Inclusive Development International, a U.S.-based human rights group,
The bank rejected the allegation that it had suppressed evidence and said that it has maintained consistently that it would not seek to verify Anuak refugees’ accounts of abuses by government authorities. It said it “adheres to the highest ethical standards when conducting its investigations.”
The case centers on a health and education initiative in Ethiopia that was supported by $2 billion in World Bank funding over the last decade. Anuak refugees said that World Bank money from the health and education project was used to fund mass evictions in which soldiers beat, raped and killed Anuak who refused to move.
An
In a
A map of the “villagization” regions.
“Our institution’s core principles include to do no harm to the poor,” World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said in a
The Inspection Panel did not attempt to verify the widely reported allegations of forced evictions and human rights violations, finding that the question was beyond the scope of its investigation. Its report notes that it “came across information” about such abuses but it does not describe them in detail.
David Pred, the director of Inclusive Development International, said the panel’s decision not to publish these findings amounted to suppression of crucial evidence. Pred released transcripts of Inspection Panel interviews in which Anuak
“There was one Anuak man among [military] Special Forces who rejected the order to go force farmers to move to the new location by force,” an Anuak, whose name is not given, told the Inspection Panel. “And we heard a shot, a highland [federal] policeman shot this man… to death right there.”
The panel said in a statement that it had
The panel’s findings in Ethiopia are its second major decision in recent months in which the panel found that the bank had violated its rules during a project associated with mass evictions, but said the bank was not directly responsible for people losing their homes. In 2014, the panel found that the bank had