New Tool: Avoiding Forced Evictions – A Community Guide to Negotiation and Advocacy (Cambodian Edition)
(Phnom Penh / Asheville) – IDI and Equitable Cambodia are pleased to launch a new training resource for the defense of land and housing rights. Avoiding Forced Evictions: A Community Guide to Negotiation and Advocacy aims to help communities prepare for negotiations with private companies or government authorities seeking to take their land and/or evict them from their homes. […]
Ethiopia: World Bank Translator, Activists Face Trial – Activists Heading for Food Workshop Charged with Terrorism
(Nairobi) – Ethiopian authorities should immediately drop all charges and release a former World Bank translator and two other local activists charged under Ethiopia’s repressive anti-terrorism law after trying to attend a workshop on food security in Nairobi, six international development and human rights groups said today. On September 7, 2015, the authorities charged Pastor […]
Major Breakthrough in Mediation Between Hoang Anh Gia Lai Company and Fourteen Indigenous Villages
(Siem Reap) – A major breakthrough was reached in the mediation between fourteen Cambodian indigenous communities and the Vietnamese rubber firm Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), during meetings held this week in Siem Reap, Cambodia. On 15-19 September 2015, community representatives of fourteen indigenous villages affected by HAGL’s land concessions in Ratanakiri province, company representatives of HAGL and its subsidiaries, and the communities’ advisors, including Inclusive […]
New IDI Resource: Following the Money – An Advocate’s Guide to Securing Accountability in Agricultural Investments
IDI is excited to launch Following the Money: An Advocate’s Guide to Securing Accountability in Agricultural Investments – a new tool in the fight against land & natural resource grabs and corporate impunity in the agricultural sector. IDI partnered with International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) to develop this practical guide for local advocates working to support communities whose land […]
Families Threatened by Cambodia Railway Development Again Seek Justice from the Asian Development Bank’s Accountability Mechanism
(Manila) – Families threatened by the Asian Development Bank-financed project to redevelop Cambodia’s railway have once again filed a complaint to the bank’s Compliance Review Panel about the controversial project. The Railway Rehabilitation Project has impacted approximately 18,000 people living alongside Cambodia’s 642-kilometers of dilapidated railway tracks. At least 1200 families, encompassing approximately 5160 […]
Joint Letter to the World Bank: Fulfill Your Commitment to Upholding the Right to Remedy for Boeung Kak Lake Community
(Phnom Penh) – Today 15 Cambodian civil society organizations (CSOs) and major CSO networks, supported by Inclusive Development International and 26 other international CSO partners, wrote to the World Bank demanding that the Bank make good on its public commitment to condition new lending to Cambodia on the provision of redress for the thousands of families […]
World Bank: Dangerous Rollback in Environmental and Social Protections
(Washington, DC) The World Bank has released new draft safeguard policies that will vastly weaken protections for affected communities and the environment at the same time as the bank intends to finance more high-risk projects, 19 organizations said today. The proposed new Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework pointedly contradicts World Bank President Jim Yong Kim’s commitment […]
Evicted and Abandoned: How the World Bank breaks its promise to protect the poor — ICIJ
An explosive year-long investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has revealed that, since 2004, an estimated 3,350,449 people were forced from their homes, deprived of their land or had their livelihoods damaged because they lived in the path of a World Bank project. Read the story: Evicted and Abandoned: How the World Bank […]
World Bank: Address systematic resettlement failure
(Washington, DC) – The World Bank’s action plan responding to an internal review on the bank’s resettlement practices does not address the serious failings the review found, 85 non-governmental organizations and independent experts from 37 countries said today in a letter to the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim. On March 4, 2015, the World […]
Coke’s zero tolerance for land grabs proves difficult to fulfill
(Washington, DC – Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The Coca-Cola Co has made a good start in axing land grabs from its supply chain, but it must work harder in proving that its bottlers and sugar suppliers do not violate land rights, development experts told the company. Coke declared two years ago that land grabbing is […]