Addressing conditionality from the perspectives of contract law, treaty law and

19. The use of conditionality in development aid has been the subject of political, practical and academic debates. They concern particularly the implementation of conditionality and the legitimacy of its insertion since it requires the Recipient of the aid to take certain

37 See on dissertations Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 5-7.

38 The World Bank Group officers interviewed preferred to remain anonymous.

measures in return for the support.³⁹ It is the IMF’s conditionality that was first studied by researchers,⁴⁰ but with time, academic interest grew for MDBs’ conditionality,⁴¹ from structural adjustment conditionality⁴² to conditionality related to environmental and social safeguards.⁴³ Some authors have addressed certain aspects of conditionality by providing, for example, detailed research on problematic MDB projects and the history of the development of this environmental and social conditionality.⁴⁴ Others have specialized in inspection panels, which monitor compliance with MDBs’ conditionality, and the Bank’s accountability in general.⁴⁵ Although there are relatively few articles on the subject for now,

39 See for instance William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002); Collier, “Is Aid Oil?”, op. cit.; Jan Willem Gunning, “Budget support, conditionality, and impact evaluation”, in S. Koeberle, Z. Stavresky, J. Waliser.

(eds.), Budget Support as More Effective Aid? Recent Experiences and Emerging Lessons (Washington DC:

World Bank, 2006), pp. 295-310.

40 See in particular Rosa M. Lastra, “IMF conditionality”, 4 Journal of International Banking Regulation no.

2 (2002), pp. 167-182; Axel Dreher, “IMF Conditionality: Theory and Evidence”, 141 Public Choice no. 1/2 (2009), pp. 233- 267.

41 Mosley, Harrigan, Toye, Aid and Power, op. cit.; Tony Killick, Ramani Gunatalika, Ana Mar, Aid and the Political Economy of Policy Change (London: Routledge / Overseas Development Institute, 1998), op. cit.;

Devesh Kapur, Richard Webb, “Governance-related Conditionalities of the International Financial Institutions”, G-24 Discussion Paper Series no. 6 (August 2000); Jakob Svensson, “When is foreign aid policy credible? Aid dependence and conditionality”, 61 Journal of Development Economics no. 1 (2000), pp. 61-84; Mold, Policy Ownership, op. cit.; Celine Tan, “The new disciplinary framework: conditionality, new aid architecture and global economic governance”, in J. Faundez, C. Tan (eds.), International Economic Law, Globalization and Developing Countries (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010), pp. 112-137.

42 Tan, “Regulation and Resource Dependency”, op. cit.

43 On the Operations Manual, see Boisson de Chazournes, “Policy Guidance and Compliance”, op. cit., which provides the cornerstone for the study of environmental and social safeguards. See also John W. Head,

“Environmental Conditionality in the Operations of International Development Finance Institutions”, 1 The Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy (1991), pp. 15-26.; David A. Wirth, “Economic Assistance, the World Bank, and Nonbinding Instruments”, in E. Brown Weiss (ed.), International Compliance With Nonbinding Accords (Washington DC: American Society of International Law, 1997); Mohamed Bekhechi,

“Some Observations regarding Environmental Covenants and Conditionalities in World Bank Lending Activities”, 3 Max Planck Yearbook of UN Law (1999), pp. 289-314; Benedict Kingsbury, “Operational Policies of International Institutions as Part of the Law-Making Process: The World Bank and Indigenous Peoples”, in G. S. Goodwin-Gill, S. Talmon (eds.), The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Daniel D. Bradlow, Megan S. Chapman, “Public Participation and the Private Sector: the Role of Multilateral Development Banks in the Evolution of International Legal Standards”, 4 Erasmus Law Review no. 2 (2011), pp. 91-124; Philipp Dann, Michael Riegner, Managing Social and Environmental Risk in World Bank Development Policy Operations, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (April 2015), available at: http://dann.rewi.hu-berlin.de/doc/Dann_2015_Managing_social-environmental-risks-world-bank.pdf; Charles Di Leva,

“Climate-related Standards and Multilateral Finance for Development”, Laws no. 4 (2015), pp. 674-690.

44 Wade, “Greening the Bank”, op. cit.; Pieter Bottelier, “Was World Bank Support for the Qinghai Anti-Poverty Project in China Ill-Considered?”, 5 Harvard Asia Quarterly no. 1 (2001), pp. 47-55, Park, “Norm diffusion within international organizations”, op. cit.; Stephen J. Macekura, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

45 Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, The World Bank Inspection Panel: In Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Suresh Nanwani, “Holding Multilateral Development Banks to Account: Gateway and Barriers”, 10 International Community Law Review (2008), pp. 199-226; Suresh Nanwani, “Directions in Reshaping Accountability Mechanisms in Multilateral Development Banks and Other Organizations”, 5 Global Policy no. 2 (2014), pp. 242-252; Andria Naudé Fourie, The World Bank Inspection Panel and Quasi-Judicial Oversight, in Search of the ‘Judicial Spirit’ in Public International Law (Utrecht: Eleven International

the World Bank’s new environmental and social standards, which are set to come into force in October 2018,⁴⁶ have already attracted the attention of some researchers.⁴⁷

20. When inserted into a loan agreement, conditionality has been studied from the perspective of treaty law or contract law, depending on the Recipient of the funds.⁴⁸ Indeed, as developed further in Chapter One, once the loan agreement is signed, conditionality is governed by treaty law if the Recipient is a State, or by contract law if the Recipient is a company.

21. While examining more generally the insertion of the policies of international organizations into international law, several researchers have come to the conclusion that MDBs’ conditionality is part of global administrative law (hereinafter also GAL), as explained below in Chapter One.⁴⁹ More precisely, the safeguards have been qualified as

Publishing, 2009); Daniel D. Bradlow, Andria Naudé Fourie, “The Operational Policies of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation: Creating Law-Making and Law-Governed Institutions?”, 10 International Organizations Law Review (2013), pp. 3-80; Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, “Public participation in decision-making: the World Bank Inspection Panel”, in E. Brown Weiss, A. Rigo Sureda, L.

Boisson de Chazournes (eds.), The World Bank, international financial institutions, and the development of international law: a symposium held in honor of Ibrahim F.I. Shihata, March 22, 1999 (Washington: The American Society of International Law, 1999); Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, “Les Panels d’Inspection”, Société Française pour le Droit International, Colloque de Lyon - Droit international et développement (Paris:

Editions A. Pedone, 2015), pp. 111-120; Andria Naudé Fourie, World Bank Accountability in Theory and in Practice (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2016); Giedre Jokubauskaite, Accountability towards Individuals and Communities Affected by World Bank Development Interventions: A Project Law Approach (Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, 2016).

46 World Bank, “Environmental and Social Framework” (website), available at:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/environmental-and-social-framework.

47 Jochen Von Bernstorff, Philipp Dann, Reforming the World Bank Safeguards, a comparative legal analysis, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (2013), available at:

https://dann.rewi.hu-berlin.de/doc/Dann_2013.pdf; Harvey Himberg, Comparative Review of Multilateral Development Bank Safeguard Systems, Main Report and Annexes (May 2015), available at:

https://consultations.worldbank.org/Data/hub/files/consultation-template/review-and-update-world-bank-safeguard-policies/en/phases/mdb_safeguard_comparison_main_report_and_annexes_may_2015.pdf;

Philipp Dann and Michael Riegner, Safeguard–Review der Weltbankgruppe: Ein neuer Goldstandard für das globale Umwelt- und Sozialrecht?, Berlin: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (2017).

48 Boisson de Chazournes, “Policy Guidance and Compliance”, op. cit., p. 288.

49 See for instance Alvarez, International Organizations as Law-makers, op. cit., pp. 244-257; Benedict Kingsbury, “The Concept of ‘Law’ in Global Administrative Law”, 20 European Journal of International Law no. 1 (2009), pp. 23-57; Kingsbury, “Introduction: Global Administrative Law in the Institutional Practice of Global Regulatory Governance’, in H. Cissé, D.D. Bradlow and B. Kingsbury (eds.), The World Bank Legal Review, Vol. 3: International Financial Institutions and Global Legal Governance (Washington: World Bank, 2012), pp. 3-33; Benoît Frydman, Arnaud Van Waeyenberge, Gouverner par les standards et les indicateurs.

De Hume aux rankings (Bruxelles / Paris: Bruylant / LGDJ, 2014); Naudé Fourie, The World Bank Inspection Panel and Quasi-Judicial Oversight, op. cit., p. 8; Philipp Dann, “The Global Administrative Law of Development Cooperation”, in Sabino Cassese (ed.), Research Handbook on Global Administrative Law (UK:

Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), pp. 415-435; Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, “Functionalism!

Functionalism! Do I look like functionalism?”, 26 European Journal of International Law no. 4 (2016), pp.

951-956; Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories, op. cit., pp. 61-66, 68-71.

pertaining to a specific branch of global administrative law, which is sometimes called the institutional law of development, or the law of development cooperation and finance.⁵⁰ Because they are considered complementary, both global administrative law and, respectively, treaty law or contract law approaches to the safeguards are adopted in the dissertation.

3.2.2. Addressing sustainable development from the perspective of public international law