10-1 Multilateral Banks and Indigenous Peoples

World Bank Holds Funds for Development Project in Brazil

Polonoroeste Update In February 1985, for the first time, the World Bank halted payments on a loan because of environmental problems and threats to the integrity of indigenous populations. The loan was for what has become perhaps the most notorious multilaterally financed development project ever - the Northwest Region Integrated Development Program (Polonoroeste), a $1.6 billion project to pave…

Social Violence and Political Authority in India - A Challenge to Human Rights

Between October 31st and November 10th, 1984, India's capital city of Delhi became the focal point of riots against citizens of the Sikh faith. Even the lowest estimate of fatalities in Delhi alone puts the number of Sikh dead at more than 300. Indian human rights workers estimate a death toll closer to 1,000, with further deaths occurring in other north Indian cities. The most disturbing feature…

Resisting Land Grabbing in Ecuador

Quichua Indians Threatened by Development In Coca, a pioneer city at the junction of Ecuador's Coca and Napo rivers, tension fills the air. Armed troops patrol the streets. Since the African Palm firms of Palmoriente S.A. and Palmeras de Ecuador S.A. Revealed that they each wanted to expand their African Palm plantations of 10,000 hectares to 200,000 hectares, a land speculation boom has begun.…

Native Rebellion and US Intervention in Central America

The Implication of the Kuna Case for the Miskito Although historical parallels can never be more than partial and suggestive, the remarkably strong similarities between the revolution of the San Blas Kuna of Panama and the struggle going on today involving the Miskito of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast can inform and illuminate as well as divert. When San Blas and Miskitia were cut off geographically…

Multilateral Development Banks and Indigenous Peoples

In the past year Cultural Survival has worked with environmentalist organizations, notably the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund, in urging Congress to pay attention to the harmful social and environmental effects of many loans made by the large multilateral development banks (MDBs). In this connection I testified on September 18, 1985 before the Subcommittee on…

Multilateral Development Assistance Destabilizes West Irian

In February 1984, a steady stream of Irianese villagers began crossing the border from Indonesian-controlled West Irian into Papua New Guinea in the east. By the end of 1984, an estimated 11,000 Irianese "voted with their feet" and left their ancestral lands located in territory that has been under Indonesian control since the early 1960s, when the Dutch finally relinquished their claims. Today,…

Mining and Indianism in Brazil

About a year ago the Brazilian Anthropological Association, the Union of Indian Nations (UNI), the Pro-Indian Commission of Sao Paulo, the Missionary Indianist Council and other groups that support the Indian cause produced a document designed to convince the government of the legal, anthropological and political grounds for changing the legislation concerning mining on Indian lands adopted under…

Logging Disrupts Solomon Islanders' Customary Way of Life

In northern New Georgia Island of the Solomon Islands, the Levers Pacific Timbers Company is presently cutting about half of the 50,000m(3) of rain forest logs that are exported annually from the Solomons. On Kolombangara Island, all accessible lowland rain forest has already been cleared by Levers, a subsidiary of Unilevers, the world's sixth largest company. In the clearing process, about 60…

Legal Strategies for Cultural Survival and Human Rights

Under the national laws and legal systems of the countries in which Indians live, it has been extremely difficult for them to find protection for their human rights. In light of such inadequacies, Indian nations have made efforts to establish an international personality in the courts and political assemblies of the world. Needless to say, their efforts to reassert their sovereignty in their…

Economic Assistance in Central America: Development or Impoverishment?

Whenever Congress is faced with the decision to provide military assistance to Central American governments and "freedom fighters," public protest and debate ensues. The only voices of protest accompanying requests for economic assistance to Central America, however, are those of fiscal conservatives who object to spending large sums of money on such "giveaway" programs. I believe, however, that…

Dam in Sarawak Forces 3,000 Iban to Resettle

Two More Dams May Displace Another 17,000 Natives Within the next 10 years, Sarawak may have three huge hydroelectric dams - but not without displacing 20,000 people and destroying tens of thousands of hectares of tropical rain forest. Already, more than 3,000 Iban, the longhouse dwellers of Sarawak's vast, trackless jungles, have been forced to move from their homes to make way for the recently…