Thursday May 16, 2024
Thursday May 16, 2024
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While few in Colombo may be aware of it, the city is host to a community of people fitting into the category of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) not arising from any armed conflict but instead victims of ‘development-induced displacement’.
In a fairly recent report to the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary in her report dated 18 July 2022 says:
I have written before about the fires at one of those camps for the development displaced called Kajimawatte in Thotalanga. This area got its name from lorries parked on the banks of the Keleni River, which had the Japanese name Kajima written on them. The lorries transported the sand that was mined from the river. Once that operation ceased, the space created to park lorries stayed empty until families evicted from various sites in Borella for development projects and city beautification, were temporarily housed there until permanent housing in the high rises in the vicinity were allocated to them.
Months later, still waiting for the promised housing, the IDPs sheltering in Kajimawatte had their belongings and the temporary roofs over their heads burned to the ground by unexplained fires, not once but three times. The third time the destruction was total and the IDPs were moved to other temporary camps where some still languish nearly a year later. It was rumoured that they will not be allowed to return to Kajimawatte, which has probably been earmarked for a ‘development’ project.
Made utterly powerless, a number of families surviving under extremely difficult conditions in a community centre, sharing one tap for water, one toilet and one light, one plug point and (mercifully) one ceiling fan, they are repeatedly exploited by politicians with promises of solutions to their situation on the condition that they attend their political meetings to swell the audience numbers for the cameras. They dare not refuse to go, although they are exhausted by these cynical acts. They were coaxed into attending a public meeting of the President’s party only recently, where several front-line Ministers and politicians spoke. But none spoke to them. The organisers of the area tasked with bringing in the audience had told them that this would be the decisive final meeting where they would finally hear good news about being rehoused as promised, in yet another self-serving lie.
Colombo’s various authorities are well aware of these people. Once displaced to Kajimawatte, the temporary shelters had been allocated house numbers and water meters installed and dues collected. However, some of those displaced by the subsequent fires are still living in make-shift camps and community centres with their belongings in bags and cardboard boxes, together with their school-going children in impossible conditions, no different to refugee camps, waiting for the promised housing. Meetings with officials and politicians responsible have offered little hope.
Just a few weeks ago, having seen how the community centre gets flooded during the heavy rains, the Government officials had told them they could go back to Kajimawatte and build temporary shelters there. None had the money to do so, having lost all they had in the fires. They have asked the authorities for help to do so, but are still awaiting their response.
Meanwhile, the families with children endure the violent altercations inside and outside the community centre every week, as extreme poverty and substance abuse in the neighbourhood manifest their inevitable consequences.
HR violations against development displaced
The UN report is clear about the HR violations committed against the long-term displaced. It says of the development–induced displaced that:
The authorities in the form of the Grama Sevaka, officials of the UDA, and representatives of politicians have visited these places and collected details of the displaced, making lists in their presence to promise them that those in the lists were definitely earmarked for flats which will be handed over in a matter of weeks. When this performance has been repeated several times with nothing to show for it well past the promised dates, the IDPs themselves had visited some of those officials and representatives of politicians for answers which have left them deeply disappointed.
With many more development projects planned for Colombo and the rest of the country, with much fanfare when monies are received from this or that country or international financial institution, there is likely to be more of these ‘development-induced displaced’ if no proper process in place for planning for appropriate relocation with compensation and mechanisms for remedies.
The UN report identifies development projects which “are especially likely to induce displacement.” They include “large-scale energy and transport infrastructure projects (dams, roads, highways, canals, power plants, railways, airports and spaceports), extractive projects (mines, oil and gas fields, and energy pipelines), and large-scale agribusiness.”
Another category is “Urban renewal or “city beautification” projects. The UN report says “they often result in those communities being forcibly evicted or displaced by economic pressures as renewed neighbourhoods become more desirable to wealthier groups.” While all these projects can be beneficial, adequate consideration has to be paid to those whose lives are negatively affected by their implementation.
UN’s HR principles on development
The UN has developed several principles which are relevant for development projects, in order to abide by their HR obligations, one of which is about ‘adequate housing’.
These principles are relevant both for states and for businesses (“private development actors”) which are associated with the development projects, according to the UN.
As for businesses, the report has useful guidelines on how they should be conducting their planning process, including impact assessment and human rights risk analysis ‘prior to commencing operations’ and adding the risks associated with human rights abuses as a compliance issue (principle 23).
IFIs and the development displaced
The UN report says that IFI’s have their own safeguard policies “dealing specifically with development-induced displacement, termed “involuntary resettlement”. Those of the World Bank Group’s policies have had a “soft law influence on the normative environment” the report says, with those being “incorporated into the policies of other public and private financial institutions”. This is good news. The Special Rapporteur on the right to development has recommended “holding financial intermediaries accountable for upholding safeguard policies”.
With special relevance to the current status of those such as the Kajimawatte displaced, the report makes explicit the HR obligations towards the affected communities which include “communities with and without formal tenure”. It requires authorities to “explicitly guarantee the right to adequate housing in line with international human rights standards, and establish procedural guidelines for evictions.” The report couldn’t be clearer.
And yet, politicians continue to turn a blind eye, happy to accept reports from officials which indicate that all is well and there are no more victims. A single visit to the camps in Thotalanga could easily clarify the claim, but that may seem like too much information for the politicians who are hardly interested in the under-privileged and powerless.
The final report on the Kajimawatte fires was handed over to the Prime Minister in October 2022. In a report dated 11th October 2022, the PM’s official website says:
Almost a year later, there are several families of those displaced, first by eviction, then by fires at the temporary shelters, still living in community centres and camps, in unsanitary and inadequate conditions unsuitable for human habitation.
Soon after the report on the Kajimawatte fires was handed over to PM Dinesh Gunawardene, a report by Roar Media headlined “Kajimawatte: Paying A Price for Urban Development” published on 27 Oct 2022 which interviewed several residents and activists, says that according to a researcher they spoke to, there were times when “the URP and its officials just used this land [Kajimawatte] like a temporary fix, where they would get people to go stay there. Maybe they never planned to give them flats. It was just a way to get them to leave their watte completely.”
She further reveals that according to the UDA report, “it was not possible to provide housing to these families in line with the approval policies under the URP… based on claims that the families are illegal settlers.”
They quote the researcher saying:
“I think it’s very easy for the UDA to say they are illegal settlers and they shouldn’t be entitled to a flat,” Perera said, “How people got there is a lot more complicated than that.” This should have been self-evident if the right process had been followed prior to eviction as set out by the UN guidelines, to assess the risks and the impact of eviction on those who lived in the areas taken over by the government, so that the required explicit guarantee of adequate housing could have been realistically estimated.
With this history, the IFIs and other funders of development projects should do their own due diligence when approving funds for development projects that are presented to them on paper, to actually seek out the truth about the unknown and powerless victims they may create and take care to abide by the guidelines recommended by the Special Rapporteurs of the Right to Development and the Rights of the Internally Displaced Persons.
