Chixoy Dam, Guatemala / Articles

The World Bank, Dams and the Quest for Reparations

The World Bank has been the largest single source of funds for large dam construction worldwide. Under its stated aim of alleviating poverty, it has promoted and funded dams that have displaced more than 10 million people from their homes and land, caused severe environmental damage, and pushed borrowers further into debt. Never hesitant to exact loan repayment in perpetuity for projects it has funded (even failed projects), the World Bank has never been forced to pay for the destruction it has caused to millions of people’s lives and the environment.

Since World War II some 45,000 large dams have been built, generating an estimated 20 percent of the world’s electricity and providing irrigation to fields that produce some 10 percent of the world’s food. The harnessing of wild rivers has not, however, occurred without considerable human and environmental cost. Dams flood some of the most productive agricultural lands in the world.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

"History does not allow injustices to vanish just because we are unable to address them."  Colombian author William Ospina

The fight for justice made by the communities affected by the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala has been going on for more than two decades. Their story is stupefying. At the time the dam was being built, horrendous persecution and even massacres of people in the dam region took place at the hands of the dictatorship. The indigenous Maya-Achí communities that lived on lands adjacent to the Chixoy (Negro) River where the dam was being built did not escape the hatred of the brutal regime. People lost the river, their land, fruit trees, animals, sacred sites, their dignity and, too many, their lives. Close to 6,000 people suffered ill effects from the dam, and at least 400 were murdered.

The survivors' resilience is admirable and humbling. For many years communities have organized, sought out national and international allies, protested, wrote letters, and met officials of the Guatemalan government, and project financiers at the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Community leaders sought remedy for wrongs doing committed against their loved ones as the dam was being planned, built and put into operation.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

An interview with Elizabeth Bevington, a member of a team of 20 pro-bono lawyers with Holland & Knight, LLP (H&K), which advises COCAHICH on the Chixoy negotiations.

Involvement of a well-respected neutral facilitator is key. We began the process with a government agency in charge of human rights as the organizer and moderator of the meetings. That process did not work well, and we recommended involving a neutral party. After some due diligence, Roberto Menendez of the Organization of American States (OAS) was identified as a potential mediator and all parties accepted. This change marked the beginning of the real advances in the process.