Letters on the Pehuenche Matter
In conjunction with the Pehuenche Briefing Document, President Jane Hill has sent the following letters to James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank Group and of its associated agency, the International Finance Corporation, and to Carol F. Lee, Vice President and General Counsel, International Finance Corporation.
Mr. James D. Wolfensohn, President The World Bank Group
2121 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20433
March 19, 1998
Dear Mr. Wolfensohn,
I write as president of the American Anthropological Association, with a membership of nearly 11,000 professional anthropologists working in the United States and elsewhere. With this letter I convey to you a copy of an extensive report, prepared by the Association's Committee for Human Rights, concerning IFC-financed hydroelectric development on the Bío-Bío river in southern Chile.
You will be well acquainted with the project, involving the Pangue Dam, the prospect of further dams upstream, and the protest lodged by IFC consultant Theodore Downing. I point out that Dr. Downing, a former president of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a distinguished member of my profession. The IFC and its project partners placed Dr. Downing in a profound conflict of professional ethics that he had specifically sought to preclude through the insertion of special language in his contractual agreement with the IFC. I protest this. Dr. Downing is owed an apology and reinstatement of his working relationship with the Bank Group.
The conduct of the Pangue project violated in several ways the human rights of an indigenous people, the Pehuenche. The Pehuenche were not adequately informed of the impending project's ramifications for them. The IFC poorly monitored the Pehuen Foundation, a promising creation for linking the project and the Pehuenche; this allowed the Foundation to fail in its purpose, leaving the Pehuenche unprotected. Timber on Pehuenche lands has been appropriated; the Pehuenche have thereby effectively financed the assault on their own lifeway and culture. Still worse, the IFC appears to have turned a blind eye to the engineered linkage between the Pangue Dam and the second, upstream Ralco Dam which will soon be built. Ralco will displace as many as 1000 Pehuenche to lands clearly unsuitable, even dangerous, to their cultural survival. And there are still other failings detailed in the report.
IFC and the World Bank Group responded to this case by drafting new guidelines for disclosure of environmental and social impacts. This is helpful but insufficient. I call upon the entire World Bank Group to take the following actions: (a) adopt a uniform and uniformly binding commitment to guarantee the human rights of all groups impacted by its development projects, (b) institute organizational changes that will prevent project-level implementation from ignoring the Bank Group's human rights directives on human rights, resettlement and participation by local populations, and (c) assure that the Bank Group's project information flow and accountability for human rights, moves fully from bottom to top of the Bank Group's structure, and is distributed beyond the Bank to public groups and to the peoples affected by those projects. Recommendation 6 of Part IV of the enclosed report speaks directly to this point.
I call upon you to direct the IFC to return to the Bío-Bío and remedy the Pehuenches' violated rights. I reject the proposition that IFC's obligations ended when its loan was repaid.
I and this Association stand ready to work with you to fashion a Bank Group-wide policy on the protection of human rights within the development process, and to propagate that policy to private lenders, to governments, and to development contractors. As Third World development increasingly privatizes, the Bank has an historic opportunity. I ask you to lead the effort to entrench the honoring of human rights in the development process at all levels, by all participants. The American Anthropological Association stands ready to join you in this critically important effort, and I propose meeting to begin this work.
Yours truly,
Jane H. Hill, President
American Anthropological Association
http://www.ameranthassn.org/chrhome.htm
(report and letter)
Carol F. Lee, Vice President and General Counsel International Finance Corporation
2121 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Rm. 7P-228
Washington, D.C. 20433
March 19, 1998
Dear Vice-President Lee,I enclose the report of the Committee for Human Rights on the Pehuenche matter. I also attach the text of a letter I have sent to James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group, which describes the position I have taken and the actions I urge be taken by the World Bank Group in general and the IFC in particular.
The report is to be understood as a briefing document, prepared by the Association's Committee for Human Rights, that has formed the basis for my letter to Mr. Wolfensohn and the other actions the Association will be taking. The report will be posted on the AAA's website shortly, at http://www.ameranthassn.org/chrhome.htm. I thank you for meeting with the Committee last November and ask that, in concert with the World Bank Group, that the IFC act positively and promptly on the recommendations it contains.
Jane H. Hill, President
American Anthropological Association
http://www.ameranthassn.org/chrhome.htm
(report and letter)
Campaņa de apoyo a los Mapuche-Pehuenche, en conflicto Bio-Bio.
Este documento es publicado en la internet por Equipo Nizkor y Derechos Human Rights
