The campaign by pro-Tibetan and other groups to press the World Bank to drop the China Western Poverty Project caused a major political battle at the institution during June.
Indigenous peoples
Rights
News
Brazilian Indians threatened by World Bank loan failure
A July Urgent Action bulletin from Survival International urges the World Bank and Government of Brazil to act to uphold conditions attached to an 18 year old World Bank loan.
Rights
News
Chad-Cameroon latest
The World Bank Board approved the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project in early June.
Rights
News
Bank assessment policies discussed
The latest issue of News and Notices for World Bank Watchers discusses World Bank social and environmental assessments and calls for a new “dynamic assessment” procedure.
Environment
News
Indigenous Peoples Workshop
A workshop on Indigenous peoples, forests and the World Bank: policies and practice was held in Washington on 9-10 May to discuss nine case studies, presented by indigenous peoples, of their communities’ experiences with World Bank projects.
Rights
News
Panel Slams Bank On China Project
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on 4 May stating that “the World Bank badly mishandled an anti-poverty project that would resettle 58,000 Chinese farmers onto hotly disputed farmlands traditionally inhabited by ethnic Tibetans, according to a report by an internal bank watchdog panel”.
Finance
News
Ecuador crisis leads to indigenous peoples’ uprising
In January, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and other social movements led an uprising in protest at the worsening economic situation which resulted in the resignation of the president, Jamil Mahuad.
Rights
News
China arrests project monitors
On 15 August the Chinese Government arrested three people for trying to investigate the World Bank Western Poverty Project.
Land
News
Oil-Palm Watch
Indonesian NGOs, concerned about the spread of oil palm plantations since the onslaught of the crisis, have formed “Sawat (Oil Palm) Watch”.
Rights
News
Poverty project endangers Tibetans
In early June the World Bank rushed to defend the proposed China Western Poverty Project from charges that it would disrupt the lives of ethnic Tibetans and had undergone too limited environmental scrutiny.
Featured briefings
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.
16 October 2024
Sustainable development requires sustainable finance: why local currency financing is part of the solution
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.