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	World Bank: Reject roll back of Safeguards to protect communities by Bank on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, agencies   July 2014   (Washington, DC) – A leaked draft of the World Bank’s proposed new social and environmental policies reveals significant erosion of protections for communities and the environment, Bank on Human Rights, a global coalition of nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and community groups said in a statement today to the World Bank board.   The World Bank board should reject the proposed draft and return it to Bank management for redrafting to address fundamental flaws, the coalition said. A committee of the World Bank board will meet on July 30, 2014, to decide whether to approve the draft safeguards policy for broad consultation with governments and nongovernmental organizations.   “The Bank and its member countries have an obligation to ensure that investments in dams, roads, or other projects don’t result in forced evictions, labor abuses, or other rights violations,” said Gretchen Gordon, the coalition coordinator. “Instead, the Bank appears to be moving to a blank-check system, where communities will have no clear protections and little ability to seek recourse if their rights are violated.”   The World Bank pioneered the development of social and environmental safeguards in the 1980s and 90s after several high-profile development projects resulted in human rights abuses and environmental devastation. The revision of the safeguards framework is intended to update the safeguards and improve their effectiveness.   Nongovernmental organizations had said that the World Bank’s move to strengthen the safeguards was a positive step. But the leaked draft revealed an alarming rollback of protections instead.   “The World Bank has repeatedly committed to producing a new safeguard framework that results in no-dilution of the existing safeguards and which reflects prevailing international standards,” the coalition said. “Instead, the draft safeguard framework represents a profound dilution of the existing safeguards and an undercutting of international human rights standards and best practice.”   The draft policy would, for example, allow countries carrying out World Bank-financed projects to “opt-out” of applying protections for indigenous peoples.   “The ‘opt-out provision’ of the Indigenous Peoples Standard is tantamount to the denial of the existence and rights of impoverished and marginalized indigenous peoples in many countries,” said Joan Carling, a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and secretary general of Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, a coalition steering committee member. “Such a policy will only continue the bad legacy the World Bank has with indigenous peoples.”   Human rights were a key issue raised by nongovernmental groups, communities affected by Bank-financed projects, and governments throughout previous consultations on the safeguards review.   While the draft policy includes new language on various human rights issues, such as discrimination and labor rights, it provides major carve-outs and exclusions. The language on discrimination, for instance, leaves out discrimination on the basis of race, color, language, and political or other opinion, in contrast with international law. The provisions on labor rights leave out freedom of association and collective bargaining and apply to only some employees.   “The Bank’s policy review is an opportunity for the World Bank to finally make itself accountable on human rights,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher at Human Rights Watch, a coalition steering committee member. “If the Bank’s board allows the draft policy to go out without fixing these major flaws, it sends a message that respect for human rights remains discretionary at the Bank.”   http://bankonhumanrights.org/ http://www.escr-net.org/node/365591 http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/28/world-bank-reject-plan-roll-back-safeguards http://www.ciel.org/Publications/IFC_LessonsLearned_13Jun2014.pdf http://www.socialwatch.org/node/16451 http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/10/world-bank-group-inadequate-response-killings-land-grabs http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/world-bank-arm-admits-wrongs-honduras-loan/ http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/jan/13/world-bank-ethics-scrutiny http://www.cao-ombudsman.org/   January 25, 2014   U.S. pushes for outside oversight of World Bank, opposes push toward ‘big hydro’, by Howard Schneider. (Washington Post)   The United States is demanding stricter oversight of World Bank projects amid concern that the bank has slipped in how closely it guards against violence, forced resettlement and other conflict associated with the works that it funds.   The United States recently approved an appropriations bill that orders the bank’s U.S. board member to vote against any major hydroelectric project — a type of development that has been a source of local land conflicts and controversies through¬out the bank’s history. The measure also demands that the organization undertake “independent outside evaluations” of all of its lending.   The demand coincides with a spate of disputes between the World Bank, civil society groups and the United States over past bank-funded projects that have been linked to killings of villagers and forcing people from their land. The cases include still-unpaid reparations from a Guatemala dam project from the 1970s in which hundreds of villagers were killed, concern about forced relocations in Ethiopia, and funding for a palm oil and food company whose operations in Honduras in recent years were the scenes of deadly fighting between workers and security guards.   The bank has procedures to guard the rights of local residents and a number of ostensibly independent review bodies inside its bureaucracy. But the growing concerns led Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, to make a broad call for stricter oversight by an outside organization.   It is not uncommon for Congress to use the appropriations bill to attach strings or recommendations about the operations of international organizations such as the World Bank, where the United States is the largest shareholder and an influential voice on policy.   The World Bank president has has said the bank should focus more of its work in the world’s conflict zones, where close oversight of which companies and projects get funded is even more critical.   In the Honduran case, funding for the Dinant Corp. flowed both directly from the bank’s International Finance Corp. and — less transparently — through a Honduran bank that the IFC supported. The IFC was criticized by its internal ombudsman in a recent report for overlooking the risk of violence in the area.   The U.S. vote alone would not be enough to block hydroelectric or other projects from moving forward. But the Leahy amendments recommend withholding U.S. funding for the bank unless an outside evaluation process is established.   They also require U.S. Treasury officials and the American member of the World Bank board to pressure the organization to more quickly resolve disputes where “individuals and communities suffer violations of human rights, including forced displacement, resulting from any loan, grant, strategy or policy.”   The amendments apply to all international financial institutions, including regional ones such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank. But the focus was on the World Bank, and the measure referred specifically to disputes in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Guatemala.   The Guatemalan case in particular stands out for its level of violence at the time and for the long-standing demand for reparations for the community involved. Construction of the Chixoy Dam in the 1970s was funded by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It coincided with a bloody civil conflict, and several hundred villagers were killed and thousands displaced in clashes as the army tried to clear the way for the project.   The uprooted community has struggled since. In 2010, a reparations plan was agreed to by the Guatemalan government, but the money has not been paid. Under the Leahy amendment, U.S. Treasury officials are expected to begin pressuring the World Bank and the IADB to push for payment. There is a separate threat to withhold funds from the Guatemalan army unless the reparations are paid.   The bank has suggested using money from existing projects to benefit the affected families, and a spokesperson said the bank would “look for opportunities” to do more. Visit the related web page
	Civilians are the soft target of war by Jérémie Labbé Global Observatory   April 2014   Against the backdrop of appalling violence against civilians in Syria, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, along with the persistent obstruction of humanitarian aid around the world, international humanitarian law may appear redundant in the twenty-first century. Initially designed with interstate wars in mind, one of the main objectives of this body of law is to limit the effects of conflict on people who are not, or no longer, participating in hostilities, especially civilians. Nowadays, the lines between combatants and civilians are often blurred, and improving compliance with the law remains a significant challenge.   However, Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier, legal director of Doctors Without Borders and author of the book The Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law, has a different take. “If humanitarian law is not respected today, this does not show that it is ill-adapted to conflict,” Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier said in an interview with the Global Observatory. Acknowledging that the law is more often violated than not, Ms. Bouchet Saulnier stressed that “what is important is that the law frames what must be respected.”   The issue of protecting civilians is at the center of the humanitarian challenge today because armed groups and armies try to avoid direct confrontation and find soft targets, according to Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier, but the fact that “civilians are the soft target of war” is “not new at all.” As such, “the protection of civilians and humanitarian relief to the civilian population and victims of conflict remains an essential battle, and it has to be fought,” said Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier. “This is as old as the history of conflict,” she said, “Things have never been better before.”   While Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier agreed that there is “a real legal asymmetry” between state and nonstate armed groups in today’s mostly internal conflicts, which creates “practical problems,” international humanitarian law is not only applicable and relevant to international conflicts—for which it was initially developed—but also to those that happen within states.   In Syria, “the fact that you cannot clearly identify the hierarchical chain of command of the opposition and the fact that it’s not one single nonstate armed group fighting with the governmental forces—this is just the reality,” Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier said. “But still, the distinction between civilian and combatant is possible.”   In addition, the protocols added to the body of international humanitarian law in 1977 “get rid of this distinction between civilian and combatant,” she said.   “What is really of interest is the situation of the victim of the conflict,” and even a combatant can become a victim: “a civilian or a combatant is of interest to international humanitarian law when he has become a victim—meaning he has lost power, because he’s wounded, because he’s sick, because he is detained.”   Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier also addressed the tension between the growing body of international criminal law, which abides by strict rules of interpretation, and the interpretation of humanitarian law, which should remain “very broad, to make sure it encompasses every situation that has not been envisaged before.”   The strict rules of interpretation of international criminal law have nurtured the position promoted by some states, especially in the war on terror, that some of today’s wars—such as in Yemen or the Central African Republic—would fall into a third category of conflict not regulated by international humanitarian law.   Such an approach is contrary to the spirit of humanitarian law where “every situation and individual must be covered with a system of mutually exclusive categories.”   In addition, to be effective, the International Criminal Court needs to be wary of building its cases on “the weakest elements of the system, which are the victims and the humanitarian organizations,” Ms. Bouchet-Saulnier said. In general, she suggested that pressuring humanitarian agencies to hand over evidence as part of a criminal case can negatively impact humanitarian access.   http://theglobalobservatory.org/interviews/721-as-nature-of-conflict-changes-is-international-humanitarian-law-still-relevant.html
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