World Bank Project Cancelled in a Landmark Victory for Tanzanian Villagers

—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—

January 21, 2025; 9:00 AM PST

Media Contact: amittal@oaklandinstitute.org, +1 510-469-5228

Oakland, CA – The World Bank’s US$150 million Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project in Tanzania is cancelled. The decision came after 16 months of advocacy by the Oakland Institute to hold the Bank accountable for enabling the expansion of RUNAPA and supporting TANAPA, the paramilitary Tanzania National Parks Authority. Its rangers are responsible for egregious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and crippling livelihood restrictions that have terrorized farmer and pastoralist communities in the Mbarali District. The expansion of the Park from one to over two million hectares threatens over 84,000 people.

“This landmark decision is a major victory for the villagers who courageously stood up to stop the project,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “Though forced to stop funding the terror it unleashed, the Bank must now urgently address the serious harms it has enabled and respond to the demands of the communities whose lives are on hold.”

When initially informed of the abuses and violations of its own safeguards in April 2023, the World Bank failed to take action. In June, the Institute filed a request for inspection on behalf of the impacted villagers with the Bank’s Inspection Panel and followed up in September 2023 with a widely covered report, Unaccountable & Complicit.

As a result, the Inspection Panel launched an investigation in November 2023. Amidst the investigation, in a rare move, the World Bank suspended disbursements to the project in April 2024, citing(link is external) the Tanzanian government’s “non-compliance with their Environmental and Social (E&S) obligations… non-compliance related to involuntary resettlement planning activities taking place in RUNAPA,” as well as the absence of a grievance redress mechanism. Continued advocacy led to the project being eventually cancelled in November 2024.

Additional pressure(link is external) to hold the Tanzanian government and the World Bank accountable came from nine United Nations Special Rapporteurs who urged “all necessary interim measures … to prevent any irreparable harm” to affected villagers.

“The initiative of the UN experts is vital given the extent of abuses inflicted by paramilitary rangers on local communities in a country where there is no rule of law,” continued Mittal. “The government and the Bank must be held accountable for the harms caused by their disregard for basic human rights for the sole purpose of increasing tourism revenue,” she concluded.

Impacted communities are demanding the following actions:

1. Removal of beacons placed marking the expansion of the park and to officially revert park boundaries to the 1998 borders established by GN 436a.
2. Provide comprehensive compensation for damages incurred by livelihood restrictions and violence inflicted by TANAPA rangers, including:
   1. Value of fines paid by pastoralists to reclaim cattle illegally seized.
   2. Value of cattle auctioned.
   3. Compensation for the loss of agricultural production for three seasons (2023, 2024, 2025).
   4. Compensation for the victims of violence and killings by TANAPA.
3. Establish a multistakeholder independent mechanism to oversee reparations.
4. Restore social services to villages impacted by GN 754.
   1. Complete construction on Luhanga Secondary School and provide it with government teachers.
   2. Reopen Mlonga Primary School that was closed in October 2022.
   3. Ensure all villages located within GN 754 boundaries are provided with the power, water, and social services they are entitled to like other villages.

“We call on the World Bank to fully assume its responsibility and urgently take these necessary steps to answer our pleas for justice. Our lives are on hold as the threat of eviction looms over us every single day. Our livelihoods have been undermined for years, our children are out of school, our farms sit fallow and our cattle are still being forcibly seized. We cannot continue living like this. The Bank must adequately address our past and ongoing suffering.”

– Statement by impacted villagers in Mbarali, January 2025

Source: oaklandinstitute.org