IFC Funding of Dinant Project: Call for Overhaul of Risk Assessment for Sustainable Finance

In January 2014, International Finance Corporation (IFC) a unit of the World Bank Group that finances private investments in some of the poor countries, made a U-turn in its dealings with Corporación Dinant S.A. de C.V. (Dinant), a vertically integrated palm oil company in Honduras . Dinant had been accused of killing and forcefully evicting hundreds of peasants from their plantations. After first rejecting the report from its internal watchdog ‘Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman’ (CAO), IFC finally accepted that it had failed to implement its own social and environmental policies and procedures while entering into a US$30 million loan agreement with Dinant. It pledged to work with Dinant, asking it for further commitments and assurances before disbursing the next round of financing....