6 March 2008
As a significant rebel threat to his government appears to recede, Chadian President Idriss Deby has clamped down on political opponents and bypassed controls established by an agreement with the World Bank to redirect oil revenues for military use.
According to Reuters, Deby used a state of emergency decree to suspend Chad’s obligation to devote 70 percent of the revenues from the Bank-backed Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline to poverty reduction measures.
The restrictions on Chad’s oil revenues are part of an unprecedented pact Deby made in order to secure World Bank support for the pipeline project, amid concern about his government’s reputation for corruption and human rights abuses. At one time the Bank trumpeted the agreement as a model for other “high-risk” infrastructure projects, though it has yet to be replicated elsewhere.
The central African country of Chad has been in turmoil since the beginning of February, when rebels attacked the capital, N’Djamena, in a failed coup attempt against Deby, who himself took power in 1990 in a similar maneuver. The rebels appear to represent another faction of the same elite Deby is part of – his nephew is a leader of the rebellion – and some observers have suggested that they are motivated in part by the lure of the oil revenues, which have grown exponentially as a result of record-high prices. When the assault was repelled after two days, Deby used it as a pretext to clamp down on political rivals.
Human Rights Watch reports that a prominent parliamentary opposition leader is still missing, while another leading opposition legislator, Ngarlejy Yorongar, “resurfaced in the last few days” in Cameroon after escaping from government custody. Yorongar was one of the early critics of the highly controversial Chad-Cameroon pipeline, and led the coalition of groups who submitted a formal complaint to the World Bank about the project in 2001. He was arrested by security forces immediately after the initial attack was repulsed.
Meanwhile, another prominent critic of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, Delphine Djiraibe, has finally found refuge in Paris after numerous demands for her safe passage out of Chad from colleagues worldwide. Djiraibe heads the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which has consistently challenged the government and the World Bank to live up to their commitments to use the country’s oil revenues for poverty reduction.
As President Deby purportedly seizes Chad’s oil profits to buy arms, World Bank staff have evacuated the country. Reuters reports that a Bank spokesman promised that “once it’s possible to have discussions with the government, we’ll explore whether it’s possible to address pressing needs and ongoing development objectives.” But an unnamed analyst counters that “The World Bank can do nothing, their role has become almost nil in Chad.”
The World Bank has a long and embattled history with the government of Chad over revenues from the Exxon Mobil-led project, which at a cost of $4.2 billion represents the single largest on-shore investment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Soon after the contract with Exxon-Mobil was finalized in 2000, Deby took $25 million of the initial signing bonus and used it to purchase arms – a move that was eventually excused on the grounds that the money was not from direct oil profits.
In December 2005, Deby orchestrated an amendment to the country’s oil revenue management law that allowed it to redirect funds to security spending to quell increasing unrest in the country. In response, the World Bank suspended its loans to Chad, triggering a freeze of the offshore escrow accounts holding oil revenue payments. Facing a standoff in which the government threatened to halt oil production, the Bank backed off, signing an agreement that allowed the resumption of World Bank lending and granting the government even greater discretion over the revenue than before.
The complex and restrictive rules placed on the revenues realized from the pipeline made some activists, concerned with infringements by the World Bank on national sovereignty, uncomfortable, but leadership from Chadian civil society and the autocratic nature of Deby’s government led to a general consensus to support the controls instituted by the agreement with the Bank.
BIC and other observers have long raised questions about whether the Bank could hold Chad to its commitments to spend on priority sectors. After the 2006 standoff, BIC wrote: “Is there any more guarantee today that oil revenues will be used to benefit the poor than there was the day that that the Bank suspended lending in January?” – and concluded that in fact it was more likely that money would be diverted to arms purchases.
Resources
- Chad decrees avoid World Bank controls – analysts, February 28, 2008 (Reuters website)
- Press Release: Chad: Opposition Leader Ibni Still Missing, March 4, 2008 (Human Rights Watch website)
- World Bank to resume lending to Chad after interim agreement reached with government, May 3, 2006 (Bank Information Center website)
- World Bank announces final agreement with Chad on oil revenue management, July 24, 2006 (Bank Information Center website)
- Chad-Cameroon Inspection Panel request, submitted by Ngarlejy Yorongar, March 22, 2001 (Inspection Panel website)