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afrol.com, 25 February - The scandal-ridden construction of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, made possible by large World Bank credits and guarantees, has finally gotten its "oversight committee". The World Bank this week appointed an International Advisory Group to "assist on" the project, heavily criticised by human rights groups, environmentalists, the Chadian opposition and Corporate Watch.
The Chad-Cameroon pipeline project has been waiting for the establishment of an oversight committee for months, as the critics of fund spending have mounted. The International Advisory Group (IAG) is supposed to "identify potential problems in the use of public revenues, the adequacy of civil society participation, progress in building institutional capacity, and more generally issues of governance, environmental management and social impacts. The IAG will recommend actions to the World Bank Group and the Governments of Chad and Cameroon to address such problems." The Chad-Cameroon pipeline project however went wrong from the start. It became known that the pipeline would cut through one of the world's last primary rainforests in East Cameroon and that the sloppy environmental impact assessment had been carried out by the Exxon and Esso oil companies in 1997-98. Human rights groups further pointed to very poor human rights standards in Chad and the fact that there is a civil war going on, which only could be fuelled by the access to "fresh" money.
President Deby in June 2000 promised to manage oil proceeds transparently, build schools, hospitals and modernise agriculture and animal husbandry. "We need to create higher institutions of learning so that our children and our brothers can stay home to learn what is needed instead of going to the four corners of the world to look for knowledge," the President said. The government even made serious attempts to end the civil war by offering rebel groups a participation in government. Given all these promises and conditions, the World Bank finally granted its aid to the pipeline project. New scandals were, however, soon to come. Shortly after the credit was granted, it was known that the Chadian government had been spending some of the money on arms and did not consult the parliament on how the money was spent. President Deby had earlier guaranteed the transparent spending and consultations with the parliament. World Bank Country Director Robert Calderisi in an interview with Edie News downplayed this incident, saying "about 18% of the petroleum bonus that the government received from the companies in May has gone to military expenditure. The rest of the 60% already committed has gone to a variety of things, including road maintenance and flood relief." In December 2000, even the Washington Post, initially very positive to the project, ran an editorial saying Deby's government should get any more funding if it was not managing the revenues in a transparent fashion. The US newspaper was outraged about how Deby had used the initial money he got for the project and the bonus he got from the oil companies to buy weapons. Calderisi however admitted that he was uncomfortable with the lack of transparency, remembering that the president had promised to consult Parliament and an oversight committee representing civil society about the use of these funds. "In fact, the Government committed 60% of the funds without doing what the President had promised, so that's led to concern here and there that the President's and the Government's commitments were not being respected. So we've taken a very strong position on this, which is that the commitment to the Chadian public was at least as important as any agreement with the World Bank," Calderisi said. - This money is not covered by agreements with the World Bank, but we agreed with the President that was a good way of demonstrating the Government's intention to use such resources responsibly and openly, the regional World Bank leader continued. Although the World Bank plays down the significance of the money spent on arms, fact is that the civil war has been fuelled the last months. Especially in the Tibesti mountain desert region bordering Libya and Niger, fights between the government and the Mouvement pour la democratie et la justice au Tchad (MDJT) have escalated since October 2000. The MDJT, which demands the resignation of Deby, claims to have killed 413 government soldiers in December 2000, while government troops claim to have killed 120 enemy fighters. Improvements in the human rights situation proved temporal. Media harassment quickly reappeared and in November 2000, a former senior public servant, Garonde Djarama, was imprisoned for an article he had published in a Chadian weekly newspaper. He had criticized the government for not reacting strongly enough against the racist killings of sub-Saharan Africans in Libya. The same month, the renown World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), accused the Chadian government forces of putting children "on the front line in order to detect mines and if reluctant they are reportedly killed." The government allegedly makes use of forced recruitment of child soldiers from Southern Chad to the armed forces in the north of the country. In January 2001, the MDJT claimed that government troops had executed prisoners of war, including one of the movement's leaders, Yaya Labadri. Executions of prisoners of war are seen as a serious war crime and the Chadian government quickly denied the charges. The case has still not been investigated by an international body. Also environmentalists keep complaining about the poor environmental security in the pipeline project. Korinna Horta, a senior economist at the Environmental Defence involved in the pipeline project, says she is "not confident at all" in how the environmental concerns of the project are addressed. While the project initially had promised a local participation of all the peoples affected, it later turned out that the consultations had been more or less fictive. "In Chad local people were visited in their villages by some Exxon or other company, accompanied by military gendarmes. The bank has admitted that, so there cannot be any kind of participation, people are intimidated and afraid and they have not got any real information about the project. They were only told about the benefits," Horta told Edie News. Other environmental groups maintain that the impact assessments and security precautions are insufficient. "The 660 mile long pipeline poses risks of soil and water pollution from oil spills, and threatens pristine rainforest habitats in Cameroon, the Sierra Club maintains. "According to studies and comments made by foreign and US government agencies, the oil spill response plan is too general and it is severely underfunded to properly respond to an oil spill," the group said. All involved groups, including the MDJT rebels, environmentalists and human rights activists, however agree to the World Bank's main argument for supporting the project, that "the Chad-Cameroon project represents an unparalleled opportunity for creating a much brighter future for Chad." The World Bank's argument goes on: "At present, the country cannot afford to provide the minimum public services necessary for ensuring a decent life for its people. In four years' time, the pipeline would increase annual Government revenues by 45 to 50 percent per year over current levels and allow it to use those resources for poverty-reducing investments in health, education, environment, infrastructure and rural development." Very few, however, believe this latter part of the argument will be fulfilled under Deby's leadership in N'djamena, although the work of International Advisory Group might improve the situation somewhat. The work of the International Advisory Group is expected to continue for up to ten years, according to the World Bank. It is supposed to visit Chad and Cameroon at least twice a year and report periodically to the World Bank. All reports of the International Advisory Group "will be made public the same day they are submitted to the World Bank," the agency promises.
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Approved by the World Bank last June, "the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project is an unprecedented framework to transform oil wealth into direct benefits for the poor, the vulnerable and the environment," according to a World Bank release. The 3.7 billion dollar project will develop the oil fields at Doba in southern Chad and construct a 1,070 km pipeline to offshore oil-loading facilities in Kribi, on Cameroon's Atlantic coast. The construction work was opened at a ceremony in Kribi in October 2000, attended by Cameroonian President Paul Biya and Chadian President, General Idriss Deby.
The critics were actually met, both by the World Bank, who's financing was absolutely necessary to exploit the oil fields found 30 years earlier, and by the Chadian government. New environmental impact assessments were carried out, leading to several significant changes in the pipeline's alignment route. Further, the Chadian president guaranteed improvements in the human rights situation, transparency in oil revenues and deep ploughing social development. The oil revenues are expected to double Chad's, one of the world's poorest countries, GDP.
