For best experience please turn on javascript and use a modern browser!
You are using a browser that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Please upgrade your browser. The site may not present itself correctly if you continue browsing.
Amsterdam Research Institute for Legal Studies Amsterdam Research Institute for Legal Studies

Holding International Financial Institutions Accountable as Makers of International Sustainable Development Law

24 April 2025

Johanna Aleria Lorenzo, Assistant Professor in Public International Law, is soon to publish her monograph, entitled, 'International Financial Institutions and Sustainable Development: Lawmaking and Accountability'. The book unpacks the multilateral development banks' (MDBs) environmental and social policies (also known as ‘safeguards’) and examines their accompanying independent accountability mechanisms, to reveal the international lawmaking role of MDBs and to better explain the long-standing calls for them to account for how economic, social, and environmental sustainability is understood and pursued, especially in the developing world. The monograph will be published by Cambridge University Press in June 2025.

The monograph is based on Johanna's doctoral dissertation, 'International Financial Institutions and International Sustainable Development Law: The Role of Safeguard Systems and Non-State Actors', which was awarded by Yale Law School the Ambrose Gherini Prize for best paper in international law.

Introduction to the book

Balancing theoretical and practice-oriented elements, this book introduces researchers, teachers, and students in international sustainable development law to the IFIs' safeguard policies. It also scrutinizes the case law of independent accountability mechanisms that interpret those policies and afford recourse to individuals and communities adversely affected by development projects. The book's focus on the procedural and substantive features of IFIs' safeguard systems contributes to a more concrete understanding of these organizations' participation in the international lawmaking process on sustainable development. It puts IFIs in the spotlight and provides an international legal critique of their activities to match their notoriety in popular consciousness and to enhance their accountability to those they harm. By approaching international (economic) law and sustainable development through the lens of economic, environmental, and social issues arising in development projects primarily in the Global South, the book presents a needed counterbalance to existing literature on the topic.

Read more about the book on the Publisher's website
Dr J.A.P. (Johanna) Lorenzo

Faculty of Law

Public International Law

j.a.p.lorenzo@uva.nl

Johanna Aleria P. Lorenzo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public International and European Law and the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). She is affiliated with the Sustainable Global Economic Law Project (SGEL) project, focusing on the contribution of international organizations and the role of inter-State inequalities in shaping the global economy and its underlying (transnational) legal order.

Dr. Lorenzo specializes in international law and development (international development law), international trade law, and the legal aspects of IFI operations. Her research and publications concentrate on sustainability, development, and global governance issues arising from the intersections of international economic law, international environmental law, and international human rights law.