Why multi-stakeholder initiatives need to be held accountable for their rights abusing members, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Medium, March 11, 2019

This week the world’s biggest sugar producers, traders and buyers are gathering at a luxury hotel in Bangkok for “Bonsucro Global Week” to celebrate their journey to social and environmental sustainability.  Bonsucro, an industry-dominated multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission “to promote sustainable sugarcane production around the world,” is holding its annual conference in Thailand this year to showcase Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol as an exemplar of corporate responsibility. On the agenda is a tour of one of Mitr Phol’s Thai operations for guests to “see first-hand sustainability in action.”  What they won’t highlighting is Mitr Phol’s legacy of land grabbing and forced displacement in Cambodia.  Read on…

Following the money:  Illuminating the path to justice for global land grabs, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Righting Finance, December 21, 2016

This year, our organization, Inclusive Development International, launched the Follow the Money initiative – a new tool to fight land grabs and other corporate abuses.  It’s a simple idea, but we believe it has the potential to be a game-changer.… Continue reading

The World Bank’s existential crisis, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Huffington Post, June 22, 2016

The sugar industry has been catastrophic for Cambodia’s poor, so why are companies being honoured?  by David Pred and Eang Vuthy, Thompson Reuters, June 22, 2016

In October, Bonsucro, the world’s largest association promoting responsible sugar production, presented its annual sustainability award. At a banquet and cocktail reception attended by industry insiders, the association honored Thai sugar producer Mitr Phol, one of Coca-Cola’s top three global cane suppliers, for its “exemplary work.”  What Bonsucro didn’t – couldn’t – mention is that Mitr Phol is responsible for grabbing the land and ruining the lives of thousands of impoverished Cambodians.  Read on…

World Bank safeguards:  Pushing more money out the door at the expense of the poor?  by Natalie Bugalski and David Pred, Devex, August 5, 2014

Last week, the World Bank released a draft of its proposed new environmental and social safeguards.  While over a hundred civil society groups, development practitioners and professional associations denounced the draft as a significant roll-back of standards, Devex reported last week how Kyle Peters, vice president for operations policy and country services, defended the proposed new rules because they “will uplift sustainable development” and represent “a strengthening of existing policies.”  However, after a careful analysis of the draft, we think that Peters’ assertions are wrong.  Read on…

The World Bank can’t sacrifice the poor to stay in the game, by David Pred, Huffington Post, August 5, 2014

Every year around the world some 15 million people are uprooted from their land and homes to make way for “development.” This slow tsunami of human misery does not attract much media attention, but forced displacement for development projects — such as mines, oil and gas pipelines, hydropower dams, and urban renewal schemes — has become a full-blown crisis in the developing world. Working with displaced communities in Asia and Africa over the last ten years, I have seen the destructive effects of these land grabs up close. The impact on poor families — and let’s be clear, it is never the well-to-do who are forced to move for development — is well documented: loss of income, homelessness, psychological harm, and many other damaging effects. The trauma unleashed on these families is difficult to overstate, and it nearly always intensifies the cycle of poverty. Read on…

How can Australia send refugees to a country that won’t help its own displaced? by Natalie Bugalski, The Age, May 14, 2014

After months of cozying up to the authoritarian government of Hun Sen, Australia has finally managed to convince Cambodia to accept its refugees from Nauru and Manus Island. Never mind that Cambodia has neither the resources – nor the human rights record – to guarantee the proper resettlement of these asylum seekers. Canberra got what it wanted.  But while Australia is busy trying to offload its refugees on ill-equipped Southeast Asian nations, it is turning its back on over 20,000 Cambodians that its own aid agency helped displace. These impoverished urban families were kicked off their land and dumped onto distant resettlement sites, where they are trapped in a cycle of debt and unemployment. Many fear losing their land a second time.  Read on…

Time for a Mind Shift at ADB on Displacing the Poor, by David Pred, Devex, May 2, 2014

Every year, millions of people around the world are forcibly displaced from their lands, homes and livelihoods to make way for large-scale development projects.  Most often those who are forced to sacrifice their place on Earth for both public and private interests are among the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, and thus the least equipped to cope with the challenges of physical, economic and social displacement and are as a result most often thrust into even deeper poverty and social exclusion. For development institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, which finances projects that cause displacement in the name of fighting poverty, this problem poses an uneasy contradiction.  Read on…

EU Commission’s Trade Policy to Cambodia is Hypocritical, by David Pred, Cambodia Daily, January 2, 2014

In the past month, the European Commission has instituted a blanket ban on Cambodian seafood imports, citing concerns that it isn’t doing enough to combat illegal fishing. It has also threatened to remove Cambodia’s preferential trade status over allegations that its rice exports are mixed with the same product from Vietnam.  Cambodia, unlike Vietnam, benefits from the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade scheme, which provides duty and quota-free access to the European market for all products excluding armaments from the world’s least developed countries.  This is the same European Commission that has strongly resisted calls for the past three years by civil society organizations and the European Parliament to withdraw trade preferences from agricultural products when producer companies are implicated in land grabbing and human rights abuses.  Read on…

The Dark Side of Development, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Council on Foreign Relations, October 30, 2013

For the first time in over a decade, the World Bank is conducting an internal review of its Safeguard Policies, which aim to ensure that Bank projects do not cause social or environmental harm. Civil society groups are advocating for the Bank to bring these policies in line with international human rights and environmental standards and consistently apply them to all Bank operations. The Bank’s senior management, on the other hand, seems more concerned with making the Bank a more attractive lender that can compete with increasingly powerful state financiers, such as Brazil and China, by ensuring there are fewer strings attached to loans. However, this move would hurt the very people the Bank is supposed to help.  Read on…

Safeguarding Land Rights:  An Opportunity for the World Bank to lead, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Terra Nullius, April 13, 2013

At the start of the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty this week, World Bank President Dr. Jim Kim made some welcome remarks about the global land rights crisis.   He did not respond directly to the withering criticism of the role the Bank has played in promoting land grabs.   But he did say that the Bank shares the concerns about the risks of large-scale land acquisitions, and importantly he acknowledged that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”  Read on…

The World Bank must stop underwriting human rights abuses in Ethiopia, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Terra Nullius, March 21, 2013

A leaked World Bank report calls for an investigation into allegations that a multi-billion dollar aid program in Ethiopia is underwriting the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities to free up fertile land to lease to investors.  The Bank’s board of directors is scheduled to meet on March 19 to discuss the case. Rights groups are watching closely to see how the new Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, will deal with sensitive questions about World Bank accountability and human rights in one of its most important client states.  Read on…

Is the European Commission sweet on land-grabbing?  Trade benefits, sugar concessions and dispossession in Cambodia, by David Pred, Terra Nullius, July 23, 2012

Before you reach for that Tate and Lyle sugar packet to sweeten your coffee, you might want to think twice.  While most Tate and Lyle sugar packets carry the Fair Trade label, Cambodian farmers who were displaced and dispossessed by their suppliers say that if you are buying this product, you are buying their blood. Earlier this month, representatives of affected communities called for a consumer boycott of companies selling sugar grown on stolen land, including Tate and Lyle Sugars.  Read on…

Accountability Squandered? World Bank should wait for justice in Cambodia, by Natalie Bugalski and David Pred, Bretton Woods Project, June 27, 2012

In an unprecedented victory against some of the most powerful forces in South East Asia, in 2011 631 Cambodian families gained legal title to land that had been the subject of a controversial land grab in the bustling center of the capital Phnom Penh. In 2006 the Boeung Kak lake households were wrongly denied the right to have their claims to the land adjudicated and registered in their names under a World Bank-financed land-titling project. In the absence of fair and impartial courts in Cambodia, the families took their case to the Bank’s complaints mechanism, the Inspection Panel, in 2009, which a year later found that they had been denied due process under the project, that Bank policies had not been complied with, and that these omissions had contributed to the “grave harm” that the families suffered through forced eviction.  Read on…

Cambodian mothers and grandmothers behind bars after facing off the most powerful men in the region: Will the World Bank stand by them?, by Natalie Bugalski and David Pred, Terra Nullius, May 29, 2012

Last week thirteen Cambodian women representatives of the Boeung Kak Lake community were sentenced up to two-and-a-half years in prison after a summary trial. The women, including a 72-year old grandmother, were arrested on May 22 whilst singing at a peaceful protest to support 18 families whose homes had been buried in sand by a private developer (view the video). The arrest, trial and sentencing took place within 48 hours, with no time for the women’s lawyers to prepare a defense. During their trial, the police arrested two more community representatives who were waiting outside the courthouse prepared to testify as witnesses for the 13 women on trial.  Read on…

DERAILED: Cambodia’s poor paying the price for railway development, by David Pred, WITNESS, February 23, 2012

Every year millions of people around the world are forcibly displaced from their lands, homes and livelihoods to make way for large-scale infrastructure projects. Most often those who are forced to sacrifice their place on earth for both public and private interests are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.  They are thus the least equipped to cope with the challenges of physical, economic and social displacement and are thrust into even deeper poverty and social exclusion as a result.  These development disasters are often justified in the name of poverty reduction, when they in fact create and exacerbate poverty.   Read on . . .

The ADB involuntary resettlement policy: Fifteen years on, the poorest still bear the brunt of development, by Natalie Bugalski, Terra Nullius, February 23, 2012

It has been more than 15 years since the Asian Development Bank (ADB) adopted a policy on involuntary resettlement with the objective of ensuring that “displaced people are at least as well-off as they would have been in the absence of the [ADB-financed] project.” The rationale behind the policy was a shift away from the perception that development-induced displacement and attendant harms suffered by those physically and economically displaced is a “sacrifice” some people have to make for the larger good. It is apparent, however, that despite the adoption of increasingly progressive and rights-oriented policies, the utilitarian view of development-induced displacement continues to dominate the culture and individual staff views of the ADB and many other aid and development institutions.   Read on . . .

Cambodia and the limits of World Bank accountability, by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski, Bretton Woods Project, April 5, 2011

The World Bank Inspection Panel released an investigation report in March, which found that the Bank breached its operational policies by failing to properly design and supervise the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), contributing to “grave harm” to affected families. The Bank’s Inspection Panel found that the Bank’s failures contributed to the forced eviction of some 20,000 people living around Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake. Residents were wrongly denied the right to register their land ownership under the $28.8 million Bank-financed land titling project shortly before the government leased the area to a private developer and began a campaign of intimidation to force more than 4,000 affected families to sell their property for a fraction of its market value.   Read on . . .

Inclusive development is still possible in Cambodia, by David Pred, Cambodia Daily, March 11, 2011

In an interview that aired last week on Channel News Asia, Phnom Penh governor Kep Chuktema said it was inevitable that some people would suffer because of development but that this should not deter authorities from developing the city. The rest of world, he said, is moving on and Phnom Penh cannot lag behind. Many people hold this utilitarian view of development–that is, until they themselves become the ones who are harmed. The test of whether the governor’s logic holds up to the principles of justice is simple: Is he prepared to give up his land and home for a small fraction of the market price in order to develop Phnom Penh? That is, after all, what he is demanding of urban poor and middle class homeowners who have the misfortune of being situated in the path of progress and development.   Read on . . .

Tracking aid in Cambodia: Monitoring the resettlement impacts of the Railways Rehabilitation Project, by Natalie Bugalski, TerraNullius, January 3, 2011

In October 2010, I went with a small research team from rights groups Bridges Across Borders Cambodia (BABC) and Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) to Battambang in northwest Cambodia to interview families that have been resettled to make way for the rehabilitation of Cambodia’s rail network. The trip was a part of an NGO effort to monitor the resettlement impacts of the Railways project to assess whether the process is occurring in accordance with the Asian Development Bank’s Involuntary Resettlement Safeguard Policy, international human rights and Cambodian laws. The ADB is contributing US$84 million in concessional loans to the Rehabilitation of the Railways in Cambodia Project (hereafter “the Project”) and the Australian Government is contributing US$21.5 million in aid.   Read on . . .

The World Bank struggles with its resettlement policy in Cambodia, by Natalie Bugalski, TerraNullius, August 16, 2010

In October the World Bank Inspection Panel will submit its report to the Bank’s Board of Directors on the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP). The Panel is investigating whether the design and implementation of LMAP constituted non-compliance with World Bank operational policies on involuntary resettlement and project supervision, and whether harm was suffered as a result of non-compliance.   Read on . . .