Imrana Jalal has become the first woman and first from Fiji or the Pacific to ever be appointed to the post of Special Project Facilitator (SPF) — a director-general level post within the Asian Development Bank.
Ms Jalal is currently a member of the three-member independent World Bank Inspection Panel, and will finish her five-year term on the panel on December 31, 2022.
The panel is a tribunal which receives and investigates complaints against World Bank projects, and she was the chair and head for three years.
“I am thrilled and honoured at being selected for this position and am so happy to be going back to ADB and Manila,” she said.
“I was very happy there in my previous role at ADB as a principal gender specialist, and look forward to the new challenges of the Special Project Facilitator role.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed working at the World Bank, every day was a challenge, but it was gratifying in every possible way.
“It was in many ways a dream job, as it utilised the multiple experiences that I had acquired in my quite unusual and varied career.
“I did not take the path of a mainstream career lawyer, and in many ways it was serendipity rather than good planning that took me along this path.
“However, having those diverse experiences prepared me for the World Bank role, as it has for the ADB role.”
The SPF is the head of the Office of the Special Facilitator, a part of the ADB’s Accountability Mechanism.
The mechanism receives environmental and social complaints against ADB projects, by project-affected people, which have allegedly breached ADB safeguards.
The SPF office attempts to problem-solve complaints through consultative dialogue, information-sharing, dispute resolution or mediation.
