By Witness Radio team
Indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) communities in eastern Nepal have fought hard for recognition after the World Bank Group’s accountability mechanism acknowledged a complaint about rights violations, underscoring their ongoing struggle to protect their land and culture.
The Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent watchdog of the World Bank Group, accepted the complaint for further assessment and formally registered the case in December 2025. The decision clears the way for a potential mediation process or a full compliance investigation into whether the project breached the IFC’s environmental and social safeguard standards.
In August 2025, Indigenous Yakthung leaders, supported by lawyers and civil society organizations, filed a complaint against the IFC’s advisory support to IME Group for the $22 million Pathivara (Mukkumlung) cable car project in Taplejung District. This filing marks a critical step in holding the project accountable for alleged rights violations and environmental harm.
The cable car is being constructed on Mukkumlung Mountain, a sacred ancestral landscape central to the Yakthung people’s spirituality and Identity, risking irreversible damage to their cultural heritage and Identity.
According to the complainants, construction has already resulted in the felling of more than 10,000 trees in and around the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area, threatening habitats of endangered species such as red pandas, snow leopards, and Himalayan musk deer, underscoring the project’s severe environmental consequences.
“The reason the Complainants and their advisors seek to engage with the CAO is because of the social and environmental harms caused by one of the cable car projects in particular, the Pathivara project. This cable car project has severe impacts on one of the most sacred sites of the Limbu (Yakthung) Indigenous Peoples, including their forests, flora, fauna, heritage (tangible and intangible), and Mukkumlung mountain. The Pathivara project has been imposed on the local Indigenous communities without their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), and has proceeded to destroy their lands, forests, sacred sites, and livelihoods. When the people protest, they have been met with extreme violence and repression by security forces.” The community complaint submitted to the Ombudsman in August 2025 read.
Between August 2022 and July 2024, the IFC provided advisory services to IME Group related to four cable car projects in Nepal, including the Pathivara project. The complainants allege that the IFC failed to ensure that its Environmental and Social Performance Standards, particularly those protecting Indigenous Peoples, were applied.
“The cable car project is tantamount to cultural genocide of the Limbu nation in violation of our rights guaranteed in Nepal’s constitution, the Treaty of 1774 with the Gorkha kingdom, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” said Advocate Shankar Limbu, Vice-Chair of LAHURNIP.
Community members say they were unaware of IFC’s involvement until July 2024, nearly two years after construction began, due to the delayed public disclosure of the advisory support.
Accordingly, the complaints stated that the project did not meet the IFC Performance Standards, including failures to assess and manage project impacts, conduct land acquisition, and address involuntary resettlement, among others.
“The IFC’s inability to ensure its client integrated the Performance Standards into the implementation of its plan for delivering cable car projects around Nepal has led to severe breaches of the protections that were supposed to safeguard vulnerable and marginalized communities. Today, Indigenous Limbu communities are being beaten, shot at, arrested, and terrorized for trying to defend their land and way of life,” the community complaints read.
Although the IFC exited the advisory role in 2024, it continues to invest in Global IME Bank, Nepal’s largest commercial bank and a core company within the IME Group. Over the past decade, the IFC has provided more than $50 million in financing to the conglomerate, along with a $500 million trade finance guarantee, which critics say gives the institution ongoing leverage and responsibility.
In its eligibility determination, the CAO found that the complaint met the required criteria, including a plausible link between IFC-supported activities and the alleged environmental and human rights harms. The case has now entered a 90-day assessment phase, during which the CAO will consult with the affected communities, the IFC, and the company involved.
At the end of the assessment, the parties may choose to engage in dispute resolution through mediation or proceed to a full compliance investigation examining whether the IFC failed to follow its own safeguard policies.
The advocates representing the communities welcomed the CAO’s decision.
“We welcome the fact that the CAO has found this complaint eligible, and look forward to working with investigators to uncover how things went so badly wrong. The IFC is currently reviewing its Performance Standards and must learn lessons on consultation, safeguarding cultural heritage and biodiversity, respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and protecting them against retaliation,” Kate Geary, Programme Director at Recourse, one of the organizations that supported the communities in the complaint, reveals.
Further, their appeal is for the CAO to handle the case with utmost urgency. “The CAO investigation into the complaint against the cable car project should move swiftly to remedy ongoing impacts of the project, including retaliations against the local communities,” added Advocate Shankar Limbu.
Indigenous leaders are demanding an immediate halt to construction, the withdrawal of security forces from the area, the release of all IFC-related project documents, and an independent investigation into alleged human rights abuses, urging urgent action to protect their rights and environment.
