21st IAMNet Annual Meeting
In October, CAO traveled to Manila for the 21st Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAM) Annual Meeting. Co-hosted by the Asian Development Bank’s Accountability Mechanism and Green Climate Fund’s Independent Redress Mechanism, the meeting attracted over 60 participants from 23 development finance institutions and included a one-day roundtable with regional and international civil society organizations (CSOs).
IAM principals and staff meet annually to discuss emerging issues, good practices, and innovations in case handling, in addition to coordinating on joint cases, outreach, training, and other activities.
Opening the Annual Meeting, the President of the Asian Development Bank, Masatsugu Asakawa, and Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund, Mafalda Duarte, set the tone, emphasizing the important role of the accountability mechanisms in development finance and the increasing coordination that will be necessary given the volume of co-financed projects on the horizon. Mutual reliance by development finance institutions and the implications this has for accountability has quickly become a new focus for the IAMs.
Sessions over four-days discussed topics such as responsible exit and remedy for environmental and social harms, and the challenges achieving this effectively via IAM processes. These topics have been a focus for several years, including through dedicated IAM working groups. The IAMs have also been following developments related to IFC’s Responsible Exit Principles and anticipated Remedial Action Framework, as these initiatives are likely to set a standard that other development finance institutions follow.
Another session featured the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay, focused on the involvement of Indigenous Peoples in IAM cases. The IAMs also delved into climate change, discussing the growth of climate finance, experiences managing complaints related to green infrastructure, and projects with climate impacts, among others. Issues related to climate are increasingly at the forefront of IAMs’ work and raise questions about how IAMs will handle concerns related to global public goods moving forward.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) permeates all aspects of our lives, a useful session focused on how the IAMs can harness AI in their work to synthesize information and sort data, while being mindful of the limitations of these powerful tools. Other sessions focused on the nuts and bolts of case handling, unpacking challenges in dispute resolution cases and compliance review processes, and outreach good practices and strategies. With several IAMs undergoing policy reviews, one session focused exclusively on this topic, with participants sharing experiences of the challenges and opportunities these updates present.
An important fixture of the Annual Meetings is the one-day roundtable with civil society organizations (CSOs), which this year included around 40 representatives from regional and international CSOs. The agenda for the roundtable is driven by the civil society participants and discussions focused on how retaliation risks are being managed by IAMs, data analysis of IAM outcomes, and how to achieve remedy through IAM processes. IAMs were also asked what progress had been made to address issues that were tabled by civil society at the previous IAM Annual Meeting in London in 2023, including good practices on information sharing with complainants and ensuring IAM processes are safe, among others.
The 2024 IAM Annual Meeting concluded with the Secretariat of the IAM Network transferring from the World Bank Accountability Mechanism to the Asian Development Bank’s Accountability Mechanism. The Secretariat has a key coordinating role for the IAM network, supporting the organization of meetings, processing applications for membership, and serving as an institutional memory bank. CAO appreciates the significant contribution of the World Bank-Accountability Mechanism in chairing the Secretariat of IAMnet over the past two years and looks forward to working with the ADB Accountability Mechanism in their new role as Secretariat.
