TheChallenge of Theoretical and Practical Status of Human Rights in the System of the World Bank

Document Type : Scientific research

Authors

• Hojjat Salimi Turkamani ¹
• Peyman Shahbazi ²

¹ Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University

² Institute for management and planning studies

https://doi.org/10.22067/le.v25i14.67059

Abstract

Nowadays international economic law and international human rights law as two diverse domains of international law have complex relations. The relationship between these legal branches is mainly around the development of law. One of the areas of interconnection and coincidence between these two branches of international law in the framework of development is the activities of international economic organizations including the World Bank. The activities of the World Bank have a substantial effect on the issue of human rights, and different societies are affected by the implementation of the World Bank’s projects. The World Bank has no vivid human rights policies and has always adopted doubtful measures in relation to human rights. Sometimes the World Bank has avoided contribution in promotion of human rights and sometimes it has declared itself bounded to protect the human rights law by developing its operation and applying a new definition. Even at the times that the actions of the World Bank have human rights effects, it doesn’t mention the human rights explicitly. The main question raised here concerns the role of the World Bank on human rights in the period of its existence.  
Research Method
the research method used in this study is descriptive-analytical using library resources. In order to answer the question, the statute of IBRD and its related documents were analyzed.
Results and Discussions
The World Bank, as an important international economical organization is the challenging  area between human rights discourse and development discourse. This challenge in the framework of the World Bank may be addressed in theoretical and pragmatic aspects. The inquiry on this challenge in the field of theoretical aspects reveals that the protection and propagation of human rights is not outside the competence of the bank and theoretically it is desirable. Some consideration such asThe promotion of human rights status in international issues, adoption of human policies in development, and excessive experimental proofs in relation to the consistency between all human rights instances, make difficulties in applying confined and limited deduction in relation to the human rights status in the world bank system. Gradually, the absolute economical deduction of the notion development has been faded by the emergence of notions such as sustainable development and good governance and has caused the human rights deduction to be coupled with the notion of development. According to this fact, today the human rights have a desirable status in the bank’s constitution and general international documents of the World Bank system. To sum up the bank is obliged to consider human rights in the context of economical consideration or any other  ways.
The inquiry between development and human rights discourse in the framework of the World Bank policy shows the inconsistency among the mentioned domains. Despite the bank and its authority’s claims, the applied measures in protecting human rights were not so satisfactory. Examining several pragmatic cases such as stablishment of inquiry commissions, formation of inspection assembly and conducting structural programs reveal this fact that the mentioned cases could not be in line with the promotion human rights status in the World Bank system. in spite of claims of  the bank and its authorities,  the measures applied by the World Bank in mentioned cases were not satisfactory and there was considrable gap between the human rights status in the bank’s claims in their reports and their operations. Although human rights has a desirable status in the constitution of the World Bank and general international law rules, but the  study on the pragmatic cases shows the relative indifference of the bank to the human rights issue.
Conclusions & Suggestions:
Finally, it can be expressed that the only method to promote the human rights, both theoretically and pragmatically, is perhaps to consider the development in the field of human rights and applying a human rights-centralized approach to development. This is an issue which must be result in the emergence of the issue of human rights in strategical and operational policies of the World Bank. In adopting such an approach, the real connection might be made between the development and the human rights ideals. Otherwise the obvious unbalance between the status of human rights in theoretical and practical aspects would remain unsolved. The World Bank approach in relation to the human rights is an important opportunity to propagate the human rights, and at the same time it is a serious threat to the human rights protection. If this opportunity is utilized, the bank might have a constructive role in human rights propagation, the rule of law establishment, and also good governance and sustainable development. If this opportunity is not used, however,it will result in a stream that only would bring the development of violence to the mind.

Keywords

• World Bank
• Human rights
• development
• Economic Consideration
• Sustainable development

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