Controversial World Bank safeguard policies rewrite goes to consultations

by Rhodri C. Williams

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the World Bank’s rollout of a draft set of reworked safeguard policies took little note of a critical petition initiated last month by Inclusive Development International. However, even as the Bank announced a consultation period scheduled to run through the end of November, IDI elaborated on its concerns in a comment in Devex.

Without having yet had time to read through the Bank’s draft, it is difficult not to be concerned by the fundamental nature of the regression indicated by IDI’s criticisms. Elimination of the requirement to prepare advance resettlement plans, removal of substantive monitoring rules, the right to opt out of indigenous peoples safeguards, and an approach so flexible that the World Bank Inspection Panel “would have no hard rules against which to hold the World Bank accountable.” As Nezir Sinani notes in Huffington, the opt-out provision alone could undo a real – but fragile – sea change in the recognition of indigenous rights in parts of Africa.

Its hard to imagine what progressive innovations could offset the negative effects of all the above, but the Bank’s plug for the new draft is both disarmingly bullish and alarmingly bland, checking off all the catchphrases without giving any meaningful indications of the actual changes involved:

Through the revision of our environmental and social safeguard policies, the World Bank is ramping up its standards to ensure the delivery of an environmental and social framework which is more efficient and comprehensive; includes a strengthened approach to the management of environmental and social risks that will support sustainable development through standards that are clear to those impacted by the projects we finance, those who implement, and those holding us to account.

It is no secret that the Bank’s public statements tend to run more progressive than its practice, and that there are real dilemmas that the Bank faces in trying to live up to its own standards. But to gut the standards while claiming to strengthen them would not only be wrong, but downright Orwellian.

 

Petition against watering down of World Bank safeguard policies

Having obtained and analysed a draft of proposed new World Bank social and economic policies, my colleagues at Inclusive Development International (full disclosure – I am on the IDI Advisory Board) have circulated a petition demanding that the Bank follow its own first principles in this matter – in that the draft submitted for upcoming consultations should provide for conditions “no worse off” than those that prevailed under the old policy.

There are alarming indications that the current draft standard fails to meet even this minimum threshold. The full text of the petition setting out these concerns can be downloaded here, and I have reprinted IDI’s summary version below. Concerned individuals and organizations are welcome to join the petition anytime before Monday at 12 pm (EST) by sending an email to IDI Managing Director David Pred (david@inclusivedevelopment.net).

–//–

Dear Friends,

As many of you will have already heard (depending on which lists you’re on), the World Bank has presented to its Board an appalling draft of its new social and environmental safeguards policies.  The Board Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) will be meeting on July 30th to decide whether the draft is “fit for purpose” and should be opened up for public consultations.

A leaked version of the draft Social and Environmental Framework that we have reviewed effectively turns back the clock 30 years to the days before people and the environment were protected from harm by binding Bank policies.  At the same time, the Bank is proposing to significantly scale up its lending and get back in the business of high-risk mega-projects.  All this while slashing its operational budget and the resources available for project due diligence, monitoring and supervision.  Remember the Chixoy dam in Guatemala? The Sobradinho dam in Brazil?  Narmada in India?  We’ll be seeing plenty more of these human rights disasters if the Bank moves forward with this draft.

For those of us concerned about the global land grabbing crisis, this draft opens the floodgates to more massive land grabs, forced evictions, and dispossession of poor communities –  financed with our public purse.

Some of the most alarming proposed changes include:

• An ‘opt out’ option for governments that decide they don’t want to apply the Indigenous People’s policy.
• Major dilutions of the Bank’s current standards on “involuntary resettlement,” including the requirement for borrowers to submit and the Bank to review and approve – prior to project approval – a comprehensive resettlement plan that ensures affected people are not harmed and have an opportunity to share in the benefits of the project.
• Exclusion of land titling projects from the coverage of the resettlement policy, leaving people like Cambodia’s Boeung Kak Lake community whose homes were demolished after they were determined not to have ownership rights by a Bank titling project completely unprotected from forced eviction. 
• Totally inadequate protections against land-grabbing, despite an alarming reference indicating that Bank projects could involve large-scale transfers of land for agricultural investment. 
• The elimination of essential appraisal and supervision requirements, which made the Bank itself accountable for non-compliance with the policies.

The World Bank released a statement last year pledging that its new safeguards would be informed by the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure and that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights.”  This commitment, which we welcomed at the time, has translated into one vague line in the draft framework about assessing risks or impacts associated with land tenure, which fails to articulate any policy objectives related to access to land or security of tenure, while many of the protections in the current Bank policies have been eviscerated as outlined above.

We have drafted the attached statement on land rights to send to CODE by Monday morning with the message that this draft is a non-starter for consultation and must be sent back for major revisions.   It has been endorsed so far by Asian Indigenous People’s Pact, Forest Peoples Program, Ulu Foundation, Urgewald (Germany), Friends of the Earth (US), Indigenous Peoples Links, Jamaa Resource Initiative (Kenya), Institute for Policy Studies, Center on International and Environmental Law, Lumière Synergie pour le Développement (Senegal) and Inclusive Development International. 

Will you add your voice to the global outcry?  Please consider signing on as an organization or an individual and sharing this with anyone else you think would want to join. 

In solidarity,

David and Natalie 
Inclusive Development International

 

 

Will the World Bank safeguard human rights in its new high-risk strategy?

by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski

There are big changes happening at the World Bank today, which will have far reaching consequences for millions of the world’s poor.

For the first time in over a decade, the Bank is undergoing a major review of its Safeguard Policies, which serve to ensure that Bank projects do no harm to people and the environment.  While civil society groups are pushing to strengthen the policies and upwardly harmonize them with international human rights and environmental standards, the view that seems to prevail within the Bank’s senior management is that the World Bank needs to become a more attractive lender, with fewer strings attached to its loans, in order to “stay relevant” in the face of increasing competition from Brazil and China.

The World Bank, under President Jim Yong Kim, is trying to redefine itself for the 21^st century. Mr. Kim has admirably reoriented the Bank’s strategy around its original poverty reduction mandate, setting two ambitious goals for the institution: the elimination of extreme poverty by 2030 and promotion of ‘shared prosperity’ to boost the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population.

Yet Mr. Kim often speaks about the need for the Bank to be less risk averse and support more “transformational large-scale projects” in order to achieve these ambitious goals.  Many are starting to worry that this discourse is code for gutting the Bank’s social and environmental requirements, which are seen by some as inhibiting risk taking, while returning the Bank to the business of financing mega-projects.  The irony is that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities – the very people the Bank has pledged to work for – are the ones who will bear the greatest risks if these concerns are realized.

One of the primary ways in which these risks materialize is in the form of development-induced forced displacement. As described by sociologist Michael Cernea, forced displacement remains a “major pathology” in Bank-sponsored development around the world.  According the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, more than one million people are affected by forced displacement and involuntary resettlement from active Bank projects at any given point in time. Displacement is often accompanied by threats of and use of violence and results in loss of livelihoods and education, food insecurity, and psychological trauma.

Although the Bank has a resettlement policy aimed at avoiding these harms, local communities displaced in the name of “development” continue to face impoverishment and violations of their human rights due to Bank-financed projects. Revisions of the policy that harmonize it with international human rights standards, coupled with incentives for improved implementation could end put an end to this injustice.

The World Bank adopts sound principles on land, but HRW points out gaps in practice

by Rhodri C. Williams

Two very interesting reports linked land, development and the World Bank’s role last week. Released on precisely the same day, the reports reflected a good deal of consensus on what should be done and rather less agreement regarding what is actually being done.

First, on 22 June, Human Rights Watch released a report criticizing the World Bank for failing to take human rights issues sufficiently into account in its development calculus – with one of the primary examples being the confiscation of land and villageization of its occupants in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Then, almost as if in response, the Bank released a new study the same day asserting that pro-poor land reform in Africa could provide tremendous benefits at minimal costs by securing the rights of local communities and protecting them against encroachment by large investment projects.

Safeguarding land rights: An opportunity for the World Bank to lead

by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski

Washington, April 13, 2013 – At the start of the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty this week, World Bank President Dr. Jim Kim made some welcome remarks about the global land rights crisis.   He did not respond directly to the withering criticism of the role the Bank has played in promoting land grabs.   But he did say that the Bank shares the concerns about the risks of large-scale land acquisitions, and importantly he acknowledged that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”

What caught people at the Conference pleasantly off guard was the Bank’s statement that its own social and environmental safeguard policies, now under review, would be informed by the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forest and Fisheries.

Inclusive Development International and Oxfam put forward a concrete proposal at the Conference for the Bank to do just that.  We presented a proposal for a new World Bank safeguard policy on tenure of land, housing and natural resources that draws extensively from the Voluntary Guidelines.

The proposal addresses major gaps in the Bank’s current policy framework that have left people affected by Bank operations unprotected from harmful impacts on their tenure rights.  If adopted, these policy measures would ensure that the Bank upholds its responsibility to respect human rights by safeguarding against the weakening of tenure rights, the instigation of land conflict and the exacerbation of inequality in access to land and natural resources by Bank operations.

The World Bank must stop underwriting human rights abuses in Ethiopia

by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski

A leaked World Bank report calls for an investigation into allegations that a multi-billion dollar aid program in Ethiopia is underwriting the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities to free up fertile land to lease to investors. A meeting of the Bank’s board of directors to discuss the Panel’s preliminary findings was postponed on Tuesday due to objections from the Ethiopian government. Rights groups are watching closely to see how the new Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, will deal with sensitive questions about World Bank accountability and human rights in one of its most important client states.

Anuak indigenous refugees from Gambella region who fled human rights abuses in Ethiopia submitted a complaint to the Bank’s Inspection Panel in September claiming that they had been severely harmed by the flagship international aid program for the provision of basic services in Ethiopia, which is administered and partially financed by the World Bank.

Landlocked in the Horn of Africa and beset by periodic droughts and famine, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world.  International relief and food assistance is still needed to feed between 10 and 20 percent of its roughly 85 million people.[1] Many Ethiopians, particularly rural dwellers, lack access to basic services, including water, sanitation and basic health facilities.

Since the ousting of the Soviet-backed “Derg” military regime in 1991, the Government of Ethiopia, led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has implemented a vast program of economic recovery and reform meant to address the dire poverty and enormous social and economic needs of the population.

The government and its development partners claim impressive strides towards meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and significant progress in key human development indicators over the past two decades, including a quadrupling in primary school enrollments, halving of child mortality, and a doubling of the number of people with access to clean water.[2]

Yet, in parallel to its economic reform agenda the government has become increasingly oppressive and intolerant of criticism and dissent.  As Human Rights Watch has reported, the government has “severely restricted the rights of expression and association, arbitrarily detained political opponents, intimidated journalists, shuttered media outlets, and made independent human rights and election monitoring practically impossible.”[3]

These human rights abuses are rarely openly acknowledged by the bilateral and multilateral donors to Ethiopia.  Ethiopia is one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid, receiving approximately US$3 billion in funds annually from external donors, including the World Bank, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Commission, Germany and the Netherlands.[4]

Largely turning a blind eye to the increasingly repressive political climate, donors justify their support by both the enormity of the need and the reported inroads achieved in reducing poverty since the EPRDF came to power.[5] Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi forged close alliances with Western nations based on a common interest in combatting Islamic extremism and establishing greater stability in the volatile region.[6]

Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, the World Bank and other donors supported the Ethiopian Government by providing direct budget support through a series of Structural Adjustment Credits and Poverty Reduction Support Operations, in addition to several specific purpose projects. In 2004/05 direct budget support from all donors constituted approximately one third of total aid to Ethiopia,[7] placing significant aid amounts directly in government hands with minimal control and oversight, despite evidence of egregious human rights abuses being perpetrated by the government and military.[8]

Upcoming guest posting on the World Bank and ‘villageization’ in Ethiopia

by Rhodri C. Williams

Since early last year, Human Rights Watch has kept a weather eye on Ethiopia, where land concessions in the Gambella region and agricultural development plans in the Omo valley are giving rise to allegations of violent mass-displacement of local villagers and pastoralists. HRW also reported on the role of international development assistance actors in actively or passively facilitating such patterns of displacement.

The violent and systematic nature of the displacement alleged to have taken place in Ethiopia – and the government’s invocation of development priorities as a justification for them – place the country firmly within a broader global trend. Just as the 2004 tsunami forced humanitarian advocates for the global population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to turn their attention from conflict to natural disasters, I have argued that the effects of new trends involving large scale investment in land – the global land rush – should prompt new humanitarian and human rights scrutiny of development-induced displacement.

In Ethiopia, such scrutiny has been quick to follow HRW’s reports. In September 2012, the NGO Inclusive Development International (IDI) alleged a link between World Bank projects in Ethiopia and the Gambella ‘villageization’ program and assisted affected indigenous persons in submitting a complaint to the Bank’s Inspection Panel. Now, as reported by Helen Epstein in the NYR Blog, the Panel has forced the Bank to decide whether to act on a finding that a full investigation is warranted:

Kyrgyzstan property issues update, part 2 – Unen-durable Solutions

by Kaigyluu

‘Kaigyluu’ is the pseudonym of a longtime TerraNullius reader with broad experience working on housing, land and property (HLP) and legal reform issues in many countries post-socialist, post-conflict or both. Having provided an earlier briefing last year on the aftermath of the 2010 ethnic riots, Kaigyluu yesterday updated TN readers on the local and regional politics of rebuilding Osh, and today addresses the policy choices of international actors involved in humanitarian response and reconstruction.

While housing, land and property (HLP) rights were put on the agenda in the immediate aftermath of the June 2010 inter-ethnic violence in South Kyrgyzstan, the HLP process was complicated (a) by a lack of clear rationale or objective and (b) strategic choices made at the outset.

With respect to the first point, based upon an initial assessment by the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) conducted in the wake of the June events, UNHCR focused first on the construction of shelter and then on legal assistance to restore HLP documents lost or destroyed. The assumption upon which provision of such legal aid was based proved faulty, in that it was soon discovered that over 80% of affected households had never had proper documentation. And so the HLP project concentrated on obtaining documentation for those whose homes were destroyed, as well as registering the newly constructed replacement shelters.

Nevertheless, the justification for securing documentation only for those whose homes were destroyed, whereas the majority of the affected population – and, indeed, the population at large – also lacked such documentation, was undermined. The project might have been realigned – and was, ad hoc, to provide documents to those whose homes were threatened with expropriation – but the follow-up scoping mission recommended by the GPC to conduct a full situational assessment was never carried out.

This leads into point (b) on strategic choices, namely that the international community chose to channel their support through the State Directorate for Reconstruction and Development for Osh and Jalal-Abad Cities (‘SDRD’ – previously, the State Directorate for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction or ‘SDRR’) set up by the central government, and headed by current Prime Minister Jantoro Satybaldiev. The international community decided to bypass the Osh mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov – understandable, given his nationalist (and often erratic) rhetoric.

Myrzakmatov was opposed to anything directed by Bishkek: an opposition entrenched when he successfully resisted the attempt of the interim government to remove him. Unfortunately, in the case of reconstructed (and, indeed, all) housing, the issuance of building permits was controlled at the municipal level. Therefore, in Osh, construction permission was never granted. And so, the majority of the shelters constructed there remain unregistered; whereas, in Jalal-Abad, where the mayor was successfully replaced (twice) by Bishkek, authorities were more cooperative, building permission was issued, and registration proved relatively simple.

More broadly, apart from reliance on the SDRD, there a choice by the international community – perhaps by default – to opt for a ‘rule of law’ approach, as opposed to one driven by the need for a recognition of rights. That is, the reconstruction and HLP process was channelled through the existing domestic land and housing regime. As such, it became vulnerable to the inefficiencies or gaps in the system, as well as any political or personal manipulation of it.

Kyrgyzstan property issues update, part 1 – Who’s afraid of the big bad master plan? Rebuilding Osh’s mahallahs in brick

by Kaigyluu

‘Kaigyluu’ is the pseudonym of a longtime TerraNullius reader with broad experience working on housing, land and property (HLP) and legal reform issues in many countries post-socialist, post-conflict or both. Having provided an earlier briefing on the politics of property in southern Kyrgyzstan after the 2010 ethnic riots, he, she or it now follows up with an update in two parts. Part one focuses on the local and regional politics of rebuilding Osh, while part two, tomorrow, addresses the policy choices of international actors involved in humanitarian response and reconstruction.

International attention on Kyrgyzstan, limited as it was during the Tulip Revolution (Redux) of April 2010 and inter-ethnic riots that followed two months later in the south of the country’s geologically and politically unstable Ferghana Valley, has long since waned and turned elsewhere. Indeed, with the Western military drawdown in Afghanistan, the importance of Central Asia – exemplified by the bidding-war between the US and Russia over the Manas airbase outside of Bishkek – has diminished correspondingly, while the problems in the region continue to fester and grow.

At least in terms of rebuilding and reconciliation (including international reconstruction assistance) in the aftermath of the June 2010 clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the ‘southern capital’ of Osh, as well as the nearby city of Jalal-Abad, progress would seem to be consolidating. The latest government shuffle, following the collapse of the yet another parliamentary coalition, saw the appointment of Jantoro Satybaldiev as Prime Minister. Satybaldiev, a former Head of the Osh Administration, led the central government’s reconstruction effort following the June 2010 clashes. He was a key partner of UNHCR, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and other international actors in this, and seen as a counterweight to perceived hard-line nationalists in the south, such as Osh’s current mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov.

Not only can Satybaldiev’s ‘promotion’ be construed as a reward for his work in the South, it is also hoped that his elevation will give him the authority to overcome the last hurdles to secure the housing, land, and property (HLP) rights of those displaced by the June 2010 events.

A ‘friend’ of the post-2010 reconstruction effort is sorely needed in high office. This past summer, the City of Osh began long-threatened expropriation of land and the demolition of at least two dozen houses, as well as several business premises, in order to widen roads: this, despite ‘iron-clad’ assurances to donors that reconstructed houses would be not be touched. It is feared that this is but the precursor for implementation of a new urban plan: one that is rumoured to include the replacement of the traditional Uzbek enclaves with ‘modern’ apartment blocks and, amongst the conspiracy-minded, one that is said to mirror – or even predate and predict – the patterns of supposedly spontaneous destruction that occurred from 11 to 14 June 2010.

The international community funded the reconstruction of almost 2,000 homes damaged or destroyed during clashes. UNHCR and ICRC led the emergency response, providing two-room (28 m²) shelters for affected households before the onset of winter in 2010. The ADB provided an additional $24 million to expand (up to 100 m2) and complete 1,500 of those shelters in a second phase of reconstruction in 2011-12.

However, optimism over Mr. Satybaldiev’s elevation may be misplaced. It is debatable whether the new Prime Minister will wish to expend precious political capital to protect those affected persons, the overwhelmingly majority of whom are from the minority (but substantial) Uzbek community. He seems still to accept, if not actively encourage, the inevitable replacement of the mahallahs – the traditional neighbourhoods composed of walled family compounds favoured by the Uzbeks in the centre of Osh – with high-rise apartment blocks. Off the record, even Mr Satybaldiev’s patron, President Almazbek Atambayev is said to have expressed puzzlement and mild exasperation at the international community’s obsession with preserving and reconstructing the mahallahs, in the face of the inexorable march of modernisation and progress.

Corporate social responsibility in a changing world: Targeting conflict resource exploitation

by Rhodri C. Williams

The march of the voluntary guidelines continues, it seems, with new approaches geared to address gaps in earlier efforts to urge corporate self-control. As Peter Spiro noted some time back in Opinio Juris (and Chris Huggins pointed out in these pages), the promotion of “soft” voluntary standards as a means of getting at some very hard human rights violations is still seen with skepticism in many quarters.

Nevertheless, Mark Taylor makes an engaging case for such standards in a recent Open Democracy piece on the role of natural resource extraction in fueling conflict. The article highlights the Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict Affected and High Risk Areas, a standard adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in May 2011 and subsequently regulated in the US through new regulations issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)  under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Taylor notes several key insights that have emerged in the wake of older certification schemes such as the Kimberly Process for conflict diamonds. These include the manner in which both illicit inflows into conflict areas (such as small arms) and outflows (such as natural resources) have become incorporated into global market flows, as well as the extent to which vulnerable local populations may be just as dependent on extraction activities for their survival as warlords are for their arms budget. In light of such factors, Taylor argues that considerable advantages may be derived from focusing on business actors rather than states:

Like the Kimberly Process, or even UN sanctions, the Guidance seeks to exclude certain commodities from global trade flows. But there the similarity ends. Instead of obligating states, the Guidance places the responsibility on business to manage their supply chains. Instead of relying on a certification regime hobbled by a lack of state capacity, the Guidance deploys the concept of business due diligence, the practice of self-investigation and risk management in a business activity. And instead of targeting a commodity based on its association with rebel groups – a definition that has plagued the Kimberly Process, for example preventing it from taking action where abuses are committed by state armed forces, as in the case of Zimbabwe – the Guidance in effect focuses on the problems of conflict financing and human rights abuse associated with mineral extraction, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a state or non-state armed group.

In effect, the Guidance places the onus on businesses to show they are not financing conflict or contributing to human rights abuse through their sourcing of minerals. And nothing in the Guidance prevents states from regulating this responsibility to conduct due diligence, which is precisely what the US has done with the conflict minerals provision of Dodd-Frank, a measure the EU is now considering.

The combined reliance on traditional state regulation and more novel forms of corporate self-regulation is promising though not, as Taylor points out, unproblematic. However, even at this early stage, there may be timely lessons that could be drawn by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in its current efforts to develop a set of ‘demand side’ standards regulating the conduct of actors participating in large-scale land investments in developing countries. This process should be facilitated by the fact that the FAO has already launched a set of ‘supply side’ guidelines for countries that are the object of such investment. While the latter clearly addressed state authorities disposing over targeted land, the former will need to take into account the role of both state and powerful non-state actors whose investments are driving the global land-rush.

Finally, in a timely reminder that such policies and safeguards are often only as effective as the advocates that monitor their application, Inclusive Development International issued a press release announcing a complaint before the Asian Development Bank’s Compliance Review Panel. The complaint alleges a violation of the Bank’s involuntary settlement policies with regard to communities affected by an ADB-funded railway rehabilitation project in Cambodia (on which, see Natalie Bugalski’s guest postings here and here). As such, it recalls the ongoing controversy in Cambodia over the World Bank’s attempts to act on a finding by its own Inspection Panel of a violation of its Resettlement Policy.