Are the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bound to abide by international human rights law? For many legal and non-legal specialists it is clear that human rights must not be treated as something separate from activities conducted by the United Nations (UN) and the international organisations attached to, and closely working with, the UN. This is referred to as the ‘mainstreaming of human rights’. In this approach, the concept of human rights is used as a bridge in the fight against the (over-)fragmentation of international law and as a (the) guiding principle for the composite and complex organisation called the United Nations. This approach applies international human rights laws to the main organs of the UN and all the international organisations and specialised bodies linked to the UN, such as, in the context of the present publication, the WBG and the IMF. Others, however, argue that the charters and other constitutive documents of these international financial institutions (IFIs) have to be honoured and that one has to respect their specialisations. The consequence of this argument would be that such charters could/should be placed above or, at least, alongside other international obligations that the IFIs have by virtue of their links to the ‘UN family’. Both views keep coming up in discussions on the questions why and to what extent the WBG and IMF are legally bound by international human rights standards. The key aim of the present publication is to make it clear by what norms of international human rights law both the WBG and the IMF are bound, and to further identify and specify points for coining their responsibility for violating these norms. As to the latter, the focus is on principles and concepts that can help to attribute and apportion such responsibility to these IFIs, including the responsibility shared with their Member States.

As to the terminology used, the 2001 Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (DARS) use the term ‘attribution of conduct’ to a State (Article 2, header of Chapter II and Articles 10 and 11). The 2011 Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (DARIO) do the same in relation to international organisations (Article 4, header of Chapter II and Article 9).