The World Bank group has been criticised by a wide variety of groups over the years for its failure to adequately take into account human rights and democratic principles. Recently, the Bank has started to widen the scope of its activities so that now the Bank is involved in projects concerned with such disparate issues as the environment, poverty reduction and women in development. This paper focuses on one of the new Bank concerns, governance, and examines the prospects it holds for ensuring that the Bank and its borrower-countries respect human rights and democratic values. It then reviews the responses governance has received and suggests alternative means that may more effectively ensure that the Bank takes into account such values. Finally, the paper proposes a new test, based on Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to be applied to potential borrowers and the test is applied to Burma.
