February 22, 2001
The World Bank Group’s announcement that it has appointed a special committee to oversee the controversial Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project was met today with a lukewarm response from international environment and human rights groups, who expressed concern over potentially harmful loopholes and omissions in the committee’s charter.
The Bank-appointed International Advisory Group (IAG) was appointed to act as a watchdog for the pipeline, a massive oil development project in western Africa. Approved by the Bank in June 2000, over the strong opposition of local and international environmental and human rights groups, the project will provide more than $190 million in financing to the governments of Chad and Cameroon and to an oil consortium led by ExxonMobil and Chevron.
The locally affected populations and international environmental and human rights groups had asked for a moratorium on the construction of the pipeline, stating that the project would not only harm fragile rainforests in Cameroon, but may worsen an already violent human rights situation in Chad. Some of these concerns materialized last November when the Chadian government used more than $4 million from the deal to purchase arms. The World Bank agreed to set up the International Advisory Group in an effort to address some of the concerns of civil society.
Pipeline critics said the appointment of the IAG represents a first step toward greater transparency in how the project develops, but cautioned that the group’s charter, or Terms of Reference, calls its ultimate effectiveness into question. Their chief concerns include:
- the Terms of Reference appointing the IAG do not include the monitoring
of human rights under the mandate of the IAG; - the relationship between the IAG and the oil companies is unclear, making access to critical information from the oil companies uncertain;
- the IAG has no permanent posting in the pipeline region, and will be limited by monitoring from afar. On-site visits are scheduled only twice per year.
“To us, it is unclear what this IAG will actually be monitoring, and there is no mention at all how the members of the group will actually communicate with the local people affected by this project,” said Samuel Nguiffo of the Centre for Environment and Development in Cameroon.
“This project has been plagued from the start with transparency, environmental, and corruption problems, and is desperately in need of an oversight committee that will aggressively promote community interests and needs. It’s not yet clear that the IAG will play this role,” said Emilie Thenard, associate for Center for International Environmental Law’s Human Rights and Environment Program.
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