Case Study on Bujagali Dam’s negative impacts on children submitted to the World Bank

Children at the Naminya Resettlement Area for the IDA-funded Bujagali Hydro-Power Dam

The Bank Information Center submitted a case study to the World Bank’s Safeguards review team regarding the negative impact of resettlement resulting from the International Development Association funded Bujagali hydropower project on affected children.

The case study highlights the fact that there was insufficient attention to the needs of children in the creation and implementation of the resettlement plan, resulting in reduced access to health care and education as well as increased rates of malnutrition and participation in child labor for affected children. It goes on to argue that there is a need for the revised safeguard policies to address the needs of children, particularly by requiring environmental and social impact assessments to specifically assess the unique impacts of projects on children and by explicitly including provisions in the resettlement policy that require that the resettlement action plan to adequately provide for children’s unique needs, rather than simply including children in a laundry list of vulnerable groups, each of which have very different needs.