Abstract

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been criticised for their weak commitment to human rights, with the World Bank subject to greater scrutiny and criticism than the IMF and despite significant progress since 2015 in linking its policies and operations to international human rights law. In this light, we explore the extent to which the IMF meets its responsibilities under international human rights law. We focus on IMF conditionality, on the conditions attached to IMF loans to countries in the global South. Using QDA Miner Lite, and a system of interpretive coding, we explore the extent to which international human rights standards are reflected in IMF loan conditions on the basis of inter-temporal and cross-country comparisons. We find that human rights are increasingly reflected in IMF conditionality, but also that it continues to undermine human rights, for instance, by unduly constraining the fiscal space available to sovereign governments. The IMF, we conclude, continues to compare unfavourably to other multilateral institutions, warranting enhanced scrutiny by organs of the UN Human Rights Council and by human rights NGOs.