On October 19-20, over 500 public development banks gathered at the second edition of the Finance in Common (FIC) Summit. Co-organized by the Italian bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, this year’s Summit focused on the contribution of PDBs to the transformation of agriculture and agribusiness for food security, adaptation to climate change and biodiversity preservation.

Unfortunately, though, human rights and community-led development were not on the agenda. Those most impacted by the investments of development banks - local communities, farmers, fisherfolks, herders, women, Indigenous Peoples and human rights defenders - did not have the opportunity to raise their concerns at the Summit, despite extensive evidence of human rights abuses linked to development banks investments, especially in the food systems sector.

This comes as no surprise, as this year’s FIC follows in the footsteps of another high-level international forum that has been heavily criticized for excluding local communities' voices, despite being hypocritically branded as “people’s summit”: the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS).