Since the publication of this book, the analysis of human rights compliance by development institutions—and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in particular—has assumed an importance that the author may not have foreseen. The formation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) (commencing in 2014 and not yet concluded at the time of this review in May 2015) formalizes the threat to the ubiquity of social and environmental safeguards set by the World Bank and the ADB, which was a key driver of many of the recent policy changes in those institutions.

Fujita builds on the work of Skogly,Footnote ¹ Darrow,Footnote ² and myself,Footnote ³ among others, in observing that both the World Bank and, to a lesser extent, the ADB, acknowledge the relevance of their operations to human rights, but nevertheless stop short of accepting binding legal obligations when human rights are violated in a Bank-sponsored project, emphasizing instead the obligations of states with which the institutions engage (p. 49).

Fujita then undertakes a human rights critique of key policies of the World Bank and the ADB, namely the information disclosure policy, the participation policy, and the inspection policy. The last of these is the mechanism by which an affected person can bring a complaint against the relevant institution for non-compliance with its own safeguard policies. Insofar as the safeguard policies reflect international human rights standards and are faithfully implemented, the “inspection” process would be the accountability mechanism for enforcing human rights standards in development projects funded by these institutions. However, Fujita rightly concludes that the safeguard policy coverage does not extend to cover the full range of rights protected by international human rights law. She further concludes that even when the inspection process is followed faithfully and independently—which she says is not always the case—the process is weighted in favour of the board of management and therefore is often inadequate in terms of delivering a remedy to affected people. In relation to the World Bank (though the sentiments apply equally to the ADB), she concludes that “[t]hese weaknesses tend to suggest that the inspection mechanism was, after all, established only to satisfy the donor countries and their request for more accountability by the World Bank … rather than with a view to empowering affected people” (p. 244).

In the final section, Fujita analyzes in detail two cases before the World Bank Inspection Panel and the ADB Inspection Committee (as it then was), which reported in 1999 and 2002, respectively. She uses these cases to demonstrate the shortcomings of each institution’s approach to human rights. Although the cases chosen are important, as each was a pioneering case for the accountability mechanisms of each institution, both were already quite old by the time this book went to press in 2013—presumably because the work was originally undertaken as part of a PhD dissertation submitted in 2008. The safeguard policy frameworks, and the accountability mechanisms through which they are enforced, of both the World Bank and the ADB have changed considerably since then, and are changing even now at the time of this review. In particular, both institutions have been wary of potential competition from entities that do not require compliance with onerous social and environmental standards as a condition of lending, and therefore have been tweaking (some would say watering down) their safeguards to retain market share, while simultaneously funnelling a greater proportion of lending through financial intermediaries not covered by the same policies. With the emergence of the AIIB, the unnamed threat that has been spooking the World Bank and the ADB now has a name. While the recent changes in both institutions are not covered in Fujita’s work in any depth, her work constitutes a useful baseline study of the approach to human rights in each institution, and an insightful critique thereof, as things stood before the most recent waves of changes.