In 2009, the Steering Committee for the programme ‘Beyond Territoriality: Globalisation and Transnational Human Rights Obligations’ (GLOTHRO), funded by the European Science Foundation and led by Belgian Professor Wouter Vandenhole, started a project on the human rights obligations of international financial institutions, most notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG), which is composed of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Development Association (IDA), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The project would build on a previous project, started in 2001 by the present author, which led to the publication of World Bank, IMF and Human Rights in 2003, containing the ‘Tilburg Guiding Principles on the World Bank Group, the IMF and Human Rights’.

The present publication provides an extensive explanatory text to, and a make-over of, the 2003 Guiding Principles, now called the ‘Tilburg-GLOTHRO Guiding Principles on the World Bank Group, the IMF and Human Rights’ (see Annex I). These principles are adapted to new insights and developments in the domain of international human rights law over the last decade, with special emphasis on the extraterritoriality of human rights, as well as on developments taking place in the domain of the international legal responsibilities of international organisations and their Member States. The text does not discuss the extent to which the WBG and IMF, and other multilateral development banks to which the findings would apply mutatis mutandis, actually live up to their international human rights legal obligations in daily practice. The focus is on discussing and clarifying the underlying legal concepts.

The explanatory text is comprised of arguments substantiating the Guiding Principles, taken either from doctrine or legal authorities. The aim of the publication is to clarify by what norms of international human rights law the WBG, IMF, and other IFIs are bound in 2014. Both the Guiding Principles and the text are meant to (re)present the relevant existing international human rights law (de lege lata), while adding a number of proposals with a view to the future law (de lege ferenda).