In order to include the views and voices of children in the World Bank safeguards review, BIC is coordinating youth consultations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. On September 3rd and 4th, BIC co-organized a consultation with Democracy School in Sana’a, Yemen. Read excerpts from Democracy School’s press release describing the event …
Image: A visually impaired respondent raises concerns during FGD at pawel parish in Patiko Sub County, Gulu district, Uganda The Disability and World Bank Safeguards Campaign, a partnership between the Bank Information Center and the Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union, submitted revised World Bank Environmental Assessment Policy (OP 4.01), Indigenous Peoples Policy (OP 4.10), and Involuntary Resettlement …
Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan “Ezgulik” and Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF) filed a formal complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel. These organizations, representing Uzbek citizens who have suffered under the state-organized system of forced labour cotton production, requested an investigation of the World Bank’s Rural …
The Community Forestry Pre-Congress, an initiative by the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests, will take place on September 24th and 25th in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. BIC and more than twenty other organizations from eight different countries will participate in the Community Forestry Pre-Congress: “Community Forestry as the Basis of Governance and the Starting …
Mexican civil society and indigenous representatives convened on June 24th and 25th in Mexico City for a workshop entitled “Towards the Construction and Articulation of Knowledge in the Process of Shaping REDD+”. With the goal of creating a new space for dialogue and shared learning around REDD, regional representatives from the Yucatan Peninsula, Central Mexico, and Northern …
As the consultation period of the first phase of the World Bank safeguard policy review and update concluded at the end of April, two coalitions of civil society organizations submitted comments on Forests and Natural Habitats Operational Policies The two CSO submissions outlined opportunities, concerns, and recommendations for the revision of Forests and Natural Habitats …
During the Safeguards Regional Consultations held in Lima (February), Buenos Aires (March) and Ciudad de Guatemala (April) several Latin American CSOs including indigenous organizations submitted a letter to their World Bank Executive Directors: Cesar Guido Forcieri, Executive Director for: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Roberto Tan, Executive Director for: Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Juan Jose Bravo Moises, Executive Director for: Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Spain, Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela with their position statement regarding the review process of the Bank’s policies.
A group of Egyptian civil society organizations have submitted their recommendations to the World Bank as input to Phase 1 of the Social and Environmental Safeguard policy review process. The document was endorsed by many of the same organizations that pushed the Bank to hold a civil society consultation in Cairo since such a meeting …
The Bank Information Center submitted a case study to the World Bank’s Safeguards review team regarding the need for Child Impact Assessments as demonstrated by the lack of due diligence around the Rural Enterprise Support Project-II loan to Uzbekistan.
In the consultations, which took place in Delhi, Bangalore, and Bhubaneshwar, civil society moved beyond the confines of Bank’s formal consultation meetings where assessments in earlier consultations have been mixed. In the protests against the consultations, Indian civil society has charged the World Bank with funding environmentally unsustainable projects while claiming the Bank has been complicit in numerous human rights abuses and environmental violations.