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dam-l PR: HRIC " World Bank ignores its own guidelines in China"


PRESS ADVISORY
June 12, 2000
For more information contact:                                                 
Hong Kong
Sophia Woodman (852) 2710-8021 
in New York, Judy Chen (212) 239-4274

In involuntary resettlement for China projects, the World Bank ignores its 
own guidelines

For some years now, the World Bank has been promoting the People's Republic of
China as a model of "best practice" for the developing world in the contested
area of involuntary resettlement. This evaluation has been widely repeated,
and most recently has been adopted in several papers commissioned by the World
Commission on Dams (WCD www.dams.org), a body mandated to conduct an
independent review of the "development effectiveness" of big dams and water
projects around the globe.

Today Human Rights in China releases three documents, two articles from the
Spring 2000 China Rights Forum and comments on a WCD report, that challenge
the image of China as resettlement model.

These documents are released as the Bank's board meets today to discuss the
report of an Inspection Panel tasked to assess whether proper procedures and
guidelines were ignored in the assessment of the resettlement component of the
China Western Poverty Reduction Project slated for Dulan County, Qinghai
Province. This Inspection Panel was only initiated after a ground-breaking
request from the International Campaign for Tibet
(http://www.savetibet.org/action/inspeclaim.pdf) raised serious questions
about whether Bank policies and safeguards were applied in the feasibility
studies and environment assessments for this project.

But as the attached documents show, by its own admission the World Bank
effectively waives its own guidelines in its work on resettlement in China,
while ignoring evidence contradicting the favored image of China as
resettlement paragon, most notably the stream of reports about corruption and 
malfeasance associated with the Three Gorges Dam. Other 
institutions,including consulting companies, follow the Bank's lead. And most 
recently this uncritical and selective approach is appearing in assessments 
prepared for the supposedly-independent World Commission on Dams.

In "Illusions of progress? The World Bank and involuntary resettlement in 
China," Patricia Armstrong points out the disturbing fact that, despite its 
experience elsewhere, the Bank appears to consider the restrictive human 
rights environment in China a positive factor in resettlement outcomes. She 
also shows how the Bank has failed to meet its requirements for assessment of
resettlement programs associated with its China projects,using instead 
research institutes attached to the Chinese government departments sponsoring 
the projects in question. She concludes: "The methodology and conclusions of 
the World Bank’s analyses of resettlement activities in China call into 
question the degree to which China, the Bank’s largest borrower, is simply 
subject to a different set of standards than those applied by the Bank in 
other countries."

In "Wishful thinking: China, resettlement models and the international review 
of big dams," Sophia Woodman writes that popular action by rural people has 
been an important factor in forcing change in China's disastrous resettlement 
policies of the past and in gaining redress for past wrongs, yet this fact is 
generally ignored by the Bank and by those who repeat its conclusions. Such 
protest tactics say much about the restrictive human rights climate in which
resettlement occurs, as well as about the failings of grievance procedures 
available to the displaced. She also points out that like so many such laws 
in China today, regulations on resettlement contain vague promises rather 
than enforceable guarantees, and thus serious questions remain about their 
implementation. She asks why, then, the resettlement review under the World 
Commission Dams has chosen to repeat the received wisdom about China as model.

In a comment on the World Commission on Dams' China Country Review Paper,
Woodman wonders how a balanced assessment of the China experience could be
possible when the author of the Paper fails to cite any of the literature
produced by NGOs in recent years on the subject of resettlement and dams in 
China, or a single publication by the most prominent critic of the Three 
Gorges Dam project inside China, Dai Qing. The author of the Paper also does 
not even mention the issue of corruption and its impact on the various 
aspects of dam-building, from project design to construction and management.

"China is borrowing huge sums from the World Bank, without the kind of 
accountability and transparency that is now expected for projects in other 
countries," said Sophia Woodman, HRIC Research Director. "The Bank even 
appears to endorse the restrictions that prevent people from having input 
into the development decisions that affect their lives. This is a recipe for 
human rights abuses committed in the name of development."

# #  #

        Human Rights in China (HRIC) is the largest independent organization 
focused on monitoring and promoting human rights in the People's Republic
of China.
Founded in 1989 by a group of Chinese scientists and scholars, HRIC maintains 
offices in New York and Hong Kong.

                              Visit our website at: www.hrichina.org

---





Doris Shen
International Rivers Network 

1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
doris@irn.org   
tel: 510.848.1155 ext. 317      
fax: 510.848.1008
IRN http://www.irn.org IRN China Page http://www.hk-sanxia.org

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and other destructive projects by Wall Street investment banks 
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