DRBF Conference, Stockholm 2nd- 4th October 2019

CICA was invited to attend the conference organized by the Dispute Resolution Board Foundation (DRBF) in Stockholm. The event was generally devoted to “Dispute Boards in the Nordics”, but the organizers had invited Mr. Enzo De Laurentiis, Chief Procurement Officer of the World Bank, to speak about the Bank’s new concepts of “Sexual Exploitation and Assault” (SEA) and “Gender-Based Violence” (GBV), to be dealt with in the Conditions of Particular Application which the Bank will use to complement and adapt the General Conditions of the FIDIC Red Book. CICA chose to attend that part of the Conference.

The Bank places great emphasis on integrating environmental and social (ES) policies with procurement and contract management. Procurement bidding requirements will include ES issues, bidders’ capacity to manage them will be assessed, and ES measures will be enforced as contractual obligations. An ES management plan (ESMP) and an ES performance security (1% to 3% of the contract price) will be required where ES risks are high (but the total of performance securities will not exceed the current 10% threshold).

Since GBV/SEA incidents have occurred in Bank-financed projects, the Bank will focus first on large civil works contract with high GBV/SEA risks and specify obligations to manage those risks that are within the contractor’s control.

The Dispute Avoidance and Adjudication Board (DAAB) will monitor the contractor’s compliance with its GBV/SEA obligations (separate from investigations of GBV/SEA incidents, though), and non-compliance can result in disqualification by the Bank (subject to due process including emergency arbitration rights).

CICA will have an opportunity to inform in more detail its members about the Bank’s vision (and provisions) with respect to GBV/SEA matters during the Autumn General Meeting in Paris on 12th and 13th December.