World Bank cancels $150m tourism project in Tanzania after abuse claims

OAKLAND, California

The World Bank’s US$150 million Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project in Tanzania is cancelled. 

The decision came after nearly two years of advocacy by the Oakland Institute to hold the Bank accountable for enabling the expansion of RUNAPA and supporting TANAPA, the paramilitary Tanzania National Parks Authority. 

Its rangers are responsible for egregious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and crippling livelihood restrictions that have terrorized farmer and pastoralist communities in the Mbarali District. 

The expansion of the Park from one to over two million hectares threatens over 84,000 people.

“This landmark decision is a major victory for the villagers who courageously stood up to stop the project,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. 

“Though forced to stop funding the terror it unleashed, the Bank must now urgently address the serious harms it has enabled and respond to the demands of the communities whose lives are on hold.”

When initially informed of the abuses and violations of its own safeguards in April 2023, the World Bank failed to take action. 

In June, the Institute filed a request for inspection on behalf of the impacted villagers with the Bank’s Inspection Panel and followed up in September 2023 with a widely covered report, Unaccountable & Complicit.

As a result, the Inspection Panel launched an investigation in November 2023. 

Amidst the investigation, in a rare move, the World Bank suspended disbursements to the project in April 2024, citing the Tanzanian government’s “non-compliance with their Environmental and Social (E&S) obligations… non-compliance related to involuntary resettlement planning activities taking place in RUNAPA,” as well as the absence of a grievance redress mechanism. Continued advocacy led to the project being eventually cancelled in November 2024.

Additional pressure to hold the Tanzanian government and the World Bank accountable came from nine United Nations Special Rapporteurs who urged “all necessary interim measures … to prevent any irreparable harm” to affected villagers.

“The initiative of the UN experts is vital given the extent of abuses inflicted by paramilitary rangers on local communities in a country where there is no rule of law,” continued Mittal. 

“The government and the Bank must be held accountable for the harms caused by their disregard for basic human rights for the sole purpose of increasing tourism revenue,” she concluded.