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The World Bank Responds

On April 18, 2000 Carlos Chen met with a group of senior officials at the World Bank. This signified that the Chixoy dam-and the related Rio Negro massacres-were back on the Bank's agenda nine years after the Bank had closed its books on the project. This was testament to the power of advocacy.

A report from the World Bank Evaluations Unit World Bank Lending for Large Dams: A Preliminary Review of Impacts Resettlement has been inadequately managed in half the projects. Overall, the 50 dams have displaced about 830,000 people. Based on information in Bank reports, the outcome of resettlement has been satisfactory in 25 of the large dams (involving 540,000 people), unsatisfactory or unknown in 24 projects, and no resettlement was required in one project. However, most projects predate the Bank's resettlement guidelines, and often, judgments on outcome are largely based on the views of the implementing agency rather than on audits to establish whether displaced people's incomes have been restored to pre-project levels, as required by today's guidelines. Problems with resettlement and compensation of indigenous people appear to have been frequent. Many dams are in remote areas whose people have a social and cultural identity that is distinct from the dominant society and makes them vulnerable to being disadvantaged by development. Unfortunately, because most of the projects in this review were approved before the Bank's guidelines on indigenous people were issued in 1982, few of them recorded information on the condition of indigenous people before and after project interventions. OED impact evaluations and reports by other agencies point to this as an outstanding issue for the Bank and its borrowers.

Still, the World Bank refused to express anything other than sympathy. This is because it sees its mission as being to promote economic development, not protect human rights. As noted above, the Bank does apply guidelines when supporting a project that touches on sensitive social issues like involuntary resettlement. But it sees these guidelines as internal and insists that it has no formal responsibility-legal, moral or otherwise-for the impact of projects.

Finally, the Bank argues that any commitments last only as long as a project. Ten million people were forcibly displaced by Bank-supported dams in the 1970s and 1980s. If the Bank accepted responsibility for Chixoy, where would it end?

But that kind of response ensures that Chixoy remains a potent rallying cry for the Bank's critics. The Rio Negro case was again brought up by critics of the Bank at the fall 2000 meeting of the World Bank in Prague (Czech Republic). Following the Prague meeting, two supporters of the Rio Negro survivors (Rights Action and the Italian-based Campaign to Reform the World Bank) called on Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to initiate a formal and complete investigation into the role of the World Bank and the Chixoy dam project. Rights Action has launched a new campaign, calling for reparations.

Eighteen years later, the Rio Negro massacres have not lost their power to shock or their symbolic importance.

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