World Bank Puts Black Employees At Back Of Bus: Study

A new report finds the World Bank, known as Africa’s leading financier, guilty of hiring practices that are biased against people of African descent.

The study, conducted by the Government Accountability Project (GAP), found racial discrimination against Black professional grade employees in the areas of recruitment, retention and internal judicial decisions.

The full report can be downloaded here.

GAP also found a race ceiling still exists at the World Bank, with a  a significant under-representation of Caribbean and Africans at the professional grade level. For example, as of 2003, the latest year for which statistics were available, Black World Bank employees were 36.3% less likely to hold a managerial grade relative to equally qualified non-Black employees. Professional Black staff members working on Bank operations are disproportionately confined to positions in the Africa Region.

“As Africa’s leading financier, the World Bank should be at the forefront of promoting racial equality,” said Shelley Walden, GAP International Program Officer and co-author of the report. “Instead, their anti-discrimination policies are largely cosmetic and lack effective, impartial enforcement mechanisms. They allow black employees to be sent to the back of the World Bank bus.”

The international agency also has a hiring bias in favor or Americans. Out of 3,500 professional grade World Bank staff worldwide, more than 1,000 are Americans. African-Americans are hardest hit by World Bank hiring practices. Out of those 1,000 Americans, there are only four are of African descent.

The World Bank’s Office of Diversity Programs responded that qualified African-American applicants were in short supply. “This response seems disingenuous,” said Bea Edwards, GAP’s International Program Director. “Washington, D.C., the city that hosts the World Bank, is home to Howard University, the flagship of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States.”

The World Bank is also unfair to employees with racial discrimination cases, the GAP report finds, putting a heavy burden of proof on those making such claims. In the last 12 years, the World Bank has heard 21 cases of racial discrimination, and not one has been proven in the eyes of the institution’s internal tribunals.

GAP recommends the World Bank make public its recruitment, retention and promotion of employees based on race, and allow an independent tribunal oversee its cases on racial discrimination.

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