World Bank: Investigate ‘Development’ Project
Abuses
(Washington, DC) – The World Bank’s board should support an internal
investigation into allegations of abuse linked to a World Bank project in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Inspection Panel, the World Bank’s independent accountability
mechanism, has recommended aninvestigation into whether it has violated its policies in a project linked to
the Ethiopian government’s resettlement program, known as “villagization.”
Villagization involves the forced relocation of some 1.5 million Ethiopians,
including indigenous and other marginalized peoples, and has been marred by
violence. The board is scheduled to meet on March 19, 2013, to consider the
Inspection Panel’s recommendation.
“The World Bank’s president and board need to let the Inspection Panel
do its job and answer the critical questions that have been raised by
Ethiopians affected by this project,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions advocate at Human Rights
Watch. “If the World Bank doesn’t support this investigation, its Ethiopia
program will continue to be shadowed by controversy.”
On September 24, 2012, several Ethiopians brought a complaint to the Inspection Panel, pressing the World Bank to apply its
safeguard policies in an Ethiopia project. The safeguard policies are designed
to prevent and mitigate undue harm in World Bank projects, including protecting
the rights of indigenous peoples and preventing abuses related to involuntary
resettlement.
The World Bank went ahead and approved the project the next day and has
not applied its safeguard policies to the project.
The Inspection Panel, which reports directly to the World Bank’s board
of executive directors, subsequently found that the complaint warranted a full
investigation. This recommendation would have been endorsed by the board in
February, but action has been delayed because the executive director
representing Ethiopia has requested a discussion of the panel’s finding and
recommendation.
Human Rights Watch research has found that many of the largely indigenous communities being moved in
Gambella, one region where “villagization” is being carried out, have not been
consulted about the resettlement process and that the government responded with
violence and arbitrary detentions when people have not agreed to move.
A 20-year-old Ethiopian man who escaped to Kenya told Human Rights Watch, “Soldiers came and asked me why I refused to
be relocated.… They started beating me until my hands were broken … I ran to
tell [my father] what had happened, but the soldiers followed me. My father and
I ran away.… I heard the sound of gunfire.” He heard his father cry out, but he
kept running and hid from the soldiers in the bushes as he was “full of fear.”
When he returned the next day, he learned that the soldiers had killed his
father.
Once forced into new villages, families have found that the promised
government services often do not exist, giving them less access to services
than before the relocation. The government has also failed to provide
compensation. Dozens of farmers in Ethiopia’s Gambella region told Human Rights
Watch they are being moved from fertile areas where they survive on subsistence
farming, to dry, arid areas. Many villagers believe that the fertile land from
which they have been removed is being leased to multinational companies for
large-scale farms.
The project in question is known as the Promotion of Basic Services
(PBS) and is intended to improve education, health care, water and sanitation,
agriculture, and rural roads. But, through this project, the World Bank is
contributing to the salaries of local government staff who have been required
to assist in implementing “villagization.”
Despite the human rights risks that “villagization” presents for the
World Bank’s project,it has not applied its own safeguard policies. Its policy
to protect indigenous people has not been applied in Ethiopia because the
government does not agree that it should apply. Nor has the World Bank applied
its policy on involuntary resettlement, which requires consultation and
compensation when people are resettled.
The Inspection Panel recommended that it undertake a full investigation
after a preliminary assessment that included interviewing Ethiopian refugees
who have fled “villagization” and meeting with the Ethiopian government and
donors. The Inspection Panel found the links between the World Bank’s basic
services program and “villagization” to be plausible and to warrant
investigation.
“Ethiopia is in great need of development aid, and its people have
urgent social and economic needs that the World Bank should work to address,”
Evans said. “But development by force is not development at all and Ethiopia
should not be an exception to the World Bank’s commitment to upholding its own
policies.”
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