Oakland, CA — Every spring for the last fifteen years, the World Bank has organized the “Conference on Land and Poverty,” which brings together corporations, governments and civil society groups. The aim is ostensibly to discuss how to “improve land governance.”
Whereas the 16th conference will take place in Washington D.C. from March 23 to 27, hundreds of civil society organizations are denouncing the World Bank’s role in global land grabs and its deceitful leadership on land issues.
“The big question is whose interests the World Bank really serves. While they spend considerable time and money painting themselves as champions of the poor, the Bank has a battery of practices and policies that suggest a very different truth,” said Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute.