In this advisory report (the “report”) the terms intimidation, reprisals and retaliation are used generically
and interchangeably to identify any sort of harmful action or conduct used by one party to discourage or prevent another party from voicing opinions or interacting with any non-judicial, quasi-judicial, judicial, or administrative recourse mechanism, or to punish another party for taking such action. This report includes some examples of reprisals allegedly experienced by Requesters 4 because they submitted a complaint to the Inspection Panel as well as alleged reprisals that project-affected persons and human rights defenders (HRDs) have experienced when raising issues or expressing opposition to a Bank-financed project that the Panel was reviewing. The reprisals described below also cover parties or persons who claim to have experienced retaliation due to their actual or presumed association with a Panel case; such associated persons5 may include interpreters or facilitators. This report cites various allegations of reprisals. These allegations have been presented to the Panel through Requests for Inspections or during the processing of the Requests; in some cases, allegations were presented after the case was closed. In some of the examples described below, the Panel neither investigated nor confirmed a given allegation, but the report presents the victims’ experiences here as they were recounted to the Panel. It is worth noting that the Panel is not required to verify the credibility of
such allegations.