At the end of the second world war the United Nations re-invented the human rights and this led to the adoption of many human rights instruments. The question is to what extent international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF are bound to live up to these human rights obligations. Alfredo Sfeir-Younis states in the first chapter that economists, economics and economic institutions will open up their doors to the human rights-based model when the strength of a political consensus is such that the foundations of values will also change. Mainstreaming human rights into economic development is not a matter of economics but of political economy.This book discusses the legal status of the World Bank and the IMF, in relation to human rights obligations and to issues in the political and economic field closely related to that.