CAO Participates in Regional Accountability Workshop with Civil Society in Panama City
On May 28 and 29, 2026, the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) joined colleagues from the World Bank Inspection Panel (IPN) and the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) for a two-day workshop in Panama City on “The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Accountability at the World Bank Group.”
The workshop brought together 25 participants from 18 civil society organizations (CSOs) across Latin America, including Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia. Discussions focused on how IAMs work across the World Bank Group and how CSOs can support project-affected communities in raising concerns, accessing information, and engaging with available mechanisms.
Over the two days, participants took part in interactive sessions, small group exchanges, and hands-on exercises on compliance and dispute resolution. The sessions highlighted practical tools, case examples, and participant reflections on the challenges and opportunities for civil society engagement.
As part of the workshop, Gabriela Stocks, CAO’s Head of Compliance, presented the Panama Transmission Line IV case and explored the case’s challenges, the Management Action Plan (MAP) elaboration process, and CAO’s monitoring of MAP implementation. “Panama was one of the first CAO cases with an IFC Board-approved MAP under the new CAO Policy, marking an important moment for accountability, community participation, and remedy,” said Stocks. “Four years later, even though the MAP objectives were not fully achieved, we have come a long way. The lessons learned from this case are now informing CAO’s engagement in other MAP processes."
Facilitators from the IAMs shared practical tools that can be leveraged to address these challenges, such as cultural- and context-sensitive approaches, visual aids and role plays, stakeholder mapping, capacity building and coaching, ground rules, active listening, expectation management and reality-testing. At the end of the session, participants shared reflections drawn from their small group discussions that they could take into their work moving forward.
Through outreach activities like this, CAO works with other IAMs to strengthen awareness, accessibility, and understanding of available complaint processes. CAO thanks the participating CSOs and colleagues from the World Bank Group IAMs for the thoughtful dialogue and collaboration in Panama City.
