Statement by Aurelio Vianna, Jr. (Rede Brasil) to the World Bank Board of Executive Directors

 

February 1998

My name is Aurelio Vianna. I am the Secretary of the Brazil Network on MDBs, which is a network with about 40 members.

First of all, we would like to tell you that the decision to request an inspection by an Inspection Panel in this case and in another case in our country (Panafloro), after very intensive debate among various Brazilian civil society organizations. The organizations of our civil society do not want an inspection that ends in punishment, but an inspection which leads to the solution of the problems with the projects that are being implemented in Brazil.

There is one thing we want to make clear. The Bank is a financing agent which gives out money, intelligence, ideas, so that government projects of the member countries can be executed. This is how we understand the whole thing.

Out of the 60 Bank-financed projects in Brazil last year, we supported the request for inspection in Itaparica, and the question we ask is: Why was this done? Because all the other 59 projects were going very well? No. The answer is no. It was done because the Bank felt responsible, felt a greater responsibility regarding the population that was involved in this project.

The Itaparica case, was a good example because it mobilized thousands of people, and because the Bank, as in many other cases, was not only a financing agent for a project of the Brazilian Government. The Bank was the other part in the realization of the project of resettlement along with the Brazilian Government.

*** (Portion of statement left out.) In other words, the Inspection Panel is seen by us not as a tool to be used all the time in every case in all projects. Rather, it should be used only for projects where the populations understands that there is a responsibility on the part of the World Bank in such a way that the project for some reason is not working well or is not achieving its aims.

All of you know how important this project was for the change in the resettlement policy of the Bank as well as this same policy on the part of other countries. The Bank, therefore, always concentrated on this and was always seen as an active agent, an institution which wanted to do something to make it so that resettlement with irrigation would have a good result—would have a good result for the population. Throughout the almost ten years of implementation of the project (which is yet to be concluded) the Bank sent several missions to the area and was always very welcome by the population, by the unions, by the people who live there. The population welcomed all the missions because they identified the Bank as an institution which came to help in the process.

However, during the last few years, the policy of the Brazilian Government has implied the privatization of many state companies, which in the past were supported by the Bank as well as by the government. With this privatization process the resettlement and its conclusion were jeopardized, especially as this was happening at a time when the World Bank financing was coming to an end.

Meawhile, after a lot of discussions and debates, the affected population believed in the importance of transparency of information and participation on a planetary level, embodied in the Inspection Panel created by the World Bank. In other words, when the population requested the inspection of the Panel, they were accepting the rules of the game.

What do I mean by this? That the population was reaffirming the Bank's having created a tool to more effectively make a project work, because the Bank was co-responsible in this process. And this is why the claim was filed.

With that filing, you know much better than we do, perhaps, what happened in this very same room when the inspection was not approved for Itaparica. Many people considered that a negative sign. However, the population directly involved did not think so, and I am going to tell you exactly why: because the population involved read the official document of the Bank where it said that the Board of the World Bank had not approved an Inspection Panel, but it approved the plan of action prepared by the Brazilian Government, which, with its own resources during two years, would bring a solution for the resettlement in Itaparica.

This was highly celebrated as a victory in Brazil because the population could see once again that the solution to their problems was being considered seriously. In other words, the fact of the matter was not to investigate for no reason, but to investigate in order to reach a solution to the problems. And that was understood.

However, after approval of the action plan, what did we see? Number one, unfortunately, there is no such plan of action. Curiously, then, what may have been approved here was some kind of a document different from a plan of action because such a thing does not exist.

Another thing, in our annual budget for the next two years and for next year—for the year of 1998, which the executive branch sent to the Congress, there is no figure which is necessary to comply with what the Board approved. Besides that, the working group convened by the government to think about the solutions for Itaparica and the resettlement thing right after the Board meeting. A working group was created by the executive branch in Brazil to conclude the resettlement. This working group refuses to receive the representatives of the population involved, in an attitude which is at least very strange for people who say they want to solve the problems of that population.

Today there is a great insecurity in the region, a great insecurity provoked by these uncertainties. In spite of that, in spite of all that, and concerning what Eraldo said before and what I am saying now, we believe that the Bank has been innovative when it created in ‘93 the Inspection Panel tool.

This tool, with all its flaws, with all its problems, is still an exemplary tool for other institutions of a multilateral nature. It is the only tool today in the world which allows citizens to act directly vis-a-vis a multilateral institution without having to go through the government, this in a world which is highly globalized, which for us as civil society is of utmost importance.

If on the one hand we reveal what has happened and is happening with Itaparica and the criticism that we have regarding several stages of the process, we nevertheless consider this tool a very important one, having a historical say to bring solutions to all these cases.

In conclusion, then, I would like to mention very clearly that we consider and we work with you at the World Bank here and in Brasilia, with the government agencies in Brasilia, and with the Brazilian Congress, because, to our understanding, the World Bank belongs to member countries. And since our country is a member of the Bank, for us sometimes it is a little difficult to think that the Bank would be against a government which is a member of its Board, because the solutions are discussed and arrived at here, and Brazil has a voice in this group.

This is what I had to tell you. Thank you very much.

 

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