Violent evictions and human rights abuses in Tanzania supported by the World Bank

A new report by the Oakland Institute documents the Bank’s role in human rights abuses in southern Tanzania

PHOTO Credit: Tanzania National Parks Authority rangers.

The World Bank is financing evictions and human rights abuses in Tanzania - in the name of conservation. A recent report by the Oakland Institute examines the World Bank’s US$150 million Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW).

The project will develop four Protected Areas to increase tourism in the south of Tanzania. But the Oakland Institute found that this “comes at an enormous cost to local Indigenous communities living adjacent to the Protected Areas”.

The report, titled, “Unaccountable & Complicit: The World Bank Finances Evictions & Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania”, is based on research carried out by a team of researchers in Tanzania. They remain anonymous to ensure their safety.

The Oakland Institute writes that,

One of the four targeted parks is the Ruaha National Park (RUNAPA). This report details how the Tanzanian government, with funding from the World Bank, through threats of evictions, extrajudicial killings, and cattle seizures, is attempting to force communities away from their homes and villages. Its plan to evict tens of thousands of people living close to RUNAPA is in violation of the Bank’s safeguards and procedures. Communities report that park rangers, receiving funding through REGROW, have been implicated in murders of several villagers and numerous instances of violence since the project began in 2017. The project’s goal to improve local livelihoods is overshadowed by massive cattle seizures, which are decimating herders financially.

World Bank ignores safeguards

The World Bank is ignoring its own safeguards. When the Oakland Institute complained about the government’s planned evictions to expand the Ruaha National Park, the Bank replied that its “mandate does not extend to overseeing the conduct of Member countries’ government agencies or to intervening in the event of alleged wrongdoing unrelated to a World Bank-financed project”.

Yet the expansion of the Ruaha National Park and the government’s brutal tactics to evicted communities are to expand tourism in the Park, which is an explicit goal of the World Bank-funded REGROW project.

The Oakland Institute has now written an open letter to the President of the World Bank Ajay Banga urging him “to take immediate action to end the complicity of the Bank in these abuses”. The Oakland Institute is encouraging people to send the message to the World Bank via its website.

One of the villagers affected told the Oakland Institute that,

“People living in Mbarali are suffering very much from RUNAPA armed rangers. They treat them with cruelty, including killings, with no proper reason. No steps have been taken by the government. There is no rule of law. The land of the farmers and pastoralists is taken by RUNAPA and we are forced to leave our ancestral land. The communities of Mbarali, if steps are not taken, will fall into poverty, which was not the intention of the REGROW project.”

The Oakland Institute notes that the evictions of Maasai pastoralists from the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and from grazing lands in Loliondo have been reported internationally - in part because of reports by the Oakland Institute.

“The dire situation in the south has gone unreported,” the Oakland Institute writes, “despite a very similar process of dispossession and human rights abuses and the same desire to boost tourism income.”

Following the publication of the Oakland Institute’s report, the human rights abuses and threats of eviction have been reported in The Guardian, Associated Press, Mongabay, and picked up by several other major news outlets.

The World Bank launched its REGROW project in September 2017. The project runs for eight years and supports the government of Tanzania’s target of earning US$6 billion by attracting five million visitors annually.

Evictions threatened

The Ruaha National Park receives dedicated funding from REGROW. A December 2022 project report states that, “the Project continues to enhance park management capacity and measures and has provided equipment that are being used for patrols…”

Tens of thousands of people face eviction as a result of the expansion of the boundaries of the Park.

In October 2022, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, Dr. Angeline Mabula, announced that five villages, with a total population of 21, 252 people would be evicted. In addition 47 sub-villages from 14 villages would be evicted. The legal registration of the villages will be cancelled.

“If you continue to be there and the village is delisted it means you are breaking the law,” Mabula said.

In response to the threat of evictions, 852 smallholder farmers from Mbeya filed a case at the High Court of Tanzania to stop the government’s plans to evict them from their homes and land.

Yet the World Bank’s REGROW Resettlement Policy Framework states that the “project, by design is not expected to cause or influence the need for any kind of resettlement”.

Extrajudicial killings, rapes, and cattle captured

Rangers in the Ruaha National Park are accused of extrajudicial killings of villagers near the Park, since the World Bank’s involvement started.

The Oakland Institute writes,

On April 23, 2021, RUNAPA rangers reportedly shot and killed William Nundu, a fisherman. The same day, they allegedly killed two young herders, 25-year-old Sandu Masanja and Ngusa Salawa, just 14 years old, in the Rujewa Ward (close to RUNAPA).

Francis Mtega, Member of Parliament for Mbarali, has called for an investigation into these murders and into the death of Musa Ndiwege and the disappearances of Abdallah Daimon and Abed Udama.

A 2022 report by Chama Cha Wafugaji Tanzania, a community organisation, documented these killings and six more murders, allegedly by Ruaha National Park rangers, since 2017. There are also reports of women being raped.

One pastoralist told the Oakland Institute that,

“Rangers captured my herd of cattle on September 21, 2022. The rangers assaulted me badly. I, as the owner of the animals, had no option but to follow the impounded livestock. I was severely beaten. I felt like dying. They forced me to cut and pull thorny branches and make a holding kraal [corral for cattle]. Then I was forced to stare at the very hot sun. The animals were also tortured. They did not eat or drink water for six days. Those were severe punishments.”

The Oakland Institute writes that, “Over the course of the project, the World Bank has failed to take any action against rampant violence committed by the rangers it finances.”

In June 2023, two community members, with support from the Oakland Institute, filed a complaint to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel.

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