World Bank Finally Acknowledges Development Projects Displacing Local Populations

The World Bank has come under fire recently for policies and practices that many consider shortsighted and insensitive to the less fortunate. A glaring example involves the World Bank’s failure to provide oversight of development projects that force people from their lands and/or harm their means of making a living. However, after years of delay, the World Bank has announced that it will take action to address these social issues. 

The World Bank has come under fire recently for policies and practices that many consider shortsighted and insensitive to the less fortunate. A glaring example involves the World Bank’s failure to provide oversight of development projects that force people from their lands and/or harm their means of making a living. However, after years of delay, the World Bank has announced that it will take action to address these social issues. 

As the world’s preeminent institution for aiding the economic development of the world, the World Bank has significant influence. Many feel the World Bank needs to use that influence to effect positive change in the world—not merely aid the development of various world economies. The new polices will create so-called “social safeguards” designed to protect people that would otherwise find themselves in the path of development and to provide mechanisms for overseeing those rules to ensure compliance. 

The changes came after an internal reorganization of the World Bank’s personnel and policies. For years, the Bank has had some form of “social safeguards,” but enforcement has proved extremely lax. Under this new regime, the Bank will empower a group of specialists to enforce the safeguards; they will have access to a separate and independent budget and management structure to ensure the autonomy needed to carry out this mission. The Bank also plans to audit its existing projects to ensure compliance.

The World Bank issued a statement, published by the Huffington Post, addressing these changes: “We recognize that our efforts have not always been sufficient, and we are continuing to engage with borrowers to make sure that people displaced physically or economically are compensated and assisted … We can, and must, do better.”

According to the Huffington Post, between 2004 and 2013, World Bank-funded development projects physically or financially displaced approximately 3.4 million people. This occurred because the Bank often failed to observe its own rules for protecting these disadvantaged communities, in some cases even funding governments and companies accused of human rights violations. 

Still, many critics of the World Bank’s practices remain skeptical of its purported new system. Many expect to see immediate and sweeping corrections of prior oversights before they will acknowledge the World Bank’s sincerity in its goals. 

Jessica Evans, a Senior Researcher and Advocate at Human Rights Watch, said that the new system should improve the World Bank’s understanding of the risks associated with its lending practices. However, she points out that will still create dilemmas in which the Bank will need to determine when the needs of an entire nation may outweigh those of individuals that will be displaced or harmed by a project. She added “What I would really like to see is what practices the bank is going to change.”