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UNSETTLING PLANS:

World Bank's New Draft Resettlement Policy

In March, the World Bank released the draft guidelines for its revised resettlement policy. Although the revision process, which lasted from 1997-1999, involved lengthy public consultation, the concerns of NGOs, community organizations and others have largely been ignored in the new guidelines. In fact, this new draft policy is weaker than the Bank's existing policy, and human rights advocacy groups have warned that if approved in its current form, the policy it will fall short of fundamental human rights guarantees.

Activists have long stressed that the World Bank must operate using high standards for development as its policies and projects directly affect the lives of millions of people in developing countries. In a bid to stop the Bank from moving backwards, activists launched a last-minute campaign to urge the Bank's President and Board of Directors to reject the draft policy. They have demanded that any new policy is consistent with international human rights legislation and that it incorporates new standards on resettlement.

Bank Backlash?
The push within the World Bank to lower standards may in part stem from a backlash resulting from the public controversy which forced the Bank to shelve its China Western Poverty Reduction Project in July 2000 after it was shown to have violated key safeguard policies including its own resettlement and indigenous peoples policies. NGOs suspect that those redrafting policies have come under pressure from influential borrower governments to reclassify once tough mandatory requirements as optional extras, and to establish a wide margin of discretion on how to apply guidelines. These erosive forces have reportedly been fuelled by complaints from some borrowers and senior Bank management that adhering to current World Bank policy standards is too expensive and time consuming.

NGOs fear that such damaging and flawed arguments are undermining the production of improved social and environmental policies for the World Bank Group. In the case of the March 2001 draft resettlement policy, NGOs pointed out multiple areas where the policy had actually been weakened. They argued successfully that the draft introduced a discriminatory approach that would deny displaced people without recognized legal rights to land and assets the right to proper consultation and compensation. The draft resettlement policy also introduced new and ambiguous provisions about how to deal with people adversely affected by parks and protected areas, who, according to parts of the draft policy, would not have to be consulted until a project has already started. The policy also excluded those deemed to be using natural resources "illegally". Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPOs) and human rights activists complained that this clause threatened to exclude the millions of indigenous peoples whose use of natural resources is not recognized by national parks and environmental legislation in borrower countries. Careful examination revealed that the policy also featured serious loopholes that would permit the forcible relocation of indigenous peoples even when it could threaten their "cultural survival".

Activists consequently stressed that the draft policy did not meet the standards of key human rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and ILO Convention 169 concerning indigenous and tribal peoples. They also complained that the proposed provisions contravened multiple standards for resettlement set by the UN Commission on Human Rights. They protested that the proposed policy did not even meet the standards of other multilateral development banks like the Inter-American Development Bank, which recognizes the right of prior informed consent for indigenous communities threatened with relocation.

NGOs were also bitterly disappointed that the Bank's proposed guidelines on resettlement failed to take on board the recommendations made in the consensus report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD). Among its numerous proposals, the WCD recommends that resettlement plans must be based on detailed social and poverty risk assessments that take account of both the direct and indirect impacts of resettlement. The WCD proposes that vulnerable groups like indigenous peoples must be empowered with the right to prior, free and informed consent. Crucially, resettlement should be the product of joint negotiation with affected communities backed by mutually agreed and enforceable entitlements to compensation and an improved standard of living after relocation.

Empty Phrases
In the World Bank's annual meeting in Prague last year, President James Wolfensohn asserted that he is "a great believer in human rights". Seven years ago, the Bank's own review of resettlement recognized that the potential for violating human rights in resettlement projects exceeds that of any other development activity, and that respect for the rights of affected persons is required in order to abide by the law and to adhere to sound development practice.

Civil society is now pressing the Bank to live up to these claims. They argue it is high time the Bank adopted a rights-based approach to development like that applied by the United Nations. A first step in this direction would be to revise the resettlement, indigenous peoples, forests and other policies in order to produce strengthened instruments consistent with international human rights law and agreed social and environmental standards for development. NGOs say that this step must be accompanied by sweeping reforms in the Bank that encourage staff and clients to apply the new standards properly on the ground. Only in this way, they argue, will the Bank begin to comply with its mandate of poverty reduction and sustainable development. If the Bank chooses to sidestep this challenge, it will lose its already waning credibility among citizens of the world.

NGOs are now waiting to see whether their concerns have produced positive changes to the retrograde March 2001 draft. Pressure is being put on the Bank not to rush the policy conversion at its final stage, but to take a step back to ensure the new policy is a sound and effective instrument to protect and empower poor and vulnerable social groups threatened with relocation in World Bank operations.

From an April 2001 briefing paper by the Forest Peoples Programme. Contact: info@fppwrm.gn.pac.org.

CONTROVERSIAL BANK PROJECTS INVOLVING RESETTLEMENT

Singrauli, India: Since 1977, the World Bank has provided loans to coal mines, power plants and transmission lines that have transformed an area once rich in biodiversity into an industrial wasteland. Three hundred thousand people have been displaced, often multiple times in one generation. Singrauli provides a telling case study of the social dislocation that comes from badly implemented resettlement on a massive scale. Ecodevelopment Project, India: A conservation project jointly funded by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility that involves seven national parks in India. While the Bank and government officials claim relocation activities have only involved those who moved voluntarily, affected people in Nagarhole National Park claim they have been coerced and forced to move. In 1998, the World Bank Inspection Panel upheld complaints made by local people at Nagarhole that the Bank had failed to properly consult with them about project design. Minera Yanacocha Gold Mine, Peru: This gold mine is partly funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank). The project has displaced numerous peasant families in a process that featured no resettlement plan and failed to involve local people in project preparation. A local peasant federation has now lodged a formal complaint with the IFC's new ombudsman office regarding violations of multiple safeguard policies including the World Bank's Involuntary Resettlement Policy. Forest Rehabilitation Project, Uganda: A major forest conservation project jointly funded with the European Commission that involved the eviction of 130,000 people from areas intended for a biological corridor between two national parks. Years after the project ended in 1993, displaced people remain worse off in resettlement villages that lack basic services. The resettled populations suffer increased infant mortality, and infectious diseases like malaria pose a serious problem. In 2000, the Ugandan courts found that the relocation had been illegal.