World Bank Linked to “Cultural Genocide”of Kenya’s Sengwer People

By Global Information Network Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 30 2014 (IPS) - (GIN) – Leaked documents seen by the Guardian newspaper of London reveal that the World Bank ignored an inspection report that detailed violations of the Bank’s own policies, permitting the burning of homes and forcible eviction of approximately 1,000 Sengwer people from their ancestral lands in Kenya’s Embobut forest.

The forced evictions were described as “cultural genocide” by horrified rights groups around the world. They were also condemned by the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples and the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination.

An online petition by the group Avaaz.org called on the bank to end the evictions.

“As citizens from around the globe, we call on you to use your leverage over the Kenyan Forest Service and the Kenyan government to urgently halt the forceful and illegal evictions of the Sengwer people from Embobut Forest,” the petition stated.

“These evictions violate Kenya’s Constitution, are illegal under international law, and are an abuse of the community’s human rights.”

Evictions of forest dwellers began as part of a World Bank plan to “preserve” natural Kenyan forests as an offset to dirty industrial projects in western countries – a plan known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

Kenya has already received over $600 million from the World Bank to protect the forests, using the Kenyan Forest Service to clear out so-called “squatters” who could be cutting down trees or burning coal.

Factories in Europe and the U.S., on the other hand, are allowed to continue polluting the land and air as long as these African forestlands could be preserved.

When first alerted to the Sengwer’s plight, the Bank president said he was “alarmed” by reports of the evictions. “The World Bank is not involved in the reported evictions, nor has the Bank financed or supported these actions. Nevertheless, we are not bystanders”, he said.

According to the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme, an internal report confirmed safeguard violations but the Bank’s management response, seen by the Guardian, denied many of the findings… proposing instead more training for forest service staff, and a meeting to examine what can be learnt.

“The Sengwer People have always preserved the ecosystems in their ancestral land by practicing by living sustainably and are now facing complete annihilation under the guise of ‘conservation’ under REDD, wrote Nnimmo Bassey and Anabela Lemos of the No REDD in Africa Network.

“The World Bank is both admitting its complicity in the forced relocation of the Sengwer People as well as offering to collude with the Kenyan government to cover-up cultural genocide,” they wrote.

“Claims of being able to restore and improve the living standards of evicted people such as the Sengwer are crude, paternalistic, colonial in nature and above all smack of sheer arrogance on the World Bank’s part.”