November 2016

This case study examines communities lodging complaints against Wilmar, one of the world’s biggest palm oil companies…Most of these complaints are oriented towards efforts to protect the land rights of local people…Communities pursued complaints through the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (‘CAO’) for the International Finance Corporation (‘IFC’) and Multilateral Investment Guarantees Agency (‘MIGA’), and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (‘RSPO’)…Mediations with a number of communities in Jambi were complex and protracted, and the CAO’s attempts to facilitate mediation was brought to an abrupt close when Wilmar sold the subsidiary, PT Asiatic Persada, to companies that had no relationship to the IFC, and were not members of the RSPO…[T]hese complaints have led to two separate audits of IFC lending practices in the palm oil sector conducted by the CAO’s compliance arm. The first…identified significant non-compliance by the IFC with its standards and led to a temporary moratorium on palm oil investment…The second compliance audit…also found significant failings in IFC procedure.