22 U.S.C. § 262d — Human rights and United States assistance policies with international financial institutions

(a) Policy goals. In how it votes and speaks at nine named institutions — the World Bank, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the International Monetary Fund — the U.S. government must advance human rights. This means trying to steer assistance away from countries whose governments either engage in a pattern of serious human-rights violations, such as torture, cruel or degrading treatment, holding people without charges for a long time, or other clear denials of life, liberty, and personal security, or that shelter people who hijack aircraft as an act of terrorism. (b) What Executive Directors must consider. The Secretary of the Treasury must instruct each U.S. Executive Director at these institutions to weigh, while doing their job: actions the President or Congress has taken on individual bilateral aid programs because of human-rights concerns; how much the institutions' economic assistance actually benefits needy people in the recipient country; whether the recipient country is trying to get unsafeguarded nuclear material or a nuclear weapon, is not part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or has detonated a nuclear device; and, for aid to Vietnam, Laos, Russia and other former Soviet states, and Cambodia, how well those governments are accounting for missing American service members. (c) Project requirements. In its voice and vote at these institutions, the U.S. must try to steer assistance toward projects that address the basic human needs of people in the recipient country. (d) Judging human-rights violations. In deciding whether a country has grossly violated internationally recognized human-rights standards, the U.S. must consider how much that country cooperates in allowing unimpeded investigation of alleged violations by groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, or investigators acting under the authority of the UN or the Organization of American States. (e) Opposing aid to violators. U.S. Executive Directors at these institutions are authorized and instructed to oppose any loan, any extension of financial assistance, or any technical assistance to a country described in (a)(1) or (a)(2) — unless the assistance is specifically directed at programs serving that country's citizens' basic human needs. (f) Consulting Congress. The Secretary of the Treasury, or a delegate, must consult frequently and promptly with the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to keep them informed about any prospective changes in policy direction toward countries with poor, or recently poor, human-rights records. (g) Religious freedom. In deciding whether a government engages in a pattern of gross human-rights violations, the President must give particular consideration to whether that government has engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom, or has failed to make serious, sustained efforts to combat such violations when it reasonably could have.