Following Violent Crackdown in Chad, Environmental Defense & Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights Call on World Bank to Rethink Funds for Chad Pipeline Project

Environmental Defense today sent a letter to World Bank President James Wolfensohn asking him to rethink funding for a giant oil and pipeline project in Chad and Cameroon based on recent news of a violent crackdown by the Chadian government. The violence follows the re-election last month of President Idriss Deby in an election process described as fraudulent by local citizens groups and in an investigative report by the French newspaper Le Monde.

This month, the World Bank is to facilitate the contribution of hundreds of millions of dollars from private banks to the ExxonMobil-led oil project, some of which would go to the Deby regime. “This is a critical time to rethink the Chad/Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project,” said Environmental Defense senior economist Korinna Horta in the letter to Wolfensohn. “Protection of the environment and of civil and human rights are the very cornerstones of sustainable development, as you have often stated. The World Bank and the international donor community need to rethink their support for systems which can only be described as government gangsterism.” The full text of the letter can be found at www.environmentaldefense.org.

Last month opposition candidates were detained in what has been widely reported as a violent crackdown in the country. Many of the detainees were released following intervention by Wolfensohn, but Amnesty International and others indicate the violence continues. Among those arrested was Ngarledjy Yorongar, the former member of parliament from Chad’s oil producing region who has opposed the pipeline project.

“Government backed killings and torture show that the World Bank must draw the line and recognize that the present Chadian government can only be expected to misuse loans,” said Delphine Djiraibe, president of a Chadian human rights organization.

According to news reports, last year President Deby, who came to power in a bloody military coup in 1990, used money from the pipeline project to purchase $3 million in weapons. Such misappropriations raise questions about the Bank’s ability to control the misuse of funds in Chad.

“Unless the World Bank assumes its responsibility and suspends support for the Chadian regime until democratic order is established, Africa’s largest infrastructure project threatens to become an environmental disaster with dire consequences for an already impoverished people,” said Horta.