Shared Responsibility or Institutional Accountability? Continuing Conceptual and Enforcement Issues for Grievance Mechanisms of Public and Private International Finance Institutions

Abstract

Major natural resource and infrastructure projects are increasingly financed and technically supported by public and private international finance institutions (ifis). When these ifis allegedly contribute towards violations of international social and environmental norms, a variety of legal and institutional measures have been proposed to respond to these allegations. These responses range from invocation of the ‘shared responsibility’ of both States and international/transnational institutions involved in a project, to institutional accountability mechanisms for responding to the claims of victims. This chapter will first assess the conceptual viability of ‘shared responsibility’ of international/transnational non-State actors for these violations, when juxtaposed against the institutional responses from these non-State actors in establishing grievance mechanisms to hold these actors accountable for their role in any such violations. Second, the effectiveness of these grievance mechanisms will be examined in two case studies, highlighting the continuing enforcement deficiencies of these mechanisms when addressing violations of international law. This chapter concludes that neither conceptual innovations such as ‘shared responsibility’, nor institutional grievance mechanisms, are ultimately able to surmount the continuing lack of effective enforcement within international law and international organizations.