The Second Housing Crisis: Agyemankata

In keeping with my theme of substantive posts, here is another one, albeit a week late.

Last Thursday (October 11) I went on a site visit with one of the organizations that has “partnered” with the Development Institute. The organization is called the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions ("COHRE"). The project addresses forced evictions in a town called Agyemankata, near Accra. The evictions are required for the construction of a landfill by the Accra Metropolitan Association (“AMA”).

Its pretty clear that Accra needs a landfill and stopping the landfill is not what this is about (for me, at least). What this is about is making sure that the people whose land is being taken are given some type of due process and compensation— neither of which is guaranteed in system with a weak civil court system. Aside from being legally repugnant, situations where people are forced from their land without due process and compensation inevitably become violent conflicts at some future date. If its something that can be avoided, I say we try our best. I assume that is why the Development Institute has partnered with COHRE on this proj8ct (The Development Institutues does conflict resolution, remember) but no one has told me that in so many words. So, for this project, I have my “condemnation lawyer” hat on, as opposed to my “alternative dispute resolution” hat on. I’m quite comfortable in both hats, thank you very much.

The long and short of it is that the landfill project is being funded by the World Bank. The World Bank, bless its global heart, has certain safeguards in place to try to minimize the social and environmental impacts of its projects. Some of those safeguards require that any project which displaces people contain a fairly specific “resettlement action plan” that moves the displaced people to other land and provides the displaced people compensation. As with anything involving large scale economic development, the resettlement safeguards and the compensation scheme are intricate, voluminous and fairly comprehensive. Good thing that have a condemnation expert like me around! ;).

As extensive as the regulations are, in good Ghanaian style, the AMA has chosen to ignore them all. Instead of following the pesky safeguards polices, the AMA has decided to just push the Agyemankata community off the landfill site. In January 2007, the “State Security Service” came through and marked houses in the landfill site as follows:

Ouch! Imagine coming home and seeing that painted on your house! Fortunately, the World Bank has a grievance procedure whereby an aggrieved community can request an investigation if there is reason to believe that World Bank policies are being violated. The investigation is undertaken by an independent panel known as the World Bank Inspection Panel. Last Thursday’s site visit was made by the panel to assess whether the Agyemankata community’s grievance is eligible for a full investigation. The white man pictured is Dr. Werner Kiene, an Austrian agricultural economist who is serving as the chairman of the World Bank Inspection Panel. The other gentleman is Isaac Smith, a coconut farmer and the proprietor of the local elementary school. Mr. Smith is one of the leaders of the Agyemankata community’s efforts. Note that at this eligibility phase of the investigation, World Bank policies (yes, those again) prohibit media coverage, presumably to allow the inspection to take place in a fair and unbiased way. I don’t think that my blog is press coverage (First Amendment lawyers?) but because I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the Agyemankata community’s grievance, I won’t say anymore and I’ll just give you a few pictures to get a sense of the scene.

The community had set up a “Durba,” or town meeting, to welcome and address the Inspection Panel. You can’t get a good feel of it here, but there were well over 100 people there. Various members of the community met Dr. Kiene. The woman behind him is Sylvia, a lawyer with COHRE and the head of this project. The other white guy is Peter Lallas, the executive secretary of the Inspection Panel. He is an American lawyer, and has a pretty cool job, assuming he likes to travel.

After lots of speech giving, Dr. Kiene answered questions from the community. It was a really interesting scene.

And there was dancing! I asked someone what the significance of the dancing was. I was told that its just some thing that happens at a Durba.

Dr. Keine presses a point with Mr. Smith.

Since the entire community is going to be displaced, everyone was pretty interested in the inspection. I think the whole town followed us around on the inspection.

After the inspection, we had some refreshments. I discovered my favorite African custom- leaving guests alone to eat (unlike at home, where leaving a guest alone to eat is considered rude and, as a result, the hosts hovers over the guest while they eat, something I hate). Then we went to meet the local chief to thank him for letting us inspect his land. The local chief was out so we went to pay our respects to a village elder, but that guy was sleeping (he is an elder, after all). We left a note and went home. On a side note, during the inspection, the World Bank people were very conscious of observing all local customs, which, say what you will about the bank, was commendable.

Needless to say, it was a pretty interesting day. Hope I have more like it, and I hope that I can offer some assistance to the community during my time here.