In 2015, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty Philip Alston stated that the World Bank treats “human rights more like an infectious disease than universal values and obligations” because of its understanding of what constitutes political interference. The World Bank’s interpretation, replicated by the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in the development finance regime complex, has shaped how activists hold the Banks to account. This chapter examines how the international accountability norm emerged through contestation with the World Bank and spread to be taken as given for the MDBs, as distinct from international human rights and environmental elemental regimes. It then documents how activists seek to protect human and environmental rights through the banks’ international accountability mechanisms as quasi-legal processes with implications for the banks’ culpability. Although there is an increasing recognition of some rights such as free, prior and informed consent and labour, the banks continue to view these as internal standards not legal obligations. The chapter then examines the extent to which the norm needs to be backed by hard law to be enforced, with efforts by the banks to maintain their international organisation immunity given legal claims as to their implication in human and environmental rights abuses.

This chapter focuses on how the application of an IO’s jurisdictional immunities prevent victims from accessing justice at the national level. The discussion first focuses on the basis of an IO’s domestic legal personality which allows suits to be brought against them at all. The chapter then identifies how IO immunities are applied today. Whereas IO immunities were intended to be functional, they have become by and large de facto absolute. This means that a claimant’s case is procedurally defeated and the merits do not get a chance to be ventilated. There are some indications that the tide might be shifting in favour of the claimant. Still, the way in which claims against IOs are addressed at the national level is unsustainable and requires a fundamental reframing.

Securing a stable and reliable energy supply in affordable and environmentally friendly conditions is the ultimate objective of energy law and policy. Energy systems must function ‘free from serious risk of major disruption of service’. Consumers must have access to a sufficient quantity of energy at socially and economically acceptable prices, but at the same time, efforts to mitigate climate change, protect local air quality and address water scarcity must not be undermined. States must therefore ensure that adequate investments are made in energy production and network capacity, without imposing an unreasonable financial burden on industry and the general public. The stakes are high. The failure to deliver energy security undermines economic development and social and environmental protection, and can also threaten social peace and stability.