Civil society calls on EBRD to centre remedy in its safeguards review

Recourse has joined accountability groups from around the world in calling on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to put remedy for communities harmed by its investments at the heart of its Environmental and Social Policy review.

In a joint letter to EBRD management, the groups say EBRD’s current approach to remedy is inadequate. They point to evidence showing how few harmed communities receive any form of remedy:

“An analysis of all publicly available management action plans, problem-solving agreements, and monitoring reports reveals that only about 36% of eligible complaints have generated any remedial commitments at all. Of those complaints, only 9% have produced commitments that are known to have been accomplished. Examining the content of those accomplished commitments, approximately one-third relate to monitoring or operational changes, meaning they did not offer substantive remedy to complainants themselves. In total, only three complaints have ever resulted in compensation or social support to complainants. This is out of 259 complaints filed in total across the lifetime of EBRD’s accountability mechanisms.” 

The letter calls on the EBRD to set up a remedy fund, ensure responsible exit from investments, ensure clients have funds to remediate potential harms and improve its approach to retaliation. In the ESP review, the letter also outlines a number of steps the EBRD can take to improve its accountability to communities, pointing to examples from other development banks.