World Bank

Honduran Farmers Sue World Bank Group For Human Rights Violations

March 10, 2017 Valentina Stackl, www.earthrights.org Resist! Honduras, Human Rights, Palm Oil, World Bank

By Valentina Stackl for Earth Rights - EarthRights International (ERI) filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of Honduran farmers charging two World Bank Group members with aiding and abetting gross violations of human rights. The suit arises out of the substantial financial support two World Bank entities, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the IFC Asset Management Corporation (IFC-AMC), invested in Honduran palm-oil companies owned by the late Miguel Facussé. His companies – which exist today as Dinant – have been at the center of a decades-long and bloody land-grabbing campaign in the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras.

Reject World Bank’s Enabling Business Of Agriculture Index

February 24, 2017 Staff, www.oaklandinstitute.org Petitions and Online Actions Food and Agriculture, World Bank

By Staff of Oakland Institute - The Enabling the Business of Agriculture index is used to promote pro-corporate agricultural reforms around the world. In the seed sector, it rewards countries that implement intellectual property rights (IPRs) to allow companies to profit from the use of their seeds by farmers. The EBA also benchmarks how easy it is for the private sector to produce and register seeds, to access genetic resources in national seed banks, and to achieve predominant representation in the committees deciding to introduce new seed varieties in countries. While the Bank claims to encourage “smart and balanced policies,” the Enabling the Business of Agriculture index largely ignores farmer-managed seed systems, which provide 80 to 90% of farmers’ seed supply in developing countries and are key to preserving agro-biodiversity and fostering resilience against climate and economic shocks.

World Bank’s Scheme to Hijack Farmers’ Rights To Seeds

January 22, 2017 Alice Martin-Prevel, www.oaklandinstitute.org Educate! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Seeds, World Bank

By Alice Martin-Prevel of the Oakland Institute. Oakland, CA—Ahead of World Bank’s release of the 2017 “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” (EBA) report this month, 157 organizations and academics from around the world denounce the Bank’s scheme to hijack farmers’ right to seeds, attack on food sovereignty and the environment. In a letter to the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and EBA’s five Western donors, the group demands the immediate end of the project, originally requested by the G8 to support its industry-co-opted New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. “The EBA dictates so-called ‘good practices’ to regulate agriculture and scores countries on how well they implement its prescriptions,” said Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute. “But the EBA has become the latest tool, to push pro-corporate agricultural policies, notably in the seed sector—where it promotes industrial seeds, that benefit a handful of agrochemical companies,” he continued.

The World Bank And IMF Won’t Admit Their Policies Are The Problem

October 13, 2016 Larry Elliott, www.theguardian.com Educate! Capitalism, IMF, Ruling Class, World Bank

By Larry Elliott for The Guardian - We hear you, poor people. That was the message that blared out from Washington last week. It came from Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund. It came from Jim Kim of the World Bank. It came from Roberto Azevêdo of the World Trade Organisation. It came from every finance minister and central bank governor. The people who run the global economy wanted the world to know that they understood what had caused the Brexit vote and given Donald Trump a shot at the White House.

The World Bank’s Bizarre Retreat On Indigenous Rights

August 15, 2016 Gretchen Gordon and Prabindra Shakya, www.truth-out.org Educate! Indigenous Rights, World Bank

By Gretchen Gordon and Prabindra Shakya for Tele Sur - While recent years have shown a steady advancement in recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, the World Bank adopted a new policy framework that threatens to undermine this progress and put Indigenous communities at risk. In 2012 when the World Bank began a review and update of its suite of environmental and social safeguard policies, there was a hope that the Indigenous Peoples Policy, which dates back to 2005, would be strengthened to provide greater protection and to incorporate advances in the understanding of Indigenous rights

World Bank: Venezuela To Pay $1.4 Billion For Protecting Lands

April 24, 2016 Pratap Chatterjee, www.corpwatch.org Educate! Indigenous Rights, Mining, Venezuela, World Bank

By Pratap Chatterjee for CorpWatch Blog. The World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has ordered the government of Venezuela to pay $1.386 billion to Crystallex, a bankrupt Canadian gold mining company, for canceling a 2002 permit to mine for gold in the Imataca Forest Reserve. Crystallex brought its arbitration claim to the ICSID in 2011 stating that Venezuela had violated the company's rights guaranteed under a bilateral treaty between Canada and Venezuela. Even though most national courts refuse to hear community claims against companiesfor environmental or human rights abuses abroad, a number of international 'arbitration' courts routinely rule allow companies to sue governments for investment 'rights' written into new bilateral and multilateral treaties. (ICSID alone is currently hearing 211 cases)

The New Global Financial Cold War

March 2, 2016 Michael Hudson, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Banking and Finance, Banks, IMF, World Bank

By Michael Hudson for Counter Punch - Suppose a country owes money to another nation’s government or official agency. How can creditors collect, unless there’s an international court and an enforcement system? The IMF and the World Bank were part of that enforcement system and now they’re saying: ‘We’re not going to be part of that anymore. We’re only working for the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. If the Pentagon tells the IMF it’s okay that a country doesn’t have to pay Russia or China, then now they don’t have to pay, as far as the IMF is concerned.’

Lima: 5,000 Protest Against World Bank, IMF, And TPP

October 20, 2015 Michael S. Wilson, www.nacla.org Resist! IMF, Peru, TPP, World Bank

By Michael S. Wilson for NACLA - At the annual governors’ meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Lima between October 5th and 12th, an estimated 800 representatives from 188 countries negotiated the shape of the world’s soon-to-be renovated finance infrastructure. While the international media focused on the official event, 1,200 people attended the Plataforma Alternativa conference—a parallel three-day meeting organized under the theme “Belying the ‘Peruvian Miracle.’” The World Bank and IMF’s governor’s meeting was safeguarded by three perimeters of police.

World Bank Fails To ‘Walk The Talk’

October 11, 2015 Educate! Climate Change, Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy, World Bank

By Janet Redman for the Institute for Policy Studies. Washington, DC - At least in rhetoric, World Bank leadership has acknowledged for a quarter century that “the possible risks [of global warming] are too high to justify complacency or evasion.” The Bank itself has cautioned that unabated climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains — and that the poorest countries and communities will suffer the consequences first and worst. The Bank has become increasingly visible at global climate summits and officials regularly comment on the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protecting the climate and making a transition to low-carbon development. However, a sober review of its lending practices reveals the Bank is undermining the cause it purports to champion.

Civil Society Challenges World Bank Annual Meeting

October 11, 2015 Anuradha Mittal, Alnoor Ladha and Cesar Gamboa, www.ourlandourbusiness.org Resist! Neoliberalism, Peru, Poverty, wealth inequality, World Bank

By Anuradha Mittal, Alnoor Ladha and Cesar Gamboa for Our Land, Our Business. Lima, Peru — The International Monetary Fund–World Bank Annual Meetings will take place in Lima, Peru this year from October 9 to 11. This is the first time these meetings are happening in Latin America in over 40 years. Peru is the poster child for the World Bank claiming “success” from its neoliberal policies and reforms, which the Bank is promoting to the rest of the world. Ranking 35th in the Bank’s Doing Business survey, Peru scored the second highest position in Latin America in 2015. This, according to the World Bank, means that Peru has created a regulatory environment “conducive to business.” The Peruvian development model, based on extractive industries and exports of raw materials, however, has concentrated the country’s natural resources and wealth in the hands of few private corporations at a high cost for the Peruvian population.

Children Traumatized By World Bank

October 11, 2015 Jocelyn Zuckerman and Michael W. Hudson, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Human Rights, Land grabs, Palm Oil, World Bank

By Jocelyn Zuckerman and Michael W. Hudson for the Huffington Post. Sungai Beruang, Indonesia -- Revan Pragustiawan loved his home by the river. The little boy’s ancestors built the place in a rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, using local bark and leaves in the traditional style of the Batin Sembilan tribe. Over the years, his dad had improved the house with wood and a metal roof. Revan felt safe there, sleeping on a plastic mat huddled up with his family, and spending his days playing with his sister and helping with chores. By the summer of 2011, he was 5 years old, big enough to help his mother fetch drinking water from the river and look forward to helping with a new garden his dad and some neighbors were planning to sow along the riverbank. Everything changed for Revan on the morning of August 10, 2011.

Rebelling Against Water Privatization And Winning

September 27, 2015 Tom Lawson, occupy.com Create! Neoliberalism, Privatization, Water, World Bank

By Tom Lawson in Occupy.com. Private companies have been working to make a profit from water since the 1600s, when the first water companies were established in England and Wales. The first wave of water privatization occurred in the 1800s, and by the mid- to late-19th century, privately owned water utilities were common in Europe, the United States and Latin America, and began to appear in Africa and Asia. But the privatization flurry faded, and throughout much of the 20th century water was largely a publicly controlled resource. In the U.S., for example, just 30% of piped water systems were privately owned in 1924, dropping from 60% in 1850. It wasn't until the late 1980s that the idea of private companies managing water re-emerged on a large scale.

World Bank Disguising Aid For Private, For-Profit Schools In Africa

August 4, 2015 Billy Briggs, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Africa, Education, Privatization, Schools, World Bank

By Billy Briggs in Mint Press News - “These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers and running large classes in substandard school buildings,” Singh wrote, adding: “Such ‘edu-businesses’, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.” Despite these findings, DFiD has also invested in BIA, prompting criticism from Global Justice Now. A spokesperson for the social justice organization told MintPress News: “British taxpayers are forcing private education systems on countries like Uganda and Kenya through schemes like this backed by DfID and the World Bank.” Aid is being used as a tool, Global Justice Now added, to compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help Western business while undermining public services in emerging nations.

How Activists Exposed The World Bank’s Secret Courts

April 26, 2015 Jim Shultz, www.fpif.org Resist! Trade tribunals, Water, World Bank

There’s an international awakening afoot about a radical expansion of corporate power — one that sits at the center of two historic global trade deals nearing completion. . . . The system of closed-door trade tribunals has been around for decades now, nestled like a ticking time bomb into hundreds of smaller bilateral trade agreements between nations. But not so long ago, the trade tribunal system wasn’t the stuff of high-profile op-eds by U.S. senators. It was virtually unknown except among a small cadre of international lawyers and trade specialists. The case that brought the system into broad public view was born 15 years ago this month on the streets of a city high in the Andes. How that case was won holds powerful lessons today for the battles over the TTIP, the TPP, and the effort to hand global corporations enormous new legal powers.

Report Finds World Bank Displaced 3.4 Million People

April 24, 2015 Sharmini Peries and Alnoor Ladha, www.therealnews.com Educate! Displacement, Neo-Liberalism, World Bank

Despite the World Bank's promises to protect the rights of indigenous people over the years, a new investigative report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the Guardian and the Huffington Post, has found that since 2004, the World Bank funded projects including dams and power plants that has displaced 3.4 million people from their homes, off their lands, or threatened their livelihood around the globe. That is roughly the population of an entire city such as Berlin or Cape Town, or even Madrid. The 2015 meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund that just ended past weekend concluded with a free concert of Earth Day on the Washington Mall.

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