The World Bank’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), has finalized its investigation into a complaint filed five years ago, alleging grave human rights violations by communities living near the Salala Rubber Corporation in Liberia. The communities accuse the plantation, owned by Belgian multinational Socfin, of land grabbing and forced evictions, pollution of water sources, sexual abuse, and the destruction of ancestral graves and sacred sites. Publication of the CAO’s findings is being delayed by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank body whose 2008 loan supported expansion of the plantation, which missed a February deadline to respond to the investigation and put forward an action plan to directly address the communities’ grievances. The Salala plantation was originally established in 1959. Members of the 22 communities within the concession’s 4,577 hectares (11,310 acres) in Bong and Margibi counties say they were evicted without their consent and have suffered severe disruption to their livelihoods and cultural and religious practices in the decades that followed. Socfin acquired the plantation in 2007 as Liberia emerged from two decades of civil war. A $10 million loan from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation a year later enabled the company to expand its concession. The financial institution’s loan disclosure included bold ambitions for the plantation’s role: “IFC’s support will encourage Salala to become a local industry leader with regard to environmental, safety, and social standards.” Instead, the IFC’s own reports show Socfin was in violation of the institution’s social and environmental requirements from the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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