Between the grassroots and the bank
New Naratif, Jan. 03, 2019 (Bali)
78-year-old Nget Khun from Cambodia couldn’t believe what she was witnessing at the World Bank group’s orientation for civil society groups in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia on 9 October 2018.
An official from the World Bank was presenting the latest Grievance Redress Service (GRS) report, which is part of their complaint mechanism for people and communities affected by World Bank-funded projects. But the case of forced evictions from the Boeung Kak Lake area in Phnom Penh, which was densely settled with more than 4,000 households and which affected Khun, was not included.
When asked by a Cambodian land rights advocacy group to find a sustainable solution for Boeung Kak Lake residents, a World Bank official told the group to contact the Cambodian government or to visit the international financial institution’s Washington headquarters. “The World Bank official answered that they already gave a solution as they had stopped the project funding and paid compensation. But the impact of their funding, like housing [issues] and impoverishment is still there,” says Sreyleak from the Housing Rights Task Force in Cambodia, a group of international and national NGOs working for the housing rights of the urban poor in Phnom Penh.
The case of Boeung Kak Lake
In 2002, the World Bank approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit of USD24.3 million to support the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) in Cambodia. Canada, Finland and Germany also provided co-financing or parallel financing for the project.
The project was aimed at supporting the Cambodian government’s long-term plan to build a modern land management sector after 25 years of conflict, with a newly enacted Land Law in 2001. Four years after the World Bank granted credit, part of the Boeung Kak Lake area was declared an LMAP Adjudication Area, which meant that it was open to a systematic land registration process in which land parcels were demarcated and land titles issued after ownership was determined. But instead of guaranteeing residents legal ownership of their homes, the authorities, backed by a solid source of funding, went ahead with a land grabbing process.
According to the World Bank Management Report in response to the inspection panel’s investigation of the LMAP project in January 2011, the Cambodian government granted a lease on the Boeung Kak Lake area to Shukaku Inc. prior to the declaration of the adjudication area and completion of the land titling process. Local authorities had claimed that the area was public state land and approved a development plan proposal from Shukaku Inc.
The residents were caught in a bind; although many had lived in Boeung Kak Lake for years, they lacked the necessary land titles and documentation to demonstrate their right to live there—a throwback to the damage done by the Khmer Rouge regime, which had destroyed land records and declared everything the property of the state. In early 2009, residents started to witness massive demolition in the area, done without any resettlement arrangements in place. Many fisherfolk, farmers, restaurant and guesthouse owners were forced to uproot their lives and start over elsewhere, often doing precarious wage labour.
The people who refused to move also live uncertain lives and foresee their future as potentially becoming part of the urban poor. The whole Boeung Kak Lake area has been filled and is in the process of being transformed into a high-end business and residential complex.
The World Bank stopped issuing new loans to Cambodia in 2011 due to the Boeung Kak dispute, but continued to fund projects approved before then. Khun finally got her land title, but still struggles to legally build a house on her land. Activists continue to face difficulties when protesting against land disputes and human rights issues.
“I went to the World Bank office in Phnom Penh and ministry offices to protest many times with villagers, but was stopped by authorities and beaten by security forces. So I was very hopeful to interact with the World Bank people to share our problem and seek a solution at the Bali [International Monetary Fund-World Bank] meeting. But I feel hopeless now and can’t do anything with the World Bank anymore,” says Khun.
Problems with accessibility
Where Khun found hope, after a decade of struggle, was with civil society forums in Bali which took place outside of the annual IMF-WBG meetings. As part of the “World Beyond Banks” programme organised by Indonesian grassroots groups, she was able to share her community’s struggle and seek solutions with more than 300 Indonesian and international grassroots representatives.
“We thought we should do something, when there are IMF-WBG annual meetings, in Bali to reflect our struggles and share knowledge on how to fight back together,” says Dinda Nuur Annisaa Yura of Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity), one of the programme organisers.
Dinda and her peers in women’s groups across Asia see systemic limitations to addressing the grassroots’ concerns in the process of mega-development projects. According to Joan Salvador from the Gabriela Alliance of Filipino Women, “[t]here have been hundreds of World Bank development projects in villages and communities in poor countries for decades. But a World Bank official told us that there have been only eight cases submitted via the online [grievance redress] system until today. [If we count] the cases from the ‘World Beyond Banks’ forum itself, [there] would be [more than] eight. This is clear evidence of how World Bank accountability mechanism has failed to function at a grassroots level.”
Grassroots groups in Asia have long been arguing about the undemocratic top-down decision-making process, a fundamental problem in the neoliberal global financial system.
It’s difficult for local communities to get access to the IMF-WBG, and little information provided to them on how to file complaints and report problems in the first place. “There are not many cases reported from Indonesia to the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman for International Finance Corporation or World Bank’s GRS, because people don’t have the information. There’s even a deadline to report cases, so people from Kedung Ombo from Central Java, for example, cannot address their problems with water because the hydropower construction project finished in 1989,” says Titi Soentoro from Aksi! (Action) for Gender, Social, Ecological Justice, Indonesia.
The Kedung Ombo Multipurpose Dam and Irrigation Project was a World Bank-financed mega-project—costing a total of USD156 million—that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to Aksi!, 5,300 households across three regencies in Central Java Province were submerged due to this project. About 2,000 residents are reported to be still suffering from water shortages because of the dam.
New Naratif approached the World Bank to seek their response to criticism of the Kedung Ombo project and its conflict resolution measures on 23 November. On 10 December, the World Bank Indonesia office forwarded links to three operational manuals usually provided to bank staff on environmental assessment, indigenous peoples, and involuntary resettlement, as well as to its “Access to Information” page. These links were not accompanied by any answers to questions asked.
A “tiger without teeth”
With three decades of advocacy experience, Titi refers to the accountability mechanism of the World Bank Group as a “tiger without teeth” to emphasise its uselessness.
Grassroots groups in Asia have long been arguing about the undemocratic top-down decision-making process, a fundamental problem in the neoliberal global financial system. The elitist system can often prevent local communities from having a voice in decisions that impact them. The World Bank GRS form, for example, is provided in English—as mentioned by advocates, affected individuals might lack the knowledge, technology, education or capacity to obtain the form, fill it in, then mail, email, fax or hand deliver it to a World Bank office.
“They have created a system that we cannot fix when it affects our lives,” says Neha Gupta from Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD).
Local grassroots groups are well aware that poverty reduction funds aren’t reaching the communities most in need, but flowing into the hands of high-ranking government officials and private companies, like Shukaku Inc. in Cambodia. “They’re going to talk about us in the meeting and create projects and regulations related to their development objectives which we never wanted. To us, it means that we’re losing the control of our own lives and livelihood resources,” says John Pluto Sinulingga from Bina Desa (Village Development), Indonesia—a grassroots community organisation founded to empower and support marginalised rural communities in West Java in advocating for agrarian policy reform.
“A democratic deficit”
This lack of democratic input from the ground is an issue that’s both well-known, not just about the World Bank, but massive international organisations in general.
“It has become common belief that the performance of international institutions, such as the World Bank, would dramatically improve if only they were more democratic,” writes political scientist Devesh Kapur, who co-authored The World Bank: Its First Half Century.
“The idea, while seductive as a normative principle, is however likely to prove structurally impossible in practice. An unpleasant reality of international institutions is that whatever form of governance and decision-making prevails in international organisations, they will not be democratic in the sense that democracy is a system of popular control over decision-making. Structurally I.O.s will always face a democratic deficit.”
“Structurally international organisations will always face a democratic deficit”
In a five-day civic forum, people from affected local communities said that various World Bank projects had caused impoverishment, marginalisation and precarity. For Khun—a mother of seven with dozens of grandchildren—the impact of the World Bank and its vision for local communities has eerie echoes of the past.
“I oppose [resettlement] because it reminds me of 1979, when we had to start all over again after Khmer Rouge collapsed,” she says. “If we lose what we’ve worked so hard for, our little houses, grocery shops, restaurants and guesthouses, we will end up being wage labourers, sex workers or beggars.”
With so many barriers in place when it comes to engaging international organisations like the World Bank and the IMF, grassroots communities have turned to their own international networks.
“Our suffering from mega-development projects is a matter of human rights and justice. But the World Bank and IMF failed to recognise this fundamental value for decades,” says Siti Aisah, a 43-year-old former domestic worker and member of the Indonesian migrant workers’ organisation Keluarga Besar Buruh Migran Indonesia.
“We would rather organise ourselves to establish a new group, or work with trusted NGOs.”
To read an original article: Click HERE
An official from the World Bank was presenting the latest Grievance Redress Service (GRS) report, which is part of their complaint mechanism for people and communities affected by World Bank-funded projects. But the case of forced evictions from the Boeung Kak Lake area in Phnom Penh, which was densely settled with more than 4,000 households and which affected Khun, was not included.
When asked by a Cambodian land rights advocacy group to find a sustainable solution for Boeung Kak Lake residents, a World Bank official told the group to contact the Cambodian government or to visit the international financial institution’s Washington headquarters. “The World Bank official answered that they already gave a solution as they had stopped the project funding and paid compensation. But the impact of their funding, like housing [issues] and impoverishment is still there,” says Sreyleak from the Housing Rights Task Force in Cambodia, a group of international and national NGOs working for the housing rights of the urban poor in Phnom Penh.
The case of Boeung Kak Lake
In 2002, the World Bank approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit of USD24.3 million to support the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) in Cambodia. Canada, Finland and Germany also provided co-financing or parallel financing for the project.
The project was aimed at supporting the Cambodian government’s long-term plan to build a modern land management sector after 25 years of conflict, with a newly enacted Land Law in 2001. Four years after the World Bank granted credit, part of the Boeung Kak Lake area was declared an LMAP Adjudication Area, which meant that it was open to a systematic land registration process in which land parcels were demarcated and land titles issued after ownership was determined. But instead of guaranteeing residents legal ownership of their homes, the authorities, backed by a solid source of funding, went ahead with a land grabbing process.
According to the World Bank Management Report in response to the inspection panel’s investigation of the LMAP project in January 2011, the Cambodian government granted a lease on the Boeung Kak Lake area to Shukaku Inc. prior to the declaration of the adjudication area and completion of the land titling process. Local authorities had claimed that the area was public state land and approved a development plan proposal from Shukaku Inc.
The residents were caught in a bind; although many had lived in Boeung Kak Lake for years, they lacked the necessary land titles and documentation to demonstrate their right to live there—a throwback to the damage done by the Khmer Rouge regime, which had destroyed land records and declared everything the property of the state. In early 2009, residents started to witness massive demolition in the area, done without any resettlement arrangements in place. Many fisherfolk, farmers, restaurant and guesthouse owners were forced to uproot their lives and start over elsewhere, often doing precarious wage labour.
The people who refused to move also live uncertain lives and foresee their future as potentially becoming part of the urban poor. The whole Boeung Kak Lake area has been filled and is in the process of being transformed into a high-end business and residential complex.
The World Bank stopped issuing new loans to Cambodia in 2011 due to the Boeung Kak dispute, but continued to fund projects approved before then. Khun finally got her land title, but still struggles to legally build a house on her land. Activists continue to face difficulties when protesting against land disputes and human rights issues.
“I went to the World Bank office in Phnom Penh and ministry offices to protest many times with villagers, but was stopped by authorities and beaten by security forces. So I was very hopeful to interact with the World Bank people to share our problem and seek a solution at the Bali [International Monetary Fund-World Bank] meeting. But I feel hopeless now and can’t do anything with the World Bank anymore,” says Khun.
Problems with accessibility
Where Khun found hope, after a decade of struggle, was with civil society forums in Bali which took place outside of the annual IMF-WBG meetings. As part of the “World Beyond Banks” programme organised by Indonesian grassroots groups, she was able to share her community’s struggle and seek solutions with more than 300 Indonesian and international grassroots representatives.
“We thought we should do something, when there are IMF-WBG annual meetings, in Bali to reflect our struggles and share knowledge on how to fight back together,” says Dinda Nuur Annisaa Yura of Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity), one of the programme organisers.
Dinda and her peers in women’s groups across Asia see systemic limitations to addressing the grassroots’ concerns in the process of mega-development projects. According to Joan Salvador from the Gabriela Alliance of Filipino Women, “[t]here have been hundreds of World Bank development projects in villages and communities in poor countries for decades. But a World Bank official told us that there have been only eight cases submitted via the online [grievance redress] system until today. [If we count] the cases from the ‘World Beyond Banks’ forum itself, [there] would be [more than] eight. This is clear evidence of how World Bank accountability mechanism has failed to function at a grassroots level.”
Grassroots groups in Asia have long been arguing about the undemocratic top-down decision-making process, a fundamental problem in the neoliberal global financial system.
It’s difficult for local communities to get access to the IMF-WBG, and little information provided to them on how to file complaints and report problems in the first place. “There are not many cases reported from Indonesia to the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman for International Finance Corporation or World Bank’s GRS, because people don’t have the information. There’s even a deadline to report cases, so people from Kedung Ombo from Central Java, for example, cannot address their problems with water because the hydropower construction project finished in 1989,” says Titi Soentoro from Aksi! (Action) for Gender, Social, Ecological Justice, Indonesia.
The Kedung Ombo Multipurpose Dam and Irrigation Project was a World Bank-financed mega-project—costing a total of USD156 million—that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to Aksi!, 5,300 households across three regencies in Central Java Province were submerged due to this project. About 2,000 residents are reported to be still suffering from water shortages because of the dam.
New Naratif approached the World Bank to seek their response to criticism of the Kedung Ombo project and its conflict resolution measures on 23 November. On 10 December, the World Bank Indonesia office forwarded links to three operational manuals usually provided to bank staff on environmental assessment, indigenous peoples, and involuntary resettlement, as well as to its “Access to Information” page. These links were not accompanied by any answers to questions asked.
A “tiger without teeth”
With three decades of advocacy experience, Titi refers to the accountability mechanism of the World Bank Group as a “tiger without teeth” to emphasise its uselessness.
Grassroots groups in Asia have long been arguing about the undemocratic top-down decision-making process, a fundamental problem in the neoliberal global financial system. The elitist system can often prevent local communities from having a voice in decisions that impact them. The World Bank GRS form, for example, is provided in English—as mentioned by advocates, affected individuals might lack the knowledge, technology, education or capacity to obtain the form, fill it in, then mail, email, fax or hand deliver it to a World Bank office.
“They have created a system that we cannot fix when it affects our lives,” says Neha Gupta from Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD).
Local grassroots groups are well aware that poverty reduction funds aren’t reaching the communities most in need, but flowing into the hands of high-ranking government officials and private companies, like Shukaku Inc. in Cambodia. “They’re going to talk about us in the meeting and create projects and regulations related to their development objectives which we never wanted. To us, it means that we’re losing the control of our own lives and livelihood resources,” says John Pluto Sinulingga from Bina Desa (Village Development), Indonesia—a grassroots community organisation founded to empower and support marginalised rural communities in West Java in advocating for agrarian policy reform.
“A democratic deficit”
This lack of democratic input from the ground is an issue that’s both well-known, not just about the World Bank, but massive international organisations in general.
“It has become common belief that the performance of international institutions, such as the World Bank, would dramatically improve if only they were more democratic,” writes political scientist Devesh Kapur, who co-authored The World Bank: Its First Half Century.
“The idea, while seductive as a normative principle, is however likely to prove structurally impossible in practice. An unpleasant reality of international institutions is that whatever form of governance and decision-making prevails in international organisations, they will not be democratic in the sense that democracy is a system of popular control over decision-making. Structurally I.O.s will always face a democratic deficit.”
“Structurally international organisations will always face a democratic deficit”
In a five-day civic forum, people from affected local communities said that various World Bank projects had caused impoverishment, marginalisation and precarity. For Khun—a mother of seven with dozens of grandchildren—the impact of the World Bank and its vision for local communities has eerie echoes of the past.
“I oppose [resettlement] because it reminds me of 1979, when we had to start all over again after Khmer Rouge collapsed,” she says. “If we lose what we’ve worked so hard for, our little houses, grocery shops, restaurants and guesthouses, we will end up being wage labourers, sex workers or beggars.”
With so many barriers in place when it comes to engaging international organisations like the World Bank and the IMF, grassroots communities have turned to their own international networks.
“Our suffering from mega-development projects is a matter of human rights and justice. But the World Bank and IMF failed to recognise this fundamental value for decades,” says Siti Aisah, a 43-year-old former domestic worker and member of the Indonesian migrant workers’ organisation Keluarga Besar Buruh Migran Indonesia.
“We would rather organise ourselves to establish a new group, or work with trusted NGOs.”
To read an original article: Click HERE