Iftekharuzzaman
THE World Bank's neglect of human rights of the
poor and disadvantaged in general and that of the indigenous people in
particular has been as well-known as disturbing. However, it is appalling that
instead of making any serious effort to improve, it is reportedly moving
further down the road to worsen its own records.
As a part of an exercise to review the Bank's
Safeguard Policies and Environment and Social Framework, meant to prevent
adverse implications on people and environment in the areas covered by
Bank-funded projects, it is moving to options that may open floodgates of
potentially devastating impact on indigenous people, the poor and environment.
After receiving the draft document nearly a hundred NGOs and civil society
networks from Asia, Africa, Latin America as well as Europe and North America
sent protest letters to the Bank's president and Board and urged to refrain
from adopting it.
In a submission to the Committee on Development
Effectiveness of the WB's Board on July 30, 2014, on behalf of 84 indigenous
people's organisations/institutions, and 79 support groups and individuals, the
Asia Indigenous People's Pact have been “deeply dismayed by the overall
weakening of the policy requirements for indigenous peoples with very serious
implications, including the outright denial of the existence and rights of
indigenous peoples under international human rights laws.” The WB has, however
ignored these and many more outcries and cleared the draft for “broad public
consultations,” which can only be eyewash before the proposals are adopted.
The draft proposes to move away from the
requirement for Bank-funded projects to be in conformity with a specific set of
processes and standards to be replaced by some vague and open-ended guidance.
The worst implications of this shift, it is feared, will be on indigenous
communities.
Presently, governments that receive Bank funds
are under obligation to obtain free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) from the
indigenous people in the project area. Conducting impact assessment of projects
is mandatory, so is preparing and disseminating specific plan of work to handle
and mitigate those impacts and to ensure effective monitoring from the point of
impacts.
The new proposals broadly retain these measures,
but under cover of addressing implementation challenges and apparently to take
into cognisance views of borrowing governments the Bank practically creates an
option of totally disregarding those standards. According to a press statement
issued by the Bank on July 30: “In exceptional circumstances when there are
risks of exacerbating ethnic tension or civil strife or where the
identification of Indigenous Peoples is inconsistent with the constitution of
the country, in consultation with people affected by a particular project, we
are proposing an alternative approach to the protection of Indigenous Peoples.
But we should be clear that any alternative approach will only be adopted with
approval from our Board, which represents all of our member countries.”
The Bank has clearly made a sweeping conclusion
that all provisions of constitutions of all countries where it operates are
fully democratic and respectful to international standards of human and
indigenous rights. As if there are no countries in the world that have failed
to provide constitutional recognition to their indigenous peoples; as if there
are no indigenous communities around the world where systematic violation of
whose basic rights by use of force by army, para-military forces and law
enforcement agencies is the main reason behind “exacerbating ethnic tension or
civil strife;” as if inconsistency of identification of Indigenous Peoples with
some arbitrary and controversial provisions of the constitution is a sufficiently
valid justification for the Bank to look for alternative approach of opting for
other much less stringent standards.
The Bank is proposing not only to absolve itself
of obligation to comply with international standards but also to stay away from
defining any specific criteria of such alternative approach except for a full
discretion given to the Bank's Board. If the proposal is pushed through
the Bank will have the discretion to use whatever means it wishes to determine
the validity of so-called borrower's concerns. In other words, if a borrowing
government wants to undertake a project ignoring rights of the indigenous
peoples in the project area, collusion may soon take place between the borrower
and the lender as the latter may find it convenient to go ahead without caring
about potential adverse implications for the indigenous communities.
According to the new draft, similar exemption is
to be granted to Bank funded projects in general in infrastructure involving
land administration and development that may cause involuntary resettlement and
displacement of people.
As shocking as these proposed changes may be, it
should not surprise anyone aware of the basic principle of any lender -- more
lending brings more benefits. The more rigorous are standards to comply with,
the less is the scope of lending business.
The Bank's track record in terms of human rights
violations is well researched and documented. Human Rights Watch for instance,
in a report published in 2013, concluded that the World Bank “neither
acknowledged nor mitigated human rights risks in its programs.” The case
studies that featured in the HRW report included a Bank-funded project for drug
detention centres accused of forced labour, arbitrary detention and torture and
an Ethiopian “villagisation” programme causing forced and violent relocation
though it failed to deliver the avowed objective of improved service quality
and infrastructure.
Other examples of World Bank's option of
expanding its lending at the expense of human rights are not far to seek. In
the Bank-funded Boeung Kak Lake project in Cambodia, residents were deprived of
land rights when flooding caused by filling of the lake with sand forced families
to leave their homes while others were compelled to accept compensation at much
below the market rate.
The Bank was not bothered that the Kaptai Dam
project funded by it not only caused gross violation of human rights of the
indigenous community of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in 1960, displacing over
100,000 people and flooding a lion's share of cultivable land in the region,
but also sowed the seeds of a conflict that is bleeding Bangladesh till date.
The example created by this Bank-funded project has been systematically
followed over the years to evict the indigenous people from their ancestral
homes, to deprive them of fundamental rights to life and livelihood, to
transform the demographic and socio-cultural landscape and to militarise the
region.
Credible research has demonstrated how World Bank
policies led to deliberate manipulation of market forces that destroyed
economic opportunities and created a situation of famine and social despair
that accelerated the process that leading to genocide. Hundreds of Mayans were
massacred by military in Guatemala in 1982 for resisting eviction of innocent
indigenous people designed to implement the Bank-funded Chixoy Dam. In Uganda
30,000 forest dwellers and peasants were evicted to implement the Kibale Forest
and Game Corridor programme under the Bank-funded Forestry Rehabilitation
Project.
The list is incomplete. The World Bank should
face the mirror and opt for standards and practices to respect and uphold human
rights as indispensable precondition for designing and implementing projects
funded by it. They must ensure that no project is designed and implemented
without conducting fully independent impact assessment in terms of human rights
in general and rights of poor, marginalised and indigenous population in
particular. The WB cannot be disrespectful to international human rights
standards just because it needs to expand lending. It cannot, because it's
funders -- people of its member countries -- have not given it the right to do
so.
The writer is Executive Director of
Transparency International Bangladesh and member of the International
Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission.
