Indigenous People Want
Power to Veto World Bank Plans
Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, May 31 (IPS) - Indigenous groups are demanding that the World
Bank seek their consent -- not just consult them -- before carrying out
development programmes on their ancestral lands.
Representatives of native communities came away from U.N.-sponsored talks here
that ended last Friday criticising the global lender for, in their view, making
cosmetic changes in its development policies, which they said continue to
undermine native interests.
Canadian aboriginal activist Arthur Manual summarised the concern bluntly.
''Consultation sounds good, but does nothing,'' he said. ''It's a mechanism to
allow for the ultimate theft of our indigenous propriety interests free of
charge. Prior informed consent is recognition of our land, culture, and way of
life.”
By seeking to negotiate with groups within a given indigenous community under
the rubric of consultation, rather than simply submitting plans for each
community to discuss and decide upon internally, the bank would be ''dividing
our communities,” added Nilo Cayuqueo of Abya Yala Nexus, an indigenous group
based in California.
They referred to the bank's new policy on indigenous peoples' development
introduced earlier this month.
The bank capped seven yeas of consultations with indigenous communities,
experts, and government officials when it unveiled its new policy, which it said
calls for ”free, prior, and informed consultations” with communities.
But indigenous leaders, in comments at the conference's end and in interviews
with IPS on Tuesday, said they were demanding that the bank recognise their
communities' rights to their ancestral territories and natural resources.
”The correct terminology for us is free, prior, and informed consent,” said
Michael Dodson, an aboriginal activist from Australia. To him and other
activists, ”consent” has entirely different meanings than
”consultations.”
''Of course, implicit in the term is the right to say no to development or to
projects,” he added.
The bank said the revised policy was aimed at preventing community
dissatisfaction with development efforts in the first place.
”We moved toward a pro-active approach and a strategic shift,” a bank
spokesman told IPS on condition he not be named. ”According to this revised
policy, the bank will provide development financing only when a process of free,
prior, and informed consultation results in broad community support.”
For activists, however, the new policy remains too vague.
”The only safeguard in the bank's approach is the need, they say, for broad
community support,” said Dodson. ”But what broad community support means is
not defined in the policy. Does that mean 51 percent? Is that broad community
support? Or is it 70 percent? It's because of this sort of uncertainty that we
want the bank to abandon this policy of consultation.”
The new bank policy is set to take effect in July. The agency finances more than
230 projects involving indigenous peoples, and it expects to finance nearly 100
more by fiscal year 2008.
Most of the world's 370 million indigenous people, both in rich and poor
countries, live in abject poverty, according to the United Nations.
The bank's new policy is ”in alignment with the decisions taken at the U.N.
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,'' according to the bank spokesman.
The permanent forum is a body of 16 representatives, half of them nominated by
indigenous organisations and half by U.N. member states. It meets annually to
examine indigenous issues and report its recommendations to the U.N. Economic
and Social Council.
At the end of its three-week meeting, the Forum adopted a set of recommendations
stressing the need to develop ”awareness and sensitivity on all indigenous
issues and concerns and to empower communities.”
In addition to the World Bank's role, activists also voiced their concern over
how governments would interpret the concept of ”consultations” with the
indigenous communities.
”The governments are not talking about it,” said Nina Pacari, an indigenous
activist from the Andean region. ”They are not talking about how the process
of consultations are going to directly and seriously affect the people.”
Citing the example of Plan Colombia, the militarised programme to eradicate
narcotic crops in the Latin American country, she said the government had taken
steps to deal with what it called ”illicit crops” but by so doing it failed
to take into account the needs of indigenous people.
”In most cases, they have been forced to leave their territories,'' said
Pacari.
(END/2005)
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.