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| June 28, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
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China
Probe paralyses World Bank board By Gumisai Mutume WASHINGTON - While World Bank officials fight over whether to officially release it or not, a scathing report on the bank's conduct regarding China is already doing the rounds in Washington. The Inspection Panel Report on the China Western Poverty Reduction Project (WPRP) has been the subject of months of speculation. Critics of the World Bank say it is one of the most astonishing indictments of the World Bank and how it conducts its business. The report, conducted by a three-member internal World Bank body, says the institution violated six out of nine of its own policies when it assessed and approved a three-component, $160 million project to resettle nearly 60,000 Chinese on what has traditionally been regarded as Tibetan land. Last year the bank approved the controversial program but did not disburse $40 million to the Qinghai component of the project pending the Inspection Panel's investigation. The panel's findings were ready in April but have still not officially been released. A bank official says the board of directors of the bank is split on whether or not to release the document. A series of meetings have so far ended in deadlock. The report was to be released after an Executive Board of Directors vote on the project on July 7, but directors backed down at the last minute. Pressure from members of the US congress, human rights groups and bank watchers calling for transparency and accountability is forcing the hand of the bank. On the Qinghai component of the WPRP, the report says, the bank did not abide by its environmental assessment, resettlement, indigenous peoples, natural habitats, pest management and information disclosure policies. The Inspection Panel says one of the major weaknesses of the project is that no project alternatives are identified, even though it is being carried out in a highly political area, namely a traditional homeland for Tibetan and Mongol herders that was occupied by China when it invaded Tibet in 1949. The report also points to a worrying internal crisis within the bank, as it provides evidence of a wide and divergent view of the bank's policies among staff. During the last five years, the Inspection Panel says it has examined some 20 projects and encountered differences in views among staff on how the bank's operational policies and procedures should be applied. ''These large differences pervade all ranks of the staff, from senior management to frontline professionals,'' notes the report. ''And they apply to virtually all of the major decisions required by the policies.'' This carries grave implications for the bank's policies and procedures since there is no way the institution's policies can be implemented consistently. While some staff members feel bank operating policies are simply idealized policy statements, others like World Bank President James Wolfensohn see them as a set of goals to be striven after to the letter. Controversy surrounding the release of the report comes at a time when there is vigorous debate over the reform of international finance institutions and their relevance in the current global economy. The World Bank has been spotlighted for its apparent lack of transparency and accountability. Following public criticism, bank management tried to retrofit the analysis of the project so it appeared to comply with the institution's own indigenous people's policy, the report charges. The bank, in addition, prepared the project's Involuntary Resettlement Plan late in the process. Also disturbing are the double standards with which China seems to be treated by the bank. Interviews carried out by the Inspection Panel with the bank's staff were punctuated by the refrain: ''On China, things are done differently.'' The bank's role in China over the last 20 years has included working in 23 provinces and providing $3.8 billion for 31 projects. China joined the World Bank in 1981, and has been the bank's largest borrower of investment financing since 1992 - cumulative lending by China totalled $33 billion by June last year. Yet two of the World Bank's biggest lenders, the United States and Germany, have been critical of the current project from the time it was approved in 1999. Both voted against it. World Bank management's response to WPRP criticism is that ''past practice'' and experience is one of the guiding factors that saw them assigning Category B rather than A status to this project (Category A would have required a full environmental assessment). It's a defense that only riles the bank's opponents further. ''The standard on China is based on how they have carried out projects in the past, not what their policy guidelines say,'' says John Ackerley, president of the International Campaign for Tibet. ''This is an admission that they are willing to accept lower standards for China and the report speaks for itself.'' The Inspection Panel also found that there exists an unhealthy ''climate of fear'' within the project area, with Tibetan and Mongolian minorities not reflecting their true feelings for fear of retribution. This therefore defeats the bank's latest recommendations in response to the report that another independent enquiry be set up in order to fix the outstanding problems. The Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, has weighed into the fray saying he is not theoretically against Chinese resettlement in Tibetan areas, but that the WPRP would create tension and cause more problems under the current conditions of mistrust between the Chinese and Tibetans. By the bank's own admission, the number of Tibetans' in the region's population will fall from 23 percent to 14 percent as a result of the project. Mongolians will dwindle from 14 percent to seven percent. (Inter Press Service) |
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