3 June 2012 - As the World Bank held its Annual Conference on Land and Poverty in April, campaigners accused it once again of facilitating and legitimising 'land grabs' that harm local communities.
The Bank’s conference was held in late April in Washington DC to "provide a forum to discuss innovative approaches to dealing with different aspects of land governance in the context of structural change and economic transformation, climate change, increased demand for key natural resources, urban expansion and (post) conflict in a pro-poor and gender-sensitive perspective." A few days earlier, on 17 April – the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, when hundreds of protests against so-called land grabs (see Update 79, 78, 77) were staged around the world – a statement was issued by 11 civil society groups, including Focus on the Global South and La Via Campesina. Noting that the responsible agricultural investment (RAI) principles, a set of voluntary guidelines for international land deals co-authored by the Bank (see Update 71), were "at the heart of the [conference’s] discussions", they described them as "an attempt to cover up power imbalances so that the land grabbers and state authorities who make the deals can get what they want".
Their statement said land grabbing undermines international human rights law, including people’s rights to food and livelihood security, water, information and participation in decisions that affect their lives. The groups claimed the Bank promotes RAI under the assumption that having a set of guidelines can result in "win-win land grabbing". But "even if done 'transparently’", land grabs will still have "disastrous consequences to peoples, communities, ecosystems and the climate", they said. Moreover, they called on the United Nations (UN) Committee on World Food Security to drop the RAI principles and adopt the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s guidelines on the governance of land and natural resources, "which are strongly rooted in human rights law".
For the complete article, please see Bretton Woods Project.
