy review, IFC/MIGA notably endorses raising the level of engagement and usefulness of these mechanisms.
For some time, CSOs and project-affected communities have been advocating for improvements to the CAO and grievance mechanisms at DFIs worldwide. Years of experience and long-standing collaboration led to the creation of the Good Policy Paper Guiding Practice from the Policies of Independent Accountability Mechanisms. These recommendations have been useful for numerous institutions seeking to improve their accountability frameworks with the ultimate goal of facilitating access to effective remedy.
What Constitutes Remedial Action for IFC and MIGA?
As stated in the RAF, “IFC/MIGA as development institutions have a role to play in the context of the broader remedial action ecosystem and may contribute to remedial action in the following ways:
- Use of available financial, contractual, and/or relationship influence and leverage to encourage clients and other responsible parties to take remedial action to address harm […]
- Provide support for enabling activities, including fact-finding, technical assistance/capacity-building, and/or community development activities.”
Even though the role of the client vis-à-vis IFC/MIGA is permanently interlinked, IFC/MIGA has approved an approach to remedy that still puts the client at the forefront of managing E&S risks and impacts, as well as funding and implementing remedial actions.
The initial perception of what was possible for a World Bank institution has evolved, noting IFC/MIGA’s commitment to contribute to Remedial Action as set forth in the RAF. While restating their role in using financial and contractual leverage to encourage clients to take remedial actions to address harm, IFC/MIGA will also provide support for enabling activities that will allow clients to provide solutions to project-affected people.
The scope of enabling activities may potentially allow for a broad range of actions by IFC/MIGA. While this will require practical experiences from the piloting phase to test and perfect the framework, initial considerations of enabling activities as presented in the RAF are promising as a minimum starting point:
- Fact-Finding: To provide additional information that may inform the creation and design of remedial actions by a client, IFC/MIGA may contribute funding to hire third-party experts who can complement dispute resolution and compliance processes at the CAO. In past cases, the lack of funding for these fact-finding efforts has become an obstacle that may stall or even stop dispute resolution processes between community complainants and clients, resulting in fruitless efforts.
- Technical Assistance and Capacity Building: Communities that have been harmed are often the most willing to act, working collaboratively to rehabilitate their lands or recover their waterways and ways of life. By providing funding for technical assistance and training so project-affected communities can address environmental impacts such as contaminated water sources, IFC/MIGA will be respecting a community’s agency and rights to remedy in direct ways. IFC/MIGA’s clients may also receive this type of assistance and capacity building to aid in implementing and monitoring corrective and remedial actions.
- Community Development Activities: The resilience of communities that have lost their livelihoods due to environmental harm is often a measure of their dignity and cultural identity. By demonstrating that community opinions are received in the design, launch, and implementation of community development programs offered, IFC/MIGA will legitimize their role, encouraging ownership of these programs and activities.
Additionally, while IFC/MIGA expect that enabling activities will be the preferred mode of engagement in most cases where project-level remedial action is warranted, the RAF states that this does not prevent them from proposing other modalities for approval by the Board.
Cost of Remedial Actions and the Role of IFC/MIGA and Their Clients
A major question and point of contention over these last years has been the cost of providing remedy. Here, the matter of differentiated roles has a direct bearing on the question of cost when IFC’s client is responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts. Something worth noting is the fact that private sector clients who joined IFC/MIGA consultations on the approach to remedial action were never opposed to remedy, but mainly concerned with how this could be done. They acknowledged the role of a project developer in remedying harms resulting from project construction, operations, etc. Their main question was always how to implement such a policy and how the costs would be allocated.
The RAF is clear about the costs for remedy, stating that under IFC’s Sustainability Framework, clients are responsible for managing E&S risks and impacts as well as funding and implementing remedial actions. While this would seem straightforward, the purpose of DFIs and the implementation of their mandates are at the core of an often nebulous division of roles. Considering this, the detailed description of IFC’s Sustainability Frameworks within the RAF comes into focus, as it is precisely the issue of a client’s ability to comply with IFC’s E&S policies and standards that makes IFC’s adjacent role more obvious and essential.
As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.
For instance, if IFC’s E&S due diligence at project appraisal is done properly, and if supervision and regular monitoring during project implementation are carried out entirely, then IFC can be sure that its client has managed E&S risks and impacts. As a result, the client adhered to IFC’s Performance Standards, applying the mitigation hierarchy correctly by taking all measures necessary to prepare for and avoid or minimize adverse impacts to the environment and preventing harm to people. However, when IFC fails to supervise and monitor its client properly, or when initial due diligence is lacking, or it neglects to notice a low-capacity client, then the risks are likely to materialize, causing harm.
If IFC realizes these errors, it may request corrective actions and changes to E&S Action Plans, so its client brings the project into compliance, yet this is not guaranteed. These are precisely the types of errors that have led affected communities to file complaints at the CAO, and the issues IFC has been grappling with for many years, ultimately leading to internal shifts and restructuring in E&S governance at the institution after assessing the entire accountability system.
Funding for contributions to remedial action by IFC will be obtained through the project’s funding structure, donor trust funds, IFC’s administrative budget, or operational risk capital. At the same time, MIGA’s contribution to remedial action activities is limited to available trust funds or existing budgetary resources.
Ultimately, the fact that IFC/MIGA has incorporated the possibility of using its own financial resources to contribute to remedial actions in the RAF, while still mentioning their concern for the risk of doing so, points to a change in perceptions that will ideally continue to shift the mode of thinking at the entire institution. Simply said, remedy should be seen as the goal from now on and something that should color all decisions at development finance institutions.
Implementation and What’s Next
The RAF was approved by the Board of Directors of both IFC and the MIGA on April 3 on an interim basis for three years. Implementation of the RAF during the pilot phase will require IFC/MIGA’s regular engagement with stakeholders to receive input and share updates.
As an essential part of the initial six months of implementation, IFC and MIGA, in consultation with the CAO, will have to define and track key performance indicators related to efficiency and effectiveness to ensure proper monitoring of the interim approach. IFC/MIGA will also monitor implementation, providing the boards with briefings and annual monitoring reports.
A final assessment in consultation with the CAO will be carried out at the end of the three-year period. The final policy will incorporate lessons learned and proposed revisions for review by the boards.
Remedy or Bust
The RAF should be praised. It has also created an opportunity to institute an approach to remedy within the entire World Bank Group at the perfect moment. As project-affected communities have illustrated through the years, harm is harm—no matter what type of investment may have led to it. As we face environmental and climate crises globally, and financial institutions join in multiplying funds available to address the growing need for solutions, we can now point to the first remedial action framework and concrete driver for ways of addressing harm and providing remedy.
Other institutions are now following suit. The IDB Group has indicated for several years that internal discussions on Remedy and Responsible Exit were already underway. Most recently, IDB Invest has prepared a draft approach to Responsible Exit based on the IFC/MIGA model and has been engaging with civil society and project-affected communities to receive feedback, while also moving on internal discussions for a remedy framework.
In the days following the approval of the IFC/MIGA Remedial Action Framework, CSOs had the opportunity to meet with IFC. The conversations had an immediate change in tone. This was a different conversation with other approaches for new projects, new contracts, thinking through how to make this framework a reality, with a sense of pride.
This was not lost on anyone. It revealed the legitimacy of having a framework and accompanying Responsible Exit Approach set to paper, as approved by the boards of these institutions. It showed its significance, its weight as a standard to follow, as a directive to take, and as a way forward for an institution that has finally recognized that development can sometimes have negative impacts, and that those impacts can lead to harm for communities. But now there is a way to address these harms and provide remedy, the commitment to do so has been set, and many are ready to make this happen, as challenging as it will undoubtedly be.
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