Rocky road to
World Bank re-engagement By Carey
L Biron
WASHINGTON - Following on calls by
civil society, the World Bank has released a draft
summary framework for its re-engagement with
Myanmar over the next year and a half, with formal
interim strategy slated to be ready by the end of
October.
At the beginning of August, the
World Bank, along with the Asian Development Bank,
reopened offices in Yangon, following more than a
year of widely watched though still disputed
political and social reforms in the country. This
marks the first formal engagement between the
World Bank and Myanmar, also known as Burma, in 25
years, as well as the first ever entry of the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World
Bank Group's private-sector arm.
Already
the bank has pledged an US$85 million loan, also
expected for approval in
October, alongside a plan to restructure Myanmar's
debt, worth some $400 million.
Now, the
bank has released a draft summary of what is
formally known as an interim strategy note (ISN),
intended to help inform ongoing consultations on
the draft ISN. But the move comes following urging
by local and international NGOs and amidst ongoing
complaints that the bank has not engaged in
adequate consultation with local communities.
Indeed, there is still no local-language
version of the ISN, though the bank says that this
is under preparation.
To date, local
organizations and communities have felt the World
Bank's approach is non-inclusive, sparse on
details, lacks transparency and, most worrisome,
does not solicit input from the organizations and
communities most affected by conflict and
development to inform their decision-making
process, Jennifer Quigley, with the
Washington-based US Campaign for Burma, told IPS.
Just prior to the ISN release, four dozen
Myanmarese NGOs sent a letter to the World Bank's
headquarters, expressing their anxiety that "the
Bank's re-engagement activities in our country ...
have been rushed, secretive and top-down."
The letter's writers note having
"initiated discussions" with the bank and others
since early this year and admit that the current
situation of flux and reform "presents
opportunities for the World Bank to practice good
governance". But they also characterize the ISN
design process as "flawed".
"While there
have been some informal meetings with World Bank
staff and some civil society networks ... there
was never any mention of the ISN, let alone formal
consultations," the letter states.
"[N]o
consultation approach, consultation materials,
guide questions, location or timeline were ever
disclosed. The outcomes of the consultation and
the draft ISN are not even posted online."
This last point has now been rectified,
and the bank is openly requesting emailed
reactions to the draft ISN.
"The World
Bank is and has been consulting widely," the
bank's Chisako Fukuda told IPS. "From the ongoing
consultations on the draft ISN, we have already
heard important views from a range of people in
Myanmar, from government, civil society, local and
international NGOs working on Myanmar, development
partners, UN agencies and the private sector, and
we look forward to further discussion."
For their part, the NGO representatives
offered a series of detailed suggestions to bank
officials, both with regard to how to structure a
stronger consultation process and on how to
safeguard its re-entry into Myanmar.
These
latter include a spectrum of economic,
environmental and human-rights-related protections
based on Myanmar's "history of rights abuses and
corruption ... particularly in relation to
infrastructure projects, coupled with the
country's history of economic isolation".
Local complexities According to
the draft ISN, much of the bank's initial work
over the year-and-a-half will revolve around
assessments, evaluations and capacity-building,
readying the ground for a full country program to
follow.
The document also includes a
pointed recommendation to "Move slowly and scale
up gradually; invest in developing government's
implementation capacity and fiduciary/safeguard
systems", though this warning may be complicated
by a separate reference to "generating quick and
tangible impacts in people's daily lives".
Perhaps the most contentious section of
the ISN will be the bank's plan to "support the
peace process in border areas through
community-driven development programs to promote
the recovery of conflict-affected communities".
According to Pamela Cox, World Bank vice-president
for East Asia and Pacific, in a video released
this week, this aspect of the bank's proposed work
plan would receive about US$5 million in funding.
While a focus on these communities is
undeniably critical, their engagement is also the
most complicated. It is here that locals are most
marginalized from the reforms process in Myanmar,
most alienated from the state and most suspicious
of "development", often seeing such projects as
thinly veiled attempts to take over their
resource-rich lands.
In late July, a
network of ethnic Karen community-based
organizations released a statement criticizing the
Norway-led Myanmar Peace Support Initiative
(MPSI), a high-level project working to assist in
negotiating peaceful settlements among the ethnic
conflicts still raging in several of Myanmar's
border regions. (In June, the World Bank had
pledged to support Norway's efforts.)
Worryingly, the Karen criticisms sound
strikingly similar to those voiced more recently
on the World Bank's ISN design process, decrying
the effects of a "lack of transparency and
community involvement" in the MPSI.
"Given
those problems, we ask MPSI and other proponents
of donor-driven peace funds not to undermine our
peace process, but rather to move to a more
inclusive and transparent process," the letter
stated.
"MPSI should not take shortcuts or
sow division within our leadership and our
community in a bid to rush the deployment of
funds. We understand your sense of urgency, but
this process is too fragile to easily survive
major mistakes that can be avoided."
Some
groups have recently voiced concerns that
international groups, partnering with the
government, could effectively squeeze out
community-led initiatives in the border areas.
"If the World Bank goes through the
government, there are many questions that we need
to ask - for example, will only registered groups
get opportunities?" Paul Sein Twa, with the Karen
Environmental and Social Action Network and one of
the lead writers of the recent letter to the World
Bank, told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a news
website, last week.
"We would encourage
them to see many of the unregistered and local
groups working in the border regions as well. If
the international NGOs don't understand the issues
on the ground, there could be many problems."
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