Company Linked to Death Squads Addresses World Bank Panel

[Judi Lynn]

Company Linked to Death Squads Addresses World Bank Panel
29 May 2014
by Douglas Gillison

The World Bank hosted a Honduran agribusiness company to speak at a bank conference in Washington on security and human rights matters last week, months after the bank’s own audit findings linked the company to scores of killings and a violent land conflict.

The company, Corporación Dinant, appeared at an annual conference on sustainable business practices, despite intense controversy over the bank’s support for the company, which human rights groups have tied to death squads.

The appearance came as Dinant announced it had built barracks to house Honduran military forces on one of its plantations, while disarming its own private company guards. Last year, one human rights organization cited witnesses who said that state security forces and company guards had acted interchangeably.

Roger Pineda, the spokesman for Dinant, did not respond to requests for comment. But the company has long denied targeting its opponents for violence.

More:
http://100r.org/2014/05/company-linked-to-death-squads-addresses-world-bank-panel/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Beyond Reform: It’s Time to Shut Down the World Bank

Beyond Reform: It’s Time to Shut Down the World Bank
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Thursday, 23 January 2014 10:50

Recent conflicts surrounding World Bank-supported projects in Honduras demonstrate that the World Bank is beyond reform, and needs to be shut down.

Source: Toward Freedom

The World Bank came under fire again last week when its ombudsman revealed that the bank’s investment in a palm oil project in Honduras worsened human rights abuses and violent conflicts.

The World Bank’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent auditor for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the bank’s private sector arm in charge of providing investments in developing countries in order to spur private sector growth, investigated a $30 million loan (half of which has been released thus far) to Corporación Dinant, a Honduran palm oil and snack food giant. The loan to Dinant was made just five months after a 2009 military coup in the country removed President Manuel Zelaya, a democratically-elected president seeking moderate labor and land reforms. Zelaya was replaced by a de-facto dictator who used the country’s military and security apparatuses to violently oppress social movements and political opposition.

Such investment on the part of the World Bank has further undermined democracy in the country and empowered Honduran elites profiting from recent political turmoil.

The CAO report suggests that there is an institutional culture of indifference at the World Bank that incentivizes staff “to overlook, fail to articulate, or even conceal potential environmental, social and conflict risk” in order to streamline the approval of loans, while failing to follow its own policies and procedures to prevent such things.

“The IFC loaned millions of dollars to a project, even though it was known that its operations were already enmeshed in killings and other violence... the Dinant case should serve as a warning about the pitfalls of investing without proper oversight,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch.

The CAO cited reports by human rights groups which documented the murder of 102 people associated with peasant movements in the Bajo Aguán Valley of Honduras, where Dinant’s operations escalated decades-long land disputes. Most of the deaths are blamed on death squads composed of Dinant’s private security working in concert with US-backed Honduran military forces. The company refuses to accept any responsibility.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/4660-beyond-reform-its-time-to-shut-down-the-world-bank-

[Judi Lynn]

2. Article reminds us of other bloody "business ventures" by the World Bank:

The World Bank’s history of investing in projects resulting in murder and human rights abuses suggests that efforts to reform the bank is a fool’s errand. During the early 1980s, in neighboring Guatemala the World Bank lent hundreds of millions of dollars for the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam project during the bloody military dictatorships of Fernando Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt. One of the results of the World Bank’s project was a series of planned massacres that left 440 Mayan Achi men, women, and children murdered.

A little over 20 years later the World Bank lent Canadian mining giant Goldcorp (then Glamis Gold) $45 million for an unpopular gold mine in Guatemala which not only spilled more indigenous blood, but was also an investment marred by violating indigenous rights and the improper evaluation of the project’s environmental impacts.

Around the world, from Ethiopia to Indonesia and Peru, the World Bank finds itself embroiled in controversies surrounding human rights violations, environmental destruction, and social discord. NGO’s for years have been calling for sweeping reforms at the World Bank, but to no avail.

It’s time to recognize that the World Bank is an institution incapable of reform, and is indeed unworthy of reform efforts. The only humane option is to focus efforts to close the bank immediately and to start building alternative financial institutions that promote local, community-led development projects guided by the principals of sustainability and solidarity rather than free market doctrine.

Otherwise, the pile of corpses will continue to grow in the name of progress and development—and reform.

We've seen happening again, and again, and they sail on, untouched by the massacres, broken lives, spirits, minds they've left in their wake. Filthy people.

[Demeter]

3. It's time to shut down all banks

and make banking a public utility only.