Development Banks Must Prevent Forced Displacement

“I refused [to resettle] and was beaten and lost my two upper teeth. My brother was beaten to death by the soldiers for refusing to go to the new village. My second brother was detained, and I don’t know where he was taken by the soldiers.”

“Because we had no access to food in the new village, I went back to my old village with my daughter to bring food. Suddenly, soldiers came…They beat me and my daughter and raped us both.”

These harrowing testimonies from members of the Anuak Indigenous People highlight the severe consequences of resettlement. In a complaint to the World Bank, members of the Anuak community reported severe human rights abuses associated with their forced displacement from ancestral homes in Gambella, Ethiopia since 2010, as part of the World Bank-financed Ethiopia Protection of Basic Services (PBS) Project. 

Under a concurrent project, the Ethiopian government sought to resettle 45,000 villagers to areas with supposedly improved infrastructure, services, and food security, promising a “socioeconomic and cultural transformation of the people.” However, the Anuak community did not consent to such a “transformation.” Villagers were violently forced from their homes through physical violence, gender-based violence, retaliation, and intimidation, only to find infertile land and a lack of promised services after resettlement. They contend that PBS funds were diverted to finance this resettlement plan and pay government workers implementing it. This is not development—it is forced displacement, a disturbingly common issue in development bank projects.

Bank responsibilities concerning displacement

The World Bank, like many global development banks, has policies governing its projects’ impacts on communities. If policies are violated, community members can raise complaints to Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs). The Anuak community did so, complaining of the World Bank violating its involuntary resettlement policy, which was designed to safeguard communities from project risks such as the loss of shelter, assets, or income sources. According to this policy, if involuntary resettlement cannot be avoided, resettlement plans must be prepared in consultation with affected communities, ensuring they are compensated and benefit from the project. 

Despite these safeguards, out of a re-analyzed subset of 1,042 complaints submitted across IAMs, at least 409 involuntary resettlement complaints have been raised, 250 (61%) involving physical displacement—the loss of shelter—reflecting a major failing by banks to meet their own human rights standards.^[1] 

Figure 1. Frequency of Top Issues Raised Across 1,042 Complaints, Highlighting Physical Displacement.

Patterns of involuntary resettlement complaints

Involuntary resettlement complaints involving physical displacement typically follow two patterns: 

(1) Breached resettlement agreements: Communities sign resettlement agreements that are later not followed or implemented correctly. These communities face devastating harm to their well-being and livelihoods due to deficient shelter accommodations or delays in receiving compensation. Such breaches violate the resettlement policies which banks are responsible for supervising.

(2) Forced displacement without consent: Communities may be coerced into signing resettlement agreements or physically forced to vacate their homes by military forces, government workers, or private security. In these cases, the language and policies of involuntary resettlement are inadequate to address the true harm being perpetrated: forced displacement. 

According to the UNHCR, forced displacement “occurs when individuals and communities have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of, or in order to avoid the effects of, armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters.” Forced displacement has profound impacts on affected communities, including the loss of home and livelihood, lack of basic services, family separation, loss of cultural identity, and exposure to violence. 

The intersection of physical displacement and violence

Complaints about forced displacement often occupy the intersection between complaints citing physical displacement and those citing violence against the community. In this context, violence refers not only to physical violence—as was committed against the Anuak people—but also to structural violence, including tactics of oppression, intimidation, and retaliation which protractedly harm communities. 

Preliminary research conducted by Stanford students for Accountability Counsel sought to identify relevant subcategories of issues for complaints raised to IAMs on the Accountability Console database. Out of the subset of complaints analyzed by Stanford students (1,042 complaints), physical displacement is included in 24%, making it the sixth most common issue overall, as shown in Figure 1. Violence is alleged in 21.6% of complaints overall but in 35.2% of the complaints related to physical displacement. This intersection represents a significant, unique harm that development banks must redress and prevent moving forward. 

Communities experiencing this harm and still awaiting redress include several villages resettled in 2014 as a result of the Olkaria geothermal project in Kenya funded by the World Bank and European Investment Bank. Community members raised multiple involuntary resettlement complaints, objecting to the forced displacement of households excluded from the resettlement agreement process. Those excluded were disproportionately members of marginalized groups, including widows and single mothers. These women reported being forcibly removed from their homes, driven away from their villages, and left on the roadside with their children. As local communities continue to seek justice for this violation of their rights, attention must be paid to ensuring such abuses are not repeated.

Preventing future harm

To address cases in which communities consent to resettlement plans that are subsequently breached, banks must recommit themselves to proper due diligence measures and adequate supervision. This includes supervising the creation of fair resettlement plans in consultation with communities, ensuring full compensation before resettlement, guaranteeing the safe, voluntary movement of communities, and monitoring post-resettlement outcomes. It is particularly crucial for banks to closely supervise the resettlement agreement-signing process, in order to prevent government intimidation coercing community members into agreeing to unfair resettlement plans.

Banks must also strengthen their project appraisal procedures to comprehensively assess potential harms. Forced displacement is unacceptable under any circumstances, regardless of the development goal. Advocates and bank representatives should review past complaints involving physical displacement—particularly the over one-third which intersect with issues of violence—to better understand how bank-funded projects are causing forced displacement. As shown in Figure 2, over two-thirds of forced displacement complaints are rooted in infrastructure, regulatory development, energy, extractives, and agribusiness projects, so particular attention should be paid to assessing the risks of projects in these five sectors before investment decisions are made. While banks allow limited, regulated involuntary resettlement for the sake of certain projects, forced displacement must be understood as a unique, unjustifiable harm that banks are responsible to prevent, so no community is subject to the layered traumas endured by forcibly displaced communities. 

Figure 2. Percentage Distribution of Project Sectors Responsible for Complaints Raising Both Physical Displacement and Violence.

Conclusion

Following their violent displacement, thousands of Anuak people fled to Kenya and South Sudan, many seeking asylum in refugee camps. Separated from their ancestral lands and robbed of their cultural ties, they resisted, raising their collective voice to defend their resettlement rights. So too did the villages in Olkaria, Kenya, and hundreds more communities harmed by involuntary resettlement. To respect their experiences and courage, the global development community must urgently address forced displacement in development bank-financed projects, ensuring accountability and preventing future harm to vulnerable populations worldwide. 

Footnotes

[1] Accountability Counsel's current online database of complaints has 1,955 complaints, of which 481 raised physical or economic displacement as an issue.  A preliminary re-analysis of 1,042 complaints was conducted breaking out issues used in our current database into more specific categories.  For example,  we disaggregated physical displacement from economic displacement.  These updates are not currently reflected in our online database but will be at a later date.