A major UK- and World Bank-funded development programme in
Ethiopia may have contributed to the violent resettlement of a minority ethnic
group, a report reveals. The World Bank’s internal watchdog said that due to
inadequate oversight, bad audit practices, and a failure to follow its own
rules, the Bank has allowed operational links to form between its programme and
the Ethiopian government’s controversial resettlement programme.
Multiple human rights groups operating in the region have
criticised the Ethiopian government’s programme for violently driving tens of
thousands of indigenous people, predominantly from the minority Anuak Christian
ethnic group, from their homes in order to make way for commercial agriculture
projects. Bank funds – which included over £300m from the UK’s Department for
International Development, the project’s largest donor – could have been diverted to implement
villagisation. Crucially for the Anuak people, the bank did not apply required
safeguards to protect indigenous groups.
David Pred of Inclusive Development International – the NGO
which filed the original complaint on the Anuak group’s behalf – said: “The
Bank has enabled the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of indigenous people
from their ancestral lands. The Bank today just doesn’t want to see human
rights violations, much less accept that it bears some responsibility when it
finances those violations.”
Anuradha Mittal, the founder of the Oakland Institute, a
California-based development NGO which is active in the region, said DfID was
an active participant in the programme, and should share responsibility for its
failings. “Along with the World Bank and other donors, DfID support constitutes
not only financial support but a nod of approval for the Ethiopian regime to
bring about ‘economic development’ for the few at the expense of basic human
rights and livelihoods of its economically and politically most marginalised
ethnic groups,” she said. Mittal was also critical of the World Bank panel’s
draft findings, falling short of directly implicating the World Bank and its
fellow donors in the resettlement programme. “It is quite stunning that the
panel does not think that the World Bank is responsible for
villagisation-related widespread abuses in Ethiopia resulting in destruction of
livelihoods, forced displacement of Anuaks from their fertile lands and
forests.”
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