مكتبة • Plan International - Girls' Rights Platform - Girls' rights are human rights: Positioning girls at the heart of the international agenda

The World Bank and human rights 2015, para. 43

Paragraph text: An especially problematic, if well-intentioned, case was the decision in February 2014 to delay a $90 million health project loan to Uganda after the country adopted a draconian anti-homosexuality act. The Bank suggested that it had acted only to ensure that the health project would not be adversely affected by the act. However, the President of the Bank explained that he had acted because he was not convinced that the loan would not lead to discrimination or even endangerment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

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Paragraph text: The President sought to make the case that serious institutional discrimination had economic costs that the Bank could legitimately take into account, but the same argument applies to equally problematic forms of discrimination against different groups in a large number of countries in which the Bank continues to operate, and in response to which no action has been taken. No convincing justification was put forward by the Bank as to why Uganda alone was singled out among the various countries that have laws that criminalize homosexuality. No explanation was given as to why discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities was the trigger for action, rather than often deeply entrenched official discrimination against various other groups. Nor was the action based on any policy document that had previously been elaborated. And finally, if the Bank itself had been directly implicated in the issue at hand, urgent remedial action would have been much more readily defensible, but it was not.

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