Global civil society response gathers momentum

New York, London, New Delhi – Civil society organisations around the world are decrying a leaked draft of the World Bank’s proposed new policies to avoid harmful impacts from the development projects that it finances. Despite earlier commitments by Bank President Jim Yong Kim that the policies would not be diluted and that safeguards on land rights would be strengthened, the proposed changes have gutted essential requirements that are necessary to prevent displacement, impoverishment, and environmental damage. The draft policies are up for discussion by the Bank’s board on July 30 ahead of public consultations.

“This draft effectively winds back the clock to the 1970s, before the Bank had binding policies in place to protect the poor and the environment. We see nothing more than a naked attempt by the Bank to shield itself from accountability for the destructive impacts of the mega-projects it is planning.” said Madhuresh Kumar, National Organizer of the National Alliance of People’s Movements in India.

Most shockingly, the draft policies provide an opt-out option for governments that do not wish to provide essential land and natural resource rights protections to Indigenous Peoples.

Joji Carino, Director of the Forest Peoples Programme, said “we have engaged with social and environmental safeguard development with the World Bank for over twenty years and have never seen a proposal with potential for such widespread negative impacts for indigenous peoples around the world. The proposed ‘opt-out’ for protections for indigenous peoples, in particular, would undermine existing international human rights law and the significant advances seen in respect for indigenous peoples rights in national laws.”

The draft also weakens protections for people who will be evicted from their homes, land and livelihoods, increasing the risk that Bank-financed projects will impoverish people, exacerbate inequality and cause human rights violations. The proposal scraps critical rules that have been in place for thirty years requiring the Bank to take concerted measures to avoid and minimise displacement and for resettlement action plans capable of restoring the livelihoods of the displaced to be in place before committing funds to projects. It provides multiple opportunities for borrower governments, or even private “intermediary” banks, to use their own standards for impact assessment, compensation and resettlement, without clear criteria on when and how this would be acceptable.

Theodore Downing, President of the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement, a 14-year old network of involuntary resettlement professionals, said “the proposed changes eviscerate existing international standards – knowingly placing millions of people at risks of impoverishment.”

“The Bank is trying to exonerate itself from all responsibility for the devastating effects of the displacement it finances, while giving private equity funds and some of the world’s most abusive governments unfettered discretion to uproot the poor as they fit,” said David Pred, Managing Director of Inclusive Development International.

Land titling projects are exempted from the coverage of the draft resettlement policy. This will leave affected communities completely unprotected from forced eviction by their government, as happened in the case of Cambodia’s Boeung Kak Lake community whose homes were demolished after they were deemed not to have ownership rights under a Bank-titling project.

“If this policy is adopted, many communities around the world will be forcibly evicted like mine was, and they will not be able to seek any recourse from the Bank,” said Tep Vanny, a community leader from Boeung Kak Lake. After filing a complaint with the World Bank’s Inspection Panel about the controversial project, Tep Vanny and local organisations finally secured title for hundreds of families that were previously threatened with eviction. With the proposed changes to the Bank’s policy, that would not have been possible.

Despite the growing land-grabbing crisis displacing countless indigenous communities, small farmers, fisher-folk and pastoralists throughout the global south, the draft policy fails to incorporate any serious protections to prevent Bank funds from supporting land-grabs.

“In Ethiopia, World Bank funds have been used to facilitate one the world’s biggest land grabs, with the indigenous populations of entire regions being uprooted to make way for agro-industrial investments. We had hoped that the new safeguards would include strong requirements to prevent governments like Ethiopia from abusing its people with Bank funds, but we are shocked to see the Bank instead opening the flood-gates for more abuses,” said Obang Metho, Executive Director of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia.

Not only is the current draft an unconscionable weakening, it is a complete misrepresentation of two years of consultations with civil society. The Bank’s Board must not endorse this draft, and at a minimum must insist that these fundamental loopholes be addressed before the next round of consultations,” said Sasanka Thilakasiri, Policy Advisor for Oxfam International.

97 non-governmental organizations and civil society networks and 17 distinguished individuals from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America, North America and Europe sent a statement to the World Bank’s Board yesterday, demanding that the draft be sent back to the drawing board and re-written with serious safeguards to respect and protect the land, housing and livelihood rights of the poor.

The joint statement is available at http://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Statement... (and copied below)

For more information and press enquiries, please contact:

- In New York, David Pred, Managing Director, Inclusive Development International (IDI), +1 917-280-2705 or david [at] inclusivedevelopment [dot] net

- In London, James Harvey, Communications Manager, Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), +44(0)1608 652893 or james [at] forestpeoples [dot] org

- In Delhi, Madhuresh Kumar, National Organizer, National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM), +91 (0)9818905316 or napmindia [at] gmail [dot] com

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At last year’s Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, the Bank publicly committed to ensuring that its new environmental and social safeguards would be informed by the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forest and Fisheries, which were adopted by all 125 members of the Committee on World Food Security in 2012. President Kim said that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights.” Civil society groups and UN welcomed the specific focus on land tenure as an ‘emerging issue’ in the first round of consultations and dedicated significant time, expertise and resources into providing the Bank with detailed input and analysis to inform the process of drafting safeguards on land issues.

Yet, the draft Environmental and Social Framework currently under consideration fails to reflect the Voluntary Guidelines in every important way and fails to adequately respond to or incorporate years of input from civil society and experts around the world. Not only does the draft Framework fail to include a comprehensive set of safeguard standards on land tenure and land rights, as is acutely needed, alarmingly, it actually acts to narrow the scope of the current policies and weaken land rights protections for poor and vulnerable groups.

‘Opt-out’ clause on safeguards for Indigenous Peoples

Most shockingly, the draft Framework provides an opt-out option for governments who do not wish to provide essential land and natural resource rights protections to Indigenous Peoples within their States. This regressive clause, if adopted, would represent a wink and nod by the World Bank to governments that they should not feel compelled to respect international human rights law, and can violate the fundamental right to land, territories and resources and to self-determination of indigenous peoples. The Executive Directors of the World Bank that represent States that are party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have an international law obligation to reject this provision.

Major dilutions of involuntary resettlement policy

The primary objective of the Voluntary Guidelines is to promote improved governance of land tenure, including in relation to expropriation and resettlement. In contrast, the draft Framework eliminates key measures in the current Bank policy that are essential to the responsible governance of projects that cause physical and economic displacement. It removes the critical requirements in relation to resettlement-planning instruments, including baseline data, and weakens requirements to assess alternatives, in order to avoid or minimize displacement. Contrary to the Voluntary Guidelines and human rights law instruments, it fails to ensure that projects supported by the Bank that result in displacement have a legitimate public purpose and general welfare value. It dilutes requirements for information disclosure, consultation and participation of displaced persons in resettlement planning, implementation and monitoring. It massively dilutes Bank appraisal and supervision responsibilities for resettlement planning and execution, relying on self-assessment and self-reporting by the borrower and approving displacement-inducing projects without conducting due diligence on comprehensive resettlement plans. The effect is that the draft ESF seriously weakens protections for people who will be evicted from their homes, land and livelihoods, increasing the risk that Bank-financed projects will impoverish people, exacerbate inequality and cause human rights violations.

The resettlement policy should be brought into line with international human rights standards and the overall Framework must ensure that the Bank maintains its responsibility for ensuring compliance during the planning and implementation of resettlement.

Exclusion of land-administration projects from resettlement safeguards

Unlike current Bank policy, the draft exempts land titling/regularization and land use regulation activities from ESS5.6 That means that people whose land rights are made insecure through a Bank-financed land administration project, because, for example, they are not determined to have ownership rights, are left completely vulnerable to forced eviction by their government, without any safeguards protections from the Bank. This is antithetical to the sprit and letter of the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure and in violation of human rights instruments that promote security of tenure and protect against forced evictions. As those displaced will almost always be the urban and rural poor, it is also manifestly contrary to the goals of extreme poverty eradication and shared prosperity.

The resettlement policy should apply to all Bank-assisted projects, including land administration projects, in order to protect persons whose tenure rights or arrangements are denied, revoked or restricted and are thus subject to displacement.

Insufficient protections against land-grabbing

One of the most important parts of the Voluntary Guidelines is the protections it sets out to ensure that large-scale land acquisitions do not undermine the tenure rights of, inter alia, rural farmers, and indigenous peoples, including pastoralists. The Bank’s draft 6 ESS5, para 5(d) and (e). OP 4.12 excludes only disputes between private parties in land titling projects from its application (footnote 8), but does not exempt land titling projects wholesale, and has been
interpreted to apply to people to be evicted from land registered as State or public land. safeguards Framework does not incorporate such protections.
ESS5 excludes from its scope of application voluntary market transactions. A footnote adds that: Special care must be taken with respect to voluntary transactions of significant areas of land (for example in the case of large-scale transfers of land for agricultural investment purposes) to ensure: (a) that land and land use rights of all affected people have been respected; (b) that individuals, groups or communities affected by the transfer are informed of their rights, have full access to reliable information concerning environmental, economic and social impacts and have the capacity to negotiate fair value and appropriate conditions for the transfer of their land; (c) that appropriate benefitssharing and grievance redress mechanisms are put in place; and (d) that terms and conditions of the transfer are transparent.

While the description of conditions for voluntariness are welcome, the footnote raises more questions than it answers. The inclusion of the reference to large-scale transfers of land begs the question as to why the Bank would be supporting activities that involve or encourage large-scale land transfer for agricultural investment in the first place. The footnote displays a recognition by the Bank that such transfers are, in practice, often involuntary in nature and cause forced displacement. And yet all that is asked by the Bank of its borrowers is that they take care in ensuring the conditions are present. Beyond this request, no further safeguards apply to protect against large-scale land grabbing, a phenomenon that has reached crisis proportions in the global south. Bank safeguards must ensure that agriculture projects do not infringe the tenure rights and arrangements of people and communities with land and natural resource-based livelihoods, including smallholder food producers, fisher folk, herders and forest dwellers. These land and natural resource users should be the primary beneficiaries of any such project, including through the strengthening of their tenure security and increasing their access to productive resources. As one way to ensure this, the types of conditions of a voluntary transfer currently described in the footnote should be included as actual safeguard requirements whenever a Bank-supported operation involves or facilitates land transactions for agricultural investments.

No objectives or serious measures to protect land rights of the poor

Under the draft framework, amongst the list of social risks and impacts that the Bank and Borrower should take into account in their due diligence and social assessment, respectively, are:
“risks or impacts associated with land and natural resource tenure and use, including (as relevant) potential project impacts on local land use patterns and
tenurial arrangements, land access and availability, food security and land values, and any corresponding risks related to conflict or contestation over land and natural resources.”

While we agree that such risks and impacts should be assessed, the inclusion of this clause alone is a far cry from ensuring that the safeguards framework is informed by the Voluntary Guidelines. There are no objectives pertaining to each of these potential risks, and no measures are outlined to ensure that identified risks are avoided and mitigated. Instead there are vague requirements of assessment of risk and the application of a “mitigation hierarchy”, which only requires adverse impacts to be compensated when “technically and financially feasible.” During the first phase of consultations, civil society groups recommended a range of substantive safeguard measures to ensure that Bank-assisted operations that impact on land rights:

• Do not weaken, impede or restrict tenure rights to land, housing or natural resources in any manner that violates human rights, including the right to adequate housing, the right to food, the right to non-discrimination and the right to equal protection of the law;
• Avoid and minimize the risk of conflict over land and natural resources, and make every effort to address any conflicts that arise from Bank operations;
• Support and strengthen recognition of the specific land tenure and resource rights of indigenous peoples and the particular protections developed to ensure the development process does not weaken or impact on these rights;
• Strengthen, secure and prioritize the tenure rights of vulnerable and marginalized people so that they enjoy, at minimum, legal protection against forced eviction and illegitimate use by others of their land and natural resources;

• Promote more equitable use of, access to and control over land, housing and natural resources, with particular attention to the rights of women.

If the Bank is serious about supporting the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure and doing no harm, as it has repeatedly professed, it must ensure that its own policies and procedures actually safeguard the land rights of the poor.

Signed by:

1. Accountability Counsel
2. ACT NOW! PNG
3. Africa Europe Faith and Justice Network
4. Africa Faith & Justice Network
5. African Resources Watch (AFREWATCH)
6. Aksi! – Indonesia
7. Alyansa Tigil Mina – Philippines
8. American Jewish World Service
9. Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
10. Asian Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy
10 ESS1, para 25.
11. Association of Fisherfolk of the Gulf of Fonseca – Honduras
12. Anuak Justice Council
13. Anuak Media
14. Asian Indigenous People’s Pact
15. Bangladesh Krishok Federation – Bangladesh
16. Bank Information Center – US
17. Both Ends – Netherlands
18. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
19. Center for International Environmental Law – US
20. Cambodian Peace-Building Network – Cambodia
21. Caney Fork Headwaters Association – US
22. Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University – Australia
23. Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University – US
24. Centre national de coopération au développement, CNCD-11.11.11 – Belgium
25. Citizens for Justice – Malawi
26. Coalition for Equitable Land Acquisitions and Development in Africa (CELADA)
27. Cornucopia Network/NJ/TN Chapter – US
28. CREED Alliance – Pakistan
29. Cubit Family Foundation – Australia
30. Cumberland Countians for Ecojustice – US
31. Eco Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives, Rights & Responsibility Collective
– India
32. Ekta Parishad – India
33. Equitable Cambodia – Cambodia
34. FIAN International
35. Focus on the Global South
36. Food Tank: The Food Think Tank
37. Forest Peoples Program
38. Forum Syd
39. Foundation for the Development of Sustainable Policies – Argentina
40. Four Regions Slum Network – Thailand
41. Friends of the Earth – US
42. Fundar, Centro de Análisis e Investigación – Mexico
43. Global Exchange
44. Green Advocates International – Liberia
45. Habi Center for Environmental Rights – Egypt
46. Highlander Association – Cambodia
47. Housing and Land Rights Network – Habitat International Coalition
48. Housing Rights Task Force – Cambodia
49. Human Settlement Foundation – Thailand
50. IBON International
51. Inclusive Development International
52. Indigenous Peoples Links – UK
53. Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self Determination and Liberation
54. Institute for Policy Studies, Climate Policy Program – US
55. Jamaa Resource Initiative – Kenya
56. Kairos: The Center for Religious, Rights and Social Justice – US
57. Kenya Human Rights Commission – Kenya
58. Kenya Land Alliance – Kenya
59. Khulumani Support Group – South Africa
60. Labour, Health and Human Rights Development Centre – Nigeria
61. Le Cercle Pour la Défense de l’Environnement (CEDEN) – Democratic Republic
of Congo
62. Leaders and Organizations of Community Organizations in Asia (LOCOA)
63. League of Boeung Kak Women Struggling for Housing Rights – Cambodia
64. Local Futures/International Society for Ecology & Culture – UK
65. London Mining Network – UK
66. Lumière Synergie pour le Développement – Senegal
67. MiningWatch Canada
68. Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People – Nigeria
69. Namati
70. National Center for Advocacy Studies – India
71. National Peasants Coalition of Pakistan – Pakistan
72. Natural Justice
73. Network of Environmental & Economic Responsibility of United Church of
Christ – US
74. Network Movement for Justice and Development – Sierra Leone
75. Nicaragua Center for Community Action (NICCA)
76. Ole Siosiomaga Society Incorporated – Samoa
77. Oxfam
78. Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum – Pakistan
79. Planet Wheeler Foundation – Australia
80. Plataforma Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarollo
81. Posco Pratirodh Sangram Sati – India
82. Project on Organizing, Development, Education, and Research (PODER) – Latin
America
83. Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (ProDESC) – Mexico
84. Sahmakum Teang Tnaut – Cambodia
85. Social Justice Connection – Canada
86. Society for Conservation and Protection of Environment (SCOPE) – Pakistan
87. Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia
88. Southeast Asia Development Program
89. The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
90. The International Network on Displacement and Resettlement
91. The Oakland Institute
92. Ulu Foundation
93. Urgewald – Germany

The statement is also endorsed by the following individuals:
1. Professor Jonathan Fox, American University – US
2. Professor Raquel Rolnik, Universidade de São Paulo – Brazil
3. Professor Ted Downing, University of Arizona – US
4. Professor Naomi Rohn-Arriaza, University of California – US
5. Associate Professor Susan Randolph, University of Connecticut – US
6. Professor Vinodh Jaichand, Dean of the School of Law, University of the
Witwatersrand – South Africa
7. Assistant Professor Dr. Usha Natarajan, The American University of Cairo –
Egypt
8. Barbara Rose Johnston, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Political
Ecology – US
9. Joanne Bauer, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University – US
10. Geoffrey Payne, Geoffrey Payne & Associates – UK
11. Charles Scheiner, La’o Hamutuk, Timor Leste Institute for Development
Monitoring and Analysis – Timor Leste
12. Franchezca Serrano, Research Université du Québec à Montréal – Canada
13. Evelyne Schmid – Switzerland
14. William Nicholas Gomes, Human Rights Ambassador for Salem-News.com – UK
15. Lea Jellinek – Australia
16. Ashish Khotari, Kalpavriksh – India
17. Axel C Ringe – US
18. Miles Litvinoff – UK