28 October 2025.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, is currently reviewing its Sustainability Framework, which includes its Access to Information Policy (ATI Policy). The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD), in collaboration with several other civil society organisations, has prepared a joint submission on the ATI Policy. The submission makes a number of recommendations, including relating to the regime of exceptions which, among other weaknesses and uniquely among international financial institutions (IFIs), is not even comprehensive (i.e. the IFC can formally claim exceptions which are not listed in the Policy).
“The IFC’s ATI Policy falls well short of international standards and better practice among IFIs in a number of areas,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of CLD. “It is important for the IFC to take full advantage of this wider review and amend the ATI Policy so as to improve transparency at the IFC and to ensure the effective and efficient provision of information to the public.”
Some of the key recommendations in the Submission are as follows:
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- The list of exceptions should be substantially revised so that it aligns with international standards, including by subjecting all exceptions to a harm test, and by making the public interest override mandatory instead of discretionary and applying it to all exceptions.
- The scope of the policy should be broadened to include all information and documents held by the IFC, instead of being limited to information “concerning its activities”, which has been interpreted restrictively.
- A number of improvements to the procedures for making and processing requests should be introduced to make this a user-friendly system.
- Proactive disclosure practices should be improved to ensure the timely and complete provision of information of key public interest.
The Submission is available here. A list of organisations which have endorsed it can be viewed here.
For further information, please contact:
Raphael Vagliano
Senior Legal Officer, Centre for Law and Democracy
raphael@law-democracy.org
+1 514 506 0948
www.law-democracy.org
X: @Law_Democracy
BlueSky: @law-democracy.bsky.social
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/centre-for-law-and-democracy
