The World Bank’s private investment arm is refusing to directly compensate individuals who faced sexual, physical, and financial harms at a chain of schools it funded in Africa and India, despite requests from the people who were hurt and pressure from civil society advocates, U.S. senators, and an internal watchdog.
On Thursday, the World Bank Group’s Executive Board will vote whether to approve the International Finance Corporation’s plan to remedy harms relating to its $13.5 million investment in Bridge International Academies, following a lengthy investigation that concluded in December. The Compliance Advisor Ombudsman found a series of failures relating to school safety and labor practices at Bridge schools in Kenya, according to a summary of its draft report that was leaked to The Intercept. The CAO asked the IFC — the World Bank’s financing arm — to work with Bridge to establish processes to compensate the affected individuals for harms suffered. Yet the IFC’s proposal declines to do so, according to two sources familiar with the case.
This comes just months after the IFC bucked a CAO recommendation for direct payments as a remedy for harm in a separate investigation involving the sexual abuse of young female students in 2016 by a teacher at a Bridge school in Kenya. Instead, the IFC agreed to fund a program that would support survivors of child sexual abuse to access services, such as counseling and health care, on a case-by-case basis and regardless of whether they were abused at a Bridge school.
“They failed to act when they became aware of the problems. That is reckless and complicit behavior.”
Civil society groups are up in arms about what they perceive as the IFC’s inadequate response to the CAO’s findings in both cases. “The truth is that the IFC knew about these problems. They failed to act when they became aware of the problems,” said Angelo Gavrielatos, campaign manager at the nonprofit Education International. “That is reckless and complicit behavior. It’s long overdue that they establish a remedy and contribute to that remedy for those who have been harmed.”
The IFC declined to comment specifically on the plan it will present to the World Bank board this week, saying only that its policy is to publicize its action plans following board approval.
Related
Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price.
Since 2018, the CAO has investigated a series of formal, overlapping complaints against Bridge International Academies, which opened in Kenya in 2009, for issues including school safety and sexual abuse. The CAO’s probes, and reporting by The Intercept, have revealed that students, parents, and teachers in Kenya were harmed as a direct result of Bridge’s wrongdoing and the IFC’s failure to supervise its investment. Bridge did not respond to requests for comment.
Civil society experts say that the best way for the IFC to make amends is to give money directly to survivors with no strings attached, as a way to acknowledge their suffering, as well as to give them the autonomy to decide what they need to heal and move forward with their lives. There is global precedent for providing compensation to survivors of abuse, including sexual abuse. A task force at the World Bank Group itself endorsed this approach in a 2017 report responding to sexual misconduct during a Bank-funded development........