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Credit Postponed !!
NIGERIA (High Risk) - World Bank Agency Postpones Credit Grant Because of Environmentalist Objections. The board of the International Finance Corporation, the private sector lending arm of the World Bank, has postponed a decision on funding oil services companies in the Niger Delta following protests from Nigerian environmental activists known as Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and the Coalition of Niger Delta Organizations in the Diaspora. The IFC said it remained committed to the funding and stressed that any sub-projects would still have to meet environmental standards. It added that the type of projects involved were software development, landscaping and engineering design, which would have minimal impact on the environment. Shell has described the allegations of environmental harm resulting from its coastal drilling operations as "false and unsubstantiated". The group is affiliated with the international non-governmental activist organization, Friends of the Earth. The IFC board had been slated last week to approve a US$15 million revolving credit facility for subcontractors of Royal Dutch/Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil group, through local Nigerian banks. Shell has been the target of protests in the region since 1993 after a number of damaging oil spills and allegations of human rights abuses. PERSPECTIVE: The postponement is indicative of the increasing extent to which environmental and human rights-related objections have entered deliberations of the IFC and other international financial institutions whose original charters directed only that decisions on credit eligibility be made according to financial criteria. However, the U.S. government's introduction, by the Carter Administration nearly three decades ago, of human rights concerns in such decisions apparently has provided an opening for activists pursuing other issues. (06/19/01)
Press report was forwarded by
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