Rights for the world's evicted. Are development projects harming people they're meant to help?

In the current decade, 10 million people a year have been displaced (forced to move) by development projects intended to improve their lives. The evidence is clear that such displacement, caused by large-scale dam, infrastructure and urban regeneration projects, has had unforeseen and damaging results. Contributors to the Development Induced Displacement and Impoverishment Conference held in Oxford, UK, in January 1995 probed these issues and asked, Why can't developers do better?

Of 20 million people displaced in India alone since 1947, 75 percent became impoverished as a result of development. Displacement commonly unravels the social fabric of a society, especially of indigenous groups. It fragments social networks and weakens or tears apart families and whole communities. It can undermine law and order and reduce self-sufficiency. Other, specific human problems associated with involuntary displacement are:

• loss of livelihoods, homes and land
• increased incidence of disease and reduced life expectancy
• lack of food security, loss of access to common property resources
• loss of a sense of cultural identity and denial of human rights.

These ills have been made worse in many instances by faulty management of resettlement programmes and inadequate training of personnel. Failure to correct such flaws or to devise policies that head off displacement and buffer the effects of forced resettlement will disadvantage governments, too, by:

• exhausting natural resources and weakening economies through poverty and unemployment overload
• giving rise to political and social unrest and international disrepute for alleged human rights abuses
• forcing people displaced by development projects to move across international borders to survive
• failing to yield optimum value for money from national infrastructure projects which could otherwise be providing new jobs, relieving poverty and promoting social integration.

The Oxford debate centred on priority strategies national governments could adopt to improve matters, viz:

• finding alternatives to the sorts of projects that give rise to displacement. If they are unavoidable, action should be taken to ensure that the displaced people at least regain their earlier living standards and feel some benefit from the project. They should be fully compensated for their loss and be helped to re-establish their lives and communities
• training those responsible for managing resettlement to avoid socially counter-productive wrong turns
• building institutional capacity among resettled groups as well as in prospective host population
• keeping resettled, as well as host communities, informed about decisions likely to affect their future and providing fair opportunities for both to participate in decision making processes
• incorporating emerging international standards on resettlement into their own policy and law so that the social, economic and cultural rights of displaced people are guaranteed
• within this framework, special provisions should be made to protect the rights of specially vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, women and indigenous peoples.

Source(s):
Papers given by Michael M Cernea, Theodore E. Downing, Chris McDowell and Kemal Mustafa to the Conference on Development Induced Displacement and Impoverishment, 3 - 7 January 1995, Oxford, UK.
The findings of the 1996 and 1995 conference, in Spanish and English are at: Full document.

Funded by: World Bank and ESCOR (DFID) 1994 -1995

id21 Research Highlight: 29-September-1998

Further Information:
Theodore E. Downing
University of Arizona
Research Professor of Social Development
Arizona Research Laboratories: Interdisciplinary Division
University of Arizona
1237 N. Mountain Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85721-0471
USA

Tel: USA 520-621-2025
Fax: USA 520-326-333
Contact the contributor: downing@U.Arizona.edu

University of Arizona

Other related links:
Theodore E. Downing is the founder of the Development Policy Kiosk