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STATEMENTS

World Bank Group’s Evolution Process must prioritize Civic Space and Participation

Published

3 years ago

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We welcome:

  • the current opportunities to offer comments on the Development Committee report on the Evolution Roadmap;
  • growing recognition by several States that the World Bank Group (WBG) – and the multilateral financial system at large – need broad reform and revamping; and
  • commitments by the new WBG President, Mr. Ajay Banga, to: “forge new partnerships with civil society”.

We welcome statements in the text of the Roadmap that recognize the importance of: “greater social inclusion and citizen and beneficiary engagement”, “improving gender equality”, creating “opportunities for youth”, “inclusion of marginalized groups such as persons with disabilities and ethnic and racial minorities”, “consideration of the particular needs of people facing compound risks of exclusion” and inclusion of “citizens and beneficiaries” from “fragile countries”.

However, environments that stifle safe and robust engagement make meaningful inclusion unattainable. Restrictions on the enabling environment for civic engagement threaten the WBG’s development impact and disproportionately silence the marginalized and vulnerable.

This statement, drafted with extensive consultation and collaboration, provides recommendations for how the Roadmap and WBG’s overall Evolution Process should address civic space and participation.

Recommendation A: The Evolution Roadmap must acknowledge the importance of civic space and participation to foster inclusive development.

1. The Roadmap must acknowledge the global crisis of shrinking civic space, as has been established by credible sources:

  • According to the Civicus Monitor tracking civic space, as of 2022, only 3.2% of the world’s population lives in countries rated as having “open” civic space.
  • According to the Democracy Report by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg, says “72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – live in autocracies by 2022.”
  • According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, only 14.4% of countries are full democracies, 35.3% are authoritarian regimes, and in between 50.3% are flawed democracies or hybrid regimes.

2. The Roadmap should recognize that shrinking civic space threatens the revised WBG goals to foster “sustainable, resilient, and inclusive development” and requires direct WBG action.

3. The Roadmap should incorporate commitments to protect civic space, similar to statements that States – including several WBG shareholders – have made. See, for example:

  • In 2023, 70 governments and authorities endorsed the Summit of Democracy Declaration, committing to protect human rights, civic space (including media freedom), and the rule of law; and
  • In the 2022 Resilient Democracies Statement, several states across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas committed to protect and foster open and pluralistic civic spaces.

Recommendation B: The Roadmap should recognize that defenders’ participation and their protection are crucial for a just transition.

4. The Roadmap should make clear that communities are the experts of their own development pathways and priorities, and community-led development models are essential for a just transition. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that we must shift development pathways towards sustainability, with attention to equity and broad and meaningful participation to build social trust and deepen and widen support for transformative changes. Open civic space is critical to ensure trust and participation. The WBG’s top-down development model and failures to address civic space compromise the stated priority to combat climate change. The absence of civic space and community-led development in the Roadmap calls into question whether the WBG fully recognizes the fundamental relationship between just transitions and participatory development.

5. The Roadmap should acknowledge the critical role of environmental and human rights defenders, especially activists advocating for climate justice and just energy transitions. The Roadmap must also recognize that environmental and human rights defenders are one of the most at-risk groups of activists working today, too often as a result of development bank-supported activities in the renewable energy and transition minerals sectors.

6. The Roadmap should commit to taking all necessary measures that ensure protection of defenders – both individuals and the communities/collectives they are a part of – in investment contexts. Reprisal risk assessments and subsequent action plans and remedies must be developed with full participation and consent of affected defenders and must be situated in the specific realities the defenders face. The plans should also include pathways
to address the impacts defenders might face, directly or indirectly, from WBG supported activities about which they are raising concerns.

Recommendation C: The Roadmap should advance transparent, accountable and participatory development supported by a rights based framework.

Background

On paper the WBG recognizes the importance of citizen engagement “in making public institutions more transparent, accountable, and effective, and contributing innovative solutions to development challenges.” It touts support for transparency, accountability and participation in protocols and policies including: The Environmental and Social Framework, performance standards, a citizen engagement mainstreaming commitment, an access to information policy, a statement on zero tolerance for reprisals and accountability and grievance redress processes.

Yet, these fall short of international human rights law and standards and thus limit ensuring robust civic engagement and participation in WBG-supported activities. There also has been inadequate reflection on how a disproportionate focus on private sector-led approaches to development contributes to reprisals and ineffective development. These gaps do not only risk human rights violations in extreme cases. They also prevent the WBG from fully knowing the real effects of day-to-day operations on local communities or understanding the longer term, cumulative social development and human rights impacts of overarching policies and programs.

7. To advance human rights based and participatory development, the WBG should develop and adopt a strong, intersectional human rights-based framework in close consultation with communities, social movements, unions, defenders, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations. At the very least, the framework must comply with applicable local, national and international human rights law. The framework will require the WBG to develop new policies and adapt existing policies and practices, including:

  • Require human rights due diligence (HRDD) on the direct and indirect impacts of WBG supported projects and policies on peoples and communities, which incorporates reprisal risk assessments. The HRDD must be conducted before investment decisions are made, and in close consultation with directly affected defenders and communities, creating opportunities for them to contribute in a safe and reprisal sensitive manner.
  • Prioritize civic space conditions in country partnership and investment decisions by institutionalizing assessments that determine the risks and challenges to civic engagement and include appropriate redress. HRDD must
    also respond to risks related to clients, contexts, and countries where participation may not be possible due to contested or closed civic space, authoritarianism, criminalization, retaliation, power imbalances or a general environment of fear to speak up.
  • Build institutional capacity, expertise and protocols to distinguish between different contexts in which people can and cannot participate. The WBG must require governments and state-owned agencies to comply with their duties
    and responsibilities to preserve defenders’ rights, protect them from attacks and threats, and create and maintain an environment in which the right to defend human rights is upheld. The WBG must have frameworks for using its leverage over business partners so that they respect human rights, remedy violations, and support defenders to exercise their right to freedom of expression, assembly and association. The WBG must also better address inaction, impunity and/or illegal actions by state authorities when they protect investors rather than those impacted by the investments.
  • Consultatively develop human rights-based development indicators to meaningfully evaluate overall development impact, especially for social and environmental impacts. Additionally, the WBG must incorporate a civic space metric and indicator in the WBG Corporate Scorecard.
  • Link staff incentives within the WBG to meaningful measures of development impact. These should include environmental and social impacts assessed with the participation of directly affected populations, especially Indigenous Peoples and local communities where projects and activities are sited – rather than the quantity of funds disbursed.
  • Improve transparency and information disclosure policies and practices to proactively make key information public, ensuring it is accessible and can be promptly updated.
  • Expand capacity to conduct work and provide information in all languages spoken where the WBG operates. There are several examples of multilateral organizations – like the United Nations and the European Investment Bank – that support participation in multiple languages, so it is unconscionable that information disclosure and participatory processes associated with WBG activities are primarily in English. Even in this consultation process,
    documents and consultations were initially only available in English.
  • Provide more resources and capacity building to WBG’s environmental and social departments and build capacity across the bank on issues relating to transparency, accountability, participation and human rights.

8. The Roadmap should ensure the independence and effectiveness of WBG’s independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) and grievance redress processes:

  • Expand the mandate of WBG IAMs to independently look at the environmental and social impacts of all WBG activities, including development policy loans. Empower IAMs to make binding recommendations with the participation of directly affected communities.
  • Ensure management and staff respect processes and findings of WBGIAMs. The WBG must also work with its accountability mechanisms to address client, country or context specific barriers that may hinder communities from accessing the complaints mechanisms, especially on issues related to civic space and reprisals.

9. The Roadmap should agree to a human rights based remedy framework, such that communities negatively impacted by WBG projects – including where WBG’s IAMs have found non-compliance with WBG policies and standards – can shape and receive remedy.

Remedy should also be provided to legacy projects where communities have been harmed.

10. The Roadmap should recognize the value of an external, independent evaluation of how the WBG’s projects, policies, practices and underlying top-down development model — with its focus on advancing economic growth and the role of the private sector in development – have impacted and continue to impact human rights and civic space.
This evaluation would need to be conducted with extensive participation of grassroots communities, defenders and others, including those who are critical of WBG activities, and should also make recommendations to redress past harms and options for moving forward.

11. The WBG must allow communities and civil society to hold it accountable for human rights impacts using legal processes in national and international courts.

Recommendation D: Ensure that changes to the WBG’s operational model and financial capacity provide robust, dedicated resources to participation and civic engagement,

12. As it seeks to dramatically increase the quantity of the financing it mobilizes, governs and disburses under the Evolution Roadmap, the WBG must ensure it allocates the necessary budget for all of the above recommendations.

  • Expanded budgetary allocations must reflect the reality that the current funding for environmental and social safeguard compliance is already not commensurate with the environmental and social risks of the bank’s activities.
  • With any substantial increases to the volume of WBG financing and more emphasis on leveraging private sector investment must come increased resource allocation to transparency, accountability and participation.
  • Reforms to the operational and financial model must consider how to provide civil society organizations from the Global South with substantial, dedicated funding mechanisms that could be administered by civil society or jointly with the WBG.

In conclusion, the quality of WBG spending and operations is as important as the quantity of funding made available, which requires that citizens and civil society be more systematically brought into decision-making and implementation across the WBG.

For years now, social movements, Indigenous Peoples, communities in the Global South, and civil society organizations have been providing concrete policy recommendations (as above) and systemic solutions to address concerns about:

  • the top-down development model advanced by the WBG which prioritizes economic growth and private profit; and
  • the role of the WBG in the interconnected crises of inequality, food-insecurity, climatechange and closing civic space.

However, the WBG’s projects and policy recommendations, under the watch of its shareholders who are human-rights duty bearers, have continued to cause or contribute to human rights violations related to forced evictions, rising debt burden, environmental degradation, increased carbon emissions, and reprisals against those who speak up. These harms are caused (at least, in part) by the WBG’s failure to ensure meaningful participation for directly affected people and the inability (and unwillingness) to address civic space dynamics in the countries where it operates and as a result of the clients with whom it partners.

The WBG Evolution Roadmap process could be a unique opportunity to more systematically understand, promote, and protect enabling environments for civic engagement using a human rights lens. Following the recommendations in this statement would enable the WBG to move towards realizing the new vision of achieving development that
is “sustainable, resilient, and inclusive”. These are critical first steps necessary for any meaningful institutional reform to take place in good faith. Given the leadership role of the WBG in the multilateral financial architecture, the roadmap could also positively influence others in the multilateral development finance system to address issues related to human rights and civic space.

Signatories

AbibiNsroma Foundation (ANF), Ghana

Accountability Counsel, Global

Accountability Lab, Global

Accountability Research Center, USA

ACTC Développement communication, Mauritanie

ACT Alliance, Global

Aid/Watch, Australia

Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), Philippines

Appui aux Initiatives Communautaire de Conservation de l’Environnement et de Développement Durable (AICED), République Démocratique du Congo

Arab Watch Coalition (AWC), USA

Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Regional (Asia)

Association LaSiesta pour la protection de l’environnement, Morocco

Bank Information Center, USA

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), MENA region

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), International

Centre de Défense des Droits de l’Homme et Démocratie, République Démocratique du Congo

Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), India

Centre for Women & children Solidarity Network (CWcSN), India

Centro de estudios e Investigación sobre Mujeres, Spain

Coalition for Human Rights in Development, Global

Committee for Peace and Development Advocacy, Liberia

Community Empowerment and Social Justice Network (CEMSOJ), Nepal

Conectas Direitos Humanos, Brazil

Confédération Nationale des Travailleurs du Sénégal (CNTS), Senegal

Conseil Regional des Organisations Non Gouvernementales de développement, République Démocratique du Congo

Council for People’s Development and Governance, Philippines

Debt justice Norway, Norway

Defenders in Development Campaign, Global

Derecho Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (DAR), Perú

Enda Lead Afrique Francophone, Senegal

Foundation For Environmental Rights,Advocacy & Development (FENRAD), Nigeria

Friends with Environment in Development, Uganda

Fundación CAUCE: Cultura ambiental – Causa Ecologista, Argentina

Fundación Humedales/ Wetlands International LAC, Argentina

Fundeps, Argentina

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Global

Green Advocates International, Liberia

Green Development Advocates (GDA), Cameroon

Instituto Maíra, Brasil

International Accountability Project, Global

International Rivers – Brazil, Brazil

International Rivers, United States of America

Mongolian CSOs Network on the SDGs, Mongolia

Narasha Community Development Group, Kenya

Natural Resource Women Platform, Liberia

NGO Forum on ADB, Asia Regional

NomoGaia, USA

Observatoire d’Etudes et d’Appui à la Responsabilité Sociale et Environnementale, OEARSE en sigle, République Démocratique du Congo

Oil Workers’ Rights Protection Organization Public Union, Azerbaijan

ONG Sustentarse, Chile

Oxfam, Global

Pakaid, Pakistan

Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Pakistan

Plataforma Internacional contra la Impunidad, Suiza

Protection International Mesoamérica, Centroamérica

Protection International, Belgium / Global

Recourse, Netherlands

Réseau de Développement et de Communication des Femmes Maliennes / Musonet, Mali

The Reality of Aid Network, Global (based in the Philippines)

Twerwaneho Listeners Club (TLC), Uganda

Uma Gota No Oceano, Brazil

urgewald, Germany

Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, India

Witness Radio, Uganda.

Source: rightsindevelopment.org

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STATEMENTS

Land-based investments in Uganda are weakening the country’s ecological resilience.

Published

4 days ago

on

June 5, 2026

By

Statement on the World Environmental Day, 2026.

Land-based investments in Uganda are weakening the country’s ecological resilience.

Today, June 5th, 2026, Uganda is entering another season of intensifying climate stress. The Uganda National Meteorological Authority has recently forecast a warmer-than-normal, drier-than-normal period from June to August, with near-normal to below-normal rainfall and persistently higher-than-average temperatures. These conditions are expected to severely disrupt agriculture, water availability, food security, and rural livelihoods.

As the world marks World Environment Day on June 5th, Witness Radio raises alarm over the accelerating ecological breakdown driven by large-scale land-based investments, many of which are approved and facilitated by state institutions.

Across the country, forests, wetlands, and customary lands are being systematically reallocated to investors for commercial agriculture, carbon offset schemes, extractive industries, industrial tree plantations, infrastructure development, and oil-related projects. These are often presented as pathways to “development” and “climate solutions,” yet in practice, they are deepening environmental destruction, land dispossession, and social inequality.

Under so-called climate-smart agriculture and carbon trading initiatives, small-scale farmers are being pushed away from food production and encouraged to convert their land into monoculture tree plantations. In many cases, communities are promised financial stability and climate resilience, only to find themselves trapped in exploitative schemes that reduce food sovereignty and increase vulnerability.

According to the Land Matrix, an independent global land monitoring initiative, investors have acquired more than 370,000 hectares of land in Uganda through large-scale land deals.

In Mubende, for example, forest reserves such as the Namwasa Forest Reserve were handed over to a UK-based investor, who subsequently established eucalyptus and pine plantations. Witness Radio has documented several reforestation initiatives that have transformed natural forests into profit-driven tree plantations. Experts have repeatedly warned that such species degrade soil quality, reduce water retention, and undermine ecological diversity, yet these concerns continue to be ignored in favor of investment interests.

Similarly, large-scale agricultural expansion projects have resulted in widespread tree cover loss, with forests cleared for commercial farming. In Hoima, the expansion of sugarcane plantations has further intensified pressure on land and ecosystems, often at the expense of local food systems and community survival.

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) has also traversed ecologically sensitive landscapes, raising serious concerns from environmental experts and affected communities. Despite repeated warnings, ecological risks remain subordinated to investment timelines and political priorities.

What is emerging is a consistent pattern in which land and ecosystems are treated primarily as investment assets rather than as living systems that sustain life. This has led to:

  • Widespread deforestation and biodiversity loss through land conversion for plantations, agribusiness, mining, and infrastructure projects.
  • Forced displacement of communities undermines ancestral land tenure systems, cultural heritage, and local livelihoods.
  • Increased climate vulnerability, as degraded ecosystems can no longer shield communities against droughts, floods, and erratic weather patterns.
  • Water stress and soil exhaustion are weakening long-term agricultural productivity and ecosystem stability.
  • Criminalization and intimidation of environmental defenders, who face threats, arrests, and legal harassment for resisting harmful projects.

Rather than strengthening environmental protection, current investment pathways are actively weakening Uganda’s ecological resilience and exposing rural communities to deeper climate and social shocks.

Witness Radio Uganda Executive Director Jeff Wokulira Ssebaggala warns. “Uganda is facing a silent but accelerating ecological emergency. What is being promoted as development is too often the systematic conversion of forests, wetlands, and community lands into investment zones that weaken both people and nature. If we continue on this path, we are not just losing biodiversity but also undermining the very foundation of rural survival and climate resilience. Real environmental protection must begin with justice for communities and respect for the ecosystems that sustain them.”

On this World Environment Day, Witness Radio Uganda calls for urgent structural change:

  • Immediately halt the allocation of forests, wetlands, and ecologically sensitive ecosystems to private investors.
  • Strengthen independent environmental governance, free from political and corporate influence, in all investment approval and monitoring processes.
  • Recognize and enforce customary and community land rights as central to environmental protection and climate resilience.
  • Ensure meaningful participation and uphold Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all affected communities before any project approval.
  • End the criminalization of environmental and land rights defenders, and guarantee their protection as key actors in safeguarding public interest and ecological integrity.

 

 

Related posts:

Witness Radio Statement on the International Human Rights Day 2024: A call to the government of Uganda to protect Land and Environmental Rights Defenders and Communities affected by irresponsible land-based investments in Uganda. Women’s Climate Assembly, 2024: African women vow to protect human and environmental rights amidst an influx of destructive land-based investments on the continent. A people-centered call to action: Promoting secure tenure rights for inclusive land governance, climate resilience, and conflict resolution “Vacant Land” Narrative Fuels Dispossession and Ecological Crisis in Africa – New report. Ecological land grab: food vs fuel vs forests
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STATEMENTS

Statement by Witness Radio- Legal Aid Clinic on International Women’s Day 2026; Scaling Up Investment to Accelerate Access to Justice for Women and Girls Defending Land and Environmental Rights

Published

3 months ago

on

March 8, 2026

By

As the world commemorates International Women’s Day, Witness Radio Legal Aid Clinic joins voices across Uganda and globally in calling for urgent and transformative action to accelerate access to justice for women and girls, particularly in protecting land rights, advancing environmental justice, and safeguarding community livelihoods.

Across Uganda’s rural communities, women are the backbone of families and local economies. They cultivate the land, produce food, and sustain household livelihoods.  Despite being the primary users and custodians of land and natural resources, women remain systematically excluded from ownership, control, and decision-making over the very land that sustains their families and communities. Through our legal aid work supporting communities affected by forced land evictions, large-scale land acquisitions, and environmental degradation, Witness Radio has consistently observed that women bear the greatest burden of land injustices as cultural norms and patriarchal systems in many communities continue to treat land as the domain of men. As a result, women are frequently excluded from community meetings, negotiations, mediations, and decision-making regarding land use, land acquisition, and compensation processes.

Additionally, the increasing wave of large-scale land investments and commercial agriculture across Uganda has further exposed and deepened long-standing inequalities that marginalize women from fair, prompt compensation, decision-making processes, land usage, and ownership rights. Compensation is often paid to male heads of households, while the rights, interests, and contributions of women are overlooked. Many women who depend on the land for farming, food production, and family survival are neither consulted nor recognized as rights holders.

In numerous cases, once compensation is paid to men, women are abandoned with children and left without land, resources, or economic security. This reality exposes the deep lack of justice and tenure security for women, particularly in customary land settings, where their rights are rarely documented or formally recognized. Women who speak out against land grabbing, forced land evictions, or environmental destruction often face intimidation, social backlash, and isolation. Yet despite these challenges, many women continue to stand as frontline defenders of land, environment, and community survival.

Unfortunately, access to justice for these women remains limited. Existing grievance redress structures, cultural institutions, and traditional justice systems often fail to recognize or include women in the justice process, and administrative frameworks and formal legal processes are exorbitantly expensive, lengthy, and inaccessible to rural communities. Social barriers such as cultural norms, poverty, and illiteracy also prevent women from seeking remedies or participating fully in justice mechanisms. Without intentional efforts to dismantle these barriers, the promise of equality under the law and access to justice remains out of reach and a rumor for many women and girls.

Accelerating access to justice for women and girls, therefore, requires transformative action. It requires strengthening community legal empowerment, ensuring women’s meaningful participation in land governance and administration, and guaranteeing that grievance and compensation mechanisms recognize women as legitimate rights holders. In addition, it requires government institutions, cultural leaders, development partners, and private investors to ensure that investments and development projects respect human rights and actively protect women’s land rights rather than undermine them. Responsible investment must include gender-responsive and inclusive land governance and administration practices in a bid to strengthen recognition and protect women’s land rights.

Investors and development actors must ensure that women are consulted, included in negotiations, and fairly compensated where compulsory land acquisition occurs. Development should empower communities, not deepen existing inequalities.

As Witness Radio Legal Aid Clinic, we remain committed to supporting women land and environmental defenders, strengthening community land rights awareness, and amplifying the voices of women who continue to resist dispossession and demand accountability. Through legal aid, documentation of human rights abuses, and advocacy for equitable land governance, we stand in solidarity with women who are courageously defending their rights and the future of their communities.

As we mark this International Women’s Day, we honor the resilience of women across Uganda who continue to speak out for justice, dignity, and equality. Their struggle is not only about land, but also about justice, survival, and the protection of future generations.

“The soil remembers, my child. Even when men steal, even when papers lie, the land never forgets who sang to it, who bled for it, who are buried beneath it.”

 

Truly,

Witness Radio Legal Aid Clinic

Related posts:

Witness Radio Statement on the International Human Rights Day 2024: A call to the government of Uganda to protect Land and Environmental Rights Defenders and Communities affected by irresponsible land-based investments in Uganda. Know Your Land rights and environmental protection laws: a case of a refreshed radio program transferring legal knowledge to local and indigenous communities to protect their land and the environment at Witness Radio. Bridging the access to justice gap: Witness Radio trains paralegals ahead of Uganda’s general election. Upholding Women’s Land Rights in the implementation of development projects will accelerate progress. In memory of land and investment women victims in Uganda on the International Women’s Day 2021
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STATEMENTS

Joint Statement Response by Advisers of PAPs to the DRS Follow-Up Report on the Uganda KIIDP-2 Case

Published

7 months ago

on

November 25, 2025

By

                                                             

Joint Statement Response by Advisers of PAPs to the DRS Follow-Up Report on the Uganda KIIDP-2 Case

KAMPALA, 25th NOVEMBER 2025

Introduction

On 30th October 2025, the World Bank’s Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) published its final Follow-up Report on the Uganda KIIDP-2 case, a community-led complaint regarding forced evictions and project-related harms under the Kampala Infrastructure and Institutional Development Project. The case began in 2021 and closed in 2023.

We welcome the publication of the Follow-up Report as it provides important reflections on dispute resolution practice. We appreciate that feedback from stakeholders, including some of our own, was incorporated into the Report. However, the Report presents an overly positive narrative that fails to reflect critical issues experienced by community members negatively impacted by the KIIDP-2 project. These omissions not only distort the record but undermine the legitimacy and objective of the accountability process and learning.

Gaps in Report

Project harms continue: It is paramount to begin here. The affected community filed a complaint to the Inspection Panel of the World Bank in 2020 to complain about harm they were experiencing with the ongoing KIIDP II project. The project designers and implementers failed to engage meaningfully with people who would be impacted by the project, and as a result, there was inadequate compensation for negative impacts, health risks and other hazards were associated with mismanagement of the drainage channel, and people lost their livelihoods. Over five years later–and even after a mediation process–the issues persist. The project remains incomplete even after the project closeout date. Clogged passages with dirt, persistent flooding of peoples homes and farms with dirty water, lack of access to homes, and incomplete infrastructure remain unresolved. The posture of the Follow-up Report assumes implementation is complete and everything is well, but the reality couldn’t be further from that.

No livelihood restoration: Livelihood support was a core demand from community members and a central topic throughout the mediation. Although interim agreements were reached on this issue, they were not included in the final agreement, and no livelihood programs have since been implemented. The community’s health, safety, and economic conditions continue to deteriorate as a result.

Women’s issues ignored: Gender-specific harms raised in the complaint and during the case process were never addressed and are completely absent from the final report.

Retaliation, intimidation, and threats of eviction: The report fails to acknowledge threats, harassment, and attempted evictions faced by community members during the process.

The process felt coerced and rushed: The Follow-up Report fails to capture DRS’ own challenges in managing the timelines to ensure a successful outcome. Although the mediation process spanned 18 months, community members report that they felt pressured to sign the agreement on the final day. In part this is because there was confusion about whether the dispute resolution process had officially concluded, and representatives and advisors were not informed in advance that the signing would take place that day. The Follow-Up Report also fails to capture the serious concerns associated with the signing of the agreement that led the community to feel coerced to sign the agreement. For example, the presence of government security officials at the signing created an intimidating atmosphere, further contributing to the sense of coercion.

Undermined decision-making: In the final stages, the DRS changed the previously agreed community representation and decision-making structure, sidelining duly elected representatives and diminishing the voice of minority or dissenting perspectives. The DRS made a unilateral decision–on the day of signing of the agreement–that the representatives previously elected by impacted community members were no longer going to make decisions on behalf of the community, and that instead, every member of the community was required individually to sign the agreement if they wanted to benefit from its provisions. Furthermore, the DRS had earlier communicated that if the agreement was signed, no unresolved issues could be referred to the compliance process, effectively discouraging individuals from dissenting or withholding their signature.

Confidentiality limitations: Unreasonably strict confidentiality restrictions during the mediation process limited community representatives’ ability to consult with other community members, the media, and allies. This lack of openness undermined transparency, community-wide participation, and meaningful ownership of the process. Towards the end of the process and during the implementation phase, the DRS interpreted these confidentiality provisions in a way that denied advisors access to key documents, including the mediation agreement and drafts of the Follow-Up Report. This made it extremely difficult for the advisors to support the community with timely and informed guidance. The removal of the Implementation Committee on the day of signing the agreement, without mutual agreement or any formal communication, further isolated the advisors. As a result, they were unable to monitor implementation or receive feedback through project-affected people (PAPs), with DRS insisting that the agreement remained confidential. The continued denial of access under the guise of confidentiality infringed on the community’s right to adequate representation.

Exclusion from Inspection Panel referral: The report omits that requesters were excluded from bringing unresolved issues to the Inspection Panel for investigation. This shift contradicted earlier expectations and closed off a key accountability route. Read more here.

To support transparency and learning, we commissioned an independent consultant to gather community feedback on the process, outcomes, and roles of various actors. Once complete, this analysis will be shared with the DRS and the World Bank to inform future DRS processes and strengthen accountability for other communities.

Conclusion

We believe in the potential of dispute resolution to provide meaningful remedy, but to realize that potential, there must be bold, transparent, and inclusive implementation. The DRS must account for all aspects of the mediation process and its outcomes. Livelihoods, gender-specific harms, and reprisals are not peripheral issues; they are central to justice, and they are left unresolved.

We thank the DRS for its work and call for further dialogue to ensure the spirit of the agreement is honored, and the dignity of the Kawaala community upheld.

Witness Radio
Accountability Counsel

Statement: 19.11.25 Statement Re DRS Report

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