A/HRC/54/31 projects so as to ensure that the frameworks are well understood and effectively implemented by staff, with institutional support at the highest levels. Those frameworks must include safeguards for Indigenous Peoples that provide concrete and human rights-based guidance to financial institutions and their partners on how to perform independent human rights and environmental impact assessments, implement ongoing free, prior and informed consent throughout the project cycle, foster the participation of Indigenous Peoples and their ownership of a project, and ensure benefit-sharing that is agreed by the rights holders affected. The establishment of independent grievance mechanisms is also critical to ensuring the accountability of those principles and should be made available to rights holders even after a project has been completed. However, even where grievance mechanisms are in place, the negative impacts of large infrastructure projects on Indigenous Peoples are often not remedied. International development finance institutions need to address the fact that government non-compliance with international and domestic law increases the risk of Indigenous rights violations. 19. The World Bank began implementing its environmental and social framework in 2018, replacing its operational policy/Bank procedures on Indigenous Peoples (OP/BP 4.10). The new framework emphasizes principles such as borrower capacity-building and transparent stakeholder engagement through meaningful and ongoing consultations throughout the life cycle of a project. It also seeks to enhance the responsiveness of grievance mechanisms to facilitate the resolution of concerns of parties affected by projects. The framework advances the existing policy of the Bank on Indigenous Peoples by including the requirement of free, prior and informed consent in projects affecting their territories, natural resources or cultural heritage, or requiring involuntary resettlement and ensuring that grievance mechanisms take into account the availability of judicial recourse and customary dispute settlement mechanisms among Indigenous Peoples.18 20. However, stakeholders are of the opinion that there are several limitations to the new World Bank framework and the frameworks of other international development finance institutions that are based upon it, including a reference to human rights as aspirational and not binding; delegation of World Bank due diligence duties to borrowers, giving them the responsibility for carrying out environmental and social impact assessments for projects; and flexibility for borrowers and financial intermediaries to apply local laws and regulations as benchmarks for projects instead of higher and more protective international standards. 19 Regarding the rights of Indigenous Peoples, critiques include a lack of compliance with international human rights standards on consultation and free, prior and informed consent; failure to consider impacts outside the immediate project area; limiting remedies to monetary compensation; and the absence of engagement, dialogue and consultation with Indigenous Peoples regarding the establishment of grievance mechanisms, as required by principle 31 of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.20 21. As the Asian Development Bank is currently in the process of updating its 2009 safeguarding policy statement, Indigenous Peoples are asking it to uphold international standards on free prior and informed consent and to expand the triggering of free, prior and informed consent processes to include all projects funded by the Bank, not only the ones that could have severe impacts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. 21 The 2023 update to the integrated safeguarding system of the African Development Bank requires borrowing States to obtain free, prior and informed consent from affected “highly vulnerable rural minorities”, a term it defines as potentially including Indigenous Peoples, but only as recognized by 18 19 20 21 6 World Bank, Environmental and social standard No. 7, paras 24 and 34. See https://earthrights.org/blog/world-banks-new-environmental-and-social-framework-is-a-hugestep-backward-for-human-rights/ and https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-lawreview/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/08/GT-GELR200022.pdf. See https://minorityrights.org/2016/09/16/comments-regarding-world-banks-environmental-socialframework-8953/. See joint submission by Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy and Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network to the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. March 2023, available from https://cemsoj.wordpress.com/2023/03/06/aipnee-and-cemsojs-joint-submission-on-developmentfinance-institutions-and-human-rights-to-the-un/. GE.23-13366