The Meghalaya Peoples Human Rights Council(MPHRC), as one of its Member of the International Coalition of Human Rights in Development in the United Nation (ICHRDUN) as a global coalition, whose member organizations around the world have engaged in the review of the World Bank safeguard policies – those policies designed to protect communities and the environment from harm – during a four-year review processes has strongly criticized the recent World Bank approval on the new Environmental and Social Framework to replace its existing safeguard policies.
“We criticized the missed opportunity to adopt robust protections for the human rights of communities impacted by Bank projects, and committed to holding the Bank accountable for the outcomes of the new policy said Dino D.G. Dympep, Chairman MPHRC.
While the groups welcomed some improvements with the new draft, including provisions on non-discrimination, they criticized the shift in the overall framework to looser protections for communities impacted by Bank-financed development projects.
“Throughout the review process, civil society groups from around the world have expressed their concerns in relation to a possible dilution of the safeguards, and have asked the Bank on many occasions to include strong human rights protections in the new framework,” said MPHRC
“Seeing the final policy, it seems that the Bank and our government specially in Meghalaya adopted some beneficial provisions, but didn’t meaningfully take into consideration civil society’s input on critical issues” said Dino D.G. Dympep, Chairman MPHRC.
Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Organizations in North East India have raised serious concerns regarding the new revised policy on indigenous peoples. “The proposed new policy represents a step forward from the existing policy in that it includes a requirement for free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples, however, it still fails to meet international human rights standards by defining consent as “collective support” rather than ensuring respect for the results of affected indigenous peoples’ independent and collective decision-making processes,” said Dino D.G. Dympep.
“Two other major criticisms regarding the new policy on indigenous peoples are that it weakens the requirement that indigenous peoples benefit from commercialization of their resources and replaces the legally recognized term “Indigenous Peoples” with the confusing phrase in response to certain governments especially in India who do not want to recognize “indigenous peoples” said MPHRC.
“The Bank should understand that there are no international protocols or treaties that speak of past ‘Indigenous Peoples histories and this retrograde terminology should not be introduced in the 21st century where indigenous people know and understand their rights. The suffering we are experiencing due to World Bank projects is enormous and the Bank should understand that we are human beings and we need our rights to be respected” said MPHRC.
“While the new safeguards framework includes provisions to prevent discrimination in Bank-financed projects and an inspirational reference to human rights within its vision statement, it does not include a commitment to respect human rights or a binding requirement that projects not contribute to human rights abuses. In fact the references to human rights conventions or guidelines were removed from the main text” said MPHRC
“The Bank and its members have an obligation to respect human rights and to ensure that they are not financing human rights abuses, and they missed a big opportunity to do that. But regardless of what this new policy framework requires, the Bank and its member countries are still accountable for their human rights impacts and so we will continue pushing them to strengthen rights protections, and we’ll continue working with civil society to monitor projects and ensure that local communities’ rights are respected” said MPHRC.
