CIEL: World Bank, China and Tibet

International Financial Institutions Program

For more information about CIEL's International Financial Institutions Program, contact Jocelyn Medallo.

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Action Alert on China-Tibet

All Gloves Are OFF! This is the final stretch in the campaign to stop the World Bank's China-Tibet resettlement project formally known as the China Western Poverty Reduction Project.

It is now up to the Bank's Board of Directors to decide the FINAL OUTCOME of the project once and for all. We have just a matter of weeks before the Board is due to meet on this issue. Therefore, it is essential that everyone TAKE ACTION NOW to make sure that this project is CANCELLED. Please focus all of your energies on mobilizing your networks to STOP THE PROJECT.

Go on-line to "http://www.savetibet.org", "http://www.ciel.org", "http://www.bicusa.org", "http://www.tibet.org/sft", "http://www.milarepa.org", "http://www.ustibet.org".

BACKGROUND

The Independent Inspection Panel Report which is still highly confidential, was delivered to Bank management and Board members on April 28th. Under the Procedures of the Inspection Panel, Management has six weeks to review the Report and to generate a response. They are expected to send their response to the Board sometime this week, after which the Board has an indefinite amount of time to review both the Panel Report and the Response, before they schedule a Board meeting to make final decisions about the project. They could meet as soon as July 7th!

Though we have not been given access to the report, we have been told by several reliable sources that it is a scathing critique of the project and that it finds policy violations which support the claim's allegations. Remember, the original claim alleged that the Bank had violated its Indigenous Peoples, Resettlement, Environmental Assessment and Information Disclosure Policies, among others). Moreover, the Report apparently raises important questions about fundamental institutional problems, and in particular the chronic weaknesses in the Bank's application of its environmental and social policies in China.

TAKE ACTION NOW!!! Here's how:

Contact your country's Executive Director and your Treasury Department/Finance Ministry by phone, fax, e-mail AND on official letterhead
(E.D. info. follows).
It would also help to have sympathetic members of parliament/congress to write letters and make phone calls to your country's decision-makers.
Please CC: Peter Stephens from the Office of External Affairs Tel. 202.458.2281; Fax 202.522.3405; Room 9-133 <mailto:pstephens1@worldbank.org> and ICT on all written correspondence.