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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Fri Apr 5, 2013, 03:33 AM Apr 2013

IFC Honduran client linked to death squads

IFC Honduran client linked to death squads
News|Bretton Woods Project|2 April 2013|

The International Finance Corporation (IFC, the Bank’s private sector arm) loan to Honduran palm oil producer Corporación Dinant has come under increased scrutiny as new evidence reveals Dinant’s links to repeated forced evictions and the killings in the Bajo Aguán region.

A February report by US-based NGO Rights Action revealed concrete links between death squads, the Honduran army, the regional police, and a number of private security firms and calculated that at least 88 campesinos and their supporters have been killed in the region since 2009; the majority “clearly have the characteristics of death squad killings.” The report concluded that “actions taken by the World Bank directly contributed to the context of impunity which facilitates the ongoing death squad activity, as they provided loans to Dinant, a principal actor in the conflict, even as reports of the land conflicts in the Aguán were widespread and a general context of impunity and repression carried out by the state in the context of the military coup was also widely reported upon”.

The IFC provided Dinant, the region’s largest single landowner, with a $30 million corporate loan in November 2009, just five months after Honduras's president was removed in a military coup. The IFC insists in the project summary, that: "land acquisition is on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, and there is no involuntary displacement of any people.”

A Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO, the IFC's accountability mechanism) investigation (see Update 82) was triggered in April 2012 by allegations from human rights organisations that the IFC’s client “conducted, facilitated, and supported forced evictions of campesinos in the Aguán valley through inappropriate uses of force by the public and private security forces under the control or influence of Dinant.” In August 2012, the CAO began a full audit into the adequacy of the IFC's response. Its decision is expected to be published in the summer.

More:
http://brettonwoodsproject.org/art.shtml?x=572250

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