Inspection Panel Returns from China
CONTACT: Eduardo Abbott (202) 458-2617; Antonia M. Macedo (202 )458-2597
October 28, 1999. The World Bank's Independent Inspection Panel returned today from a three week visit to China, including an extended visit to the proposed site of the West China Poverty Reduction Project in Qinghai. The Panel's Chairman, Jim MacNeill of Canada, stated that the Panel had completed this essential stage of the investigation into Bank Management's compliance with its own policies and procedures that the Bank's Board had requested it to undertake.
Mr. MacNeill was accompanied by his colleague, Panel member Professor Edward Ayensu of Ghana, and a team including Professor Richard Fuggle of the University of Cape Town, Professor Vernon Heywood of the University of Reading, Dr. Paul Taylor, on leave from the Smithsonian Institution, and Mr. Eduardo Abbott of Chile, the Panel's Executive Secretary. The Panel took its own interpreters in Mandarin, the Tibetan Amdo-ke dialect and Mongolian.
The Panel held in-depth interviews in Beijing with Bank officials involved in the design of the project. It met with national and provincial government officials and experts from various institutes involved in the project in Beijing and Qinghai. It visited villages in the designated move-out area in several counties near the Qinghai capital of Xining and it spoke with dozens of individuals, families and groups concerning the project. It did the same in the move-in area in Dulan County, speaking with dozens of affected individuals, families and groups in villages in and around the Xianridge township, the area's main commercial and service location, and between Xianridge and the irrigation site.
"The team has returned with a vast amount of facts and information which it must now assess," Mr. MacNeill said. "It has also laid the foundation for the succeeding stages of the investigation which will include further interviews with Bank officials in Washington involved in the design of the project."
On June 24, 1999, the Board approved the West China Poverty Reduction Project subject to the results of an investigation by the Inspection Panel. On September 9, 1999, the Board formally requested the Panel to undertake an investigation to see whether Bank Management had observed its policies on, among others, involuntary resettlement, indigenous peoples, environmental assessment.
Earlier the Panel had received a Request for Inspection from the International Campaign for Tibet claiming that the proposed migration of 60,000 poor people from 6 counties in eastern Qinghai Province to Dulan County would adversely affect the lives and livelihoods of 4,000 Tibetan and Mongolian ethnic peoples.