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Aleta Brown
Campaign Associate
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703 USA
Phone: 1.510.848.1155
Fax: 1.510.848.1008
email: aleta@irn.org
http://www.irn.org 

Background on the report:

Ted Downing, an anthropologist hired by IFC to evaluate the Pangue social impact and resettlement plans, contacted Barbara Rose Johnston-who was  coordinating a global research and advocacy effort through the Society for Applied Anthropology-requesting advocacy assistance. He sought this
assistance because the independent review that he was hired to do by WB President, Wolfensohn regarding the Pehuen Foundation was being suppressed by the IFC, he was threatened with punative lawsuits if he circulated any of his research findings, and more importantly, the Pehuenche poeple were experiencing a number of human rights abuse problems and had no legal avenue to persue.

Last November, Downing appeared before the American Anthropological Association Committee for Human Rights to present his case. Also present were representatives from IFC, the World Bank, and a Chilean anthropologist (who is also half Pehuenche). The CfHR voted to persue an inquiry into the case, examining the human rights implications tied to the Biobío dam projects and also, the broader moral and legal ramifications of private development bank funding. Following is the Executive Summary of the report. As stated above, the full content of the report can be found on the web at <www.ameranthassn.org/chrbrief.htm>.

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The Pehuenche, the World Bank Group and ENDESA S.A.

Violations of Human Rights in the Pangue and Ralco Dam Projects on the Bío-Bío River, Chile

[When the Committee for Human Rights takes up a specific case of human rights abuse, it may prepare a Briefing Document, written by one or more of its own members, or commissioned from a knowledgeable colleague. The briefing document is reviewed, perhaps edited, and adopted by the Committee as a whole and then, together with recommended actions, transmitted to the president of the American Anthropological Association. A Briefing Document is not an official document of the Association, but provides essential information supporting the action recommendations the Committee recommends to the Association president.]

Executive Summary

This report was prepared by the Committee for Human Rights of the AAA in response to a complaint from a member of the Association, Dr. Theodore Downing. Downing had served as consultant for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in an evaluation of the efficacy of the Pehuen Foundation, an organization created to offset the socioeconomic impacts of an IFC-financed project, the Pangue Dam, the first of a interrelated pair of dams on the Bío-Bío River in southern Chile. This evaluation was prompted by complaints of abuses perpetrated against Pehuenche ndians
through the Pehuen Foundation. Downing found numerous grave abuses, but the IFC, together with the private Chilean developer ENDESA, suppressed his report. This placed the anthropologist in the professionally untenable position of being unable to reveal to the Pehuenche information that directly affected their rights and social welfare and the developing threat to their cultural survival.

According to Downing, the IFC failure to release Downing's 1996 report to the Pehuenche in a culturally appropriate manner, as mandated in his original contract, meant that the Pehuenche were asked to sign resettlement agreements (exchanging ancestral land rights for land high in mountains, several hours distant from their homes) without an understanding of the effects of Pangue Dam development or the potential effects of the proposed Ralco Dam development. Furthermore, they were not informed about how the Pehuen Foundation is structured, what role it is supposed to play in funneling income back into the Pehuenche community, or of their constitutionally protected right to
participate in the decision to build a dam within their ancestral territory. These and other actions that have accompanied the construction of the Pangue Dam violated the human and constitutional rights of the Pehuenche. The plan to immediately begin constructing the second dam, Ralco, will, if no changes are made, result in a dramatically larger violation of Pehuenche human rights.

The present Report of the Committee for Human Rights presents the evidence this Committee's review and analysis of the evidence, leading to the twelve recommendations for action listed in Part IV of this Report. We propose that the American Anthropological Association, the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group, ENDESA, S.A., and others take these twelve actions on behalf of the Pehuenche, on behalf of the anthropological consultant in this case, and on behalf of all anthropologists. These actions address the roles that the IFC, the World Bank Group, ENDESA S.A., the Chilean Government, private banks and others played in this case, the remedies required to restore Pehuenche rights on the Bío-Bío, and the changes required to prevent these actors from setting in motion future development projects that will violate the human rights of other peoples in another places.