Ethiopia won’t cooperate with panel probing World Bank project
June 1, 2013 (ADDIS ABABA) – The Ethiopian government says that it will not cooperate with an independent accountability panel tasked to investigate whether or not the World Bank has violated its own policies at a project in the Horn of Africa nation.
The World Bank is under fire from many advocacy groups that it has violated own policies by supporting an Ethiopian project known as “villagisation” that has allegedly forced tens of thousands of indigenous people off their ancestral lands.
Last September, a group of ethnic Anuak people from Ethiopia’s southwestern Gambella region questioned whether the World Bank was complying with its own policies and pushed forward with a complaint asking for an inspection of the program.
They alleged that the Ethiopian government is conducting large-scale eviction in a bid to lease their land to foreign firms and local investors for a massive agro-industrial plantation.
The Ethiopian government however said the resettlement is based on the contest of the people and there has never been a forcible relocation.
It said the resettlement program is not politically motivated as some organisations and human rights groups are alleging.
The premier’s office further said that the Ethiopian government won’t collaborate with the independent Inspection Panel but with the World Bank itself.
The Inspection Panel is an independent investigative body that probes and holds to account the World Bank for violating polices in its lending practices.
Last March, the Ethiopian government has refused to discuss the Panel’s report of investigation.
An opposition official who refused to be named told Sudan Tribune that People who oppose the program are being arrested and intimidated, an allegation the government denied.
The opposition official further alleged that security forces have beaten and raped to those refusing an “involuntary relocation” that violates the constitutional rights of Ethiopians.
There has also been an alleged extra-judicial killing during the process.
Receiving some 3 billion Dollars annually, Ethiopia is one among the largest aid recipients from external donors particularly from the US and the UK.
The World Bank had been under huge pressure to stop funds given for the Protection of Basic Services program (PBS) arguing the funds are used contrary to the banks policies.
World Bank officials have in the past dismissed these allegations saying there are no links between Ethiopia’s villagisation program and the PBS program which aims to develop access to services in education, health, water supply and other developments in rural areas.
Ethiopia plans to resettle an estimated 1.5 million people under the country’s unpopular relocation program.
However right groups have said the country is exercising systematic human rright abuses in the pretext of providing the Protection of Basic Services program.
(ST)