Miriam Young (RFK Center for Human Rights): It happened that when this event came to be, it happened that at about the same time our selection committee named Delphine Djiraibe our 2004 Human Rights laureate, the article, the provocative article in foreign policy written by Sebastian Mallaby, as well as his book had appeared and a conversation had started.

Now Delphine is mentioned in Mr. Mallabyís book, sheís described as an elegant, chatty human rights leader. And we all agree. And the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline, which has been the focus of much of her work, forms much of one of his chapters of his book. So it seemed only fitting that the two of them should get together at a meeting.

Now obviously the selection committee feels that Delphine is much more than an elegant activist. And I think the issues that are raised by her work and by Mr. Mallabyís writings are much too important to restrict to a private meeting. Hence the idea of a public debate.

Samuel Nguiffo of Cameroon, who is the 1999 Africa recipient of the Goldman Environmental prize, was going to be our third panelist, through the generosity of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. Unfortunately, for all of us Samuel is ill, in the hospital and was unable to come. But we are here for what I feel is a very important conversation, and one that I hope will continue far beyond this single event. The RFK Memorial is very pleased to provide the platform for the beginning of the discussion. Please join me in welcoming all of our panelists.

(Applause)

David Hunter: Good morning. My name is David Hunter, and Iím elected, selected to be the moderator today. Iím very happy to be here for what I feel is going to be a very interesting and important discussion. The catalyst for this as Miriam has mentioned, let me thank now, in case I forget, Miriam and the RFK Center for sponsoring the event and Carnegie for hosting us, and all the panel members for being here, although Iím sure Iíll remember at the end as well.

The catalyst for the meeting in part has been, of course, the publication of Mr. Mallabyís book, the Worldís Banker, A Story of Failed States, Financial Crisis and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Itís a very rich and lively read about the bankís experience in the last more or less decade. And it has many themes running throughout it. Perhaps the theme that has engendered the most controversy has been the portrayal of non-governmental organizations, particularly activist non-governmental organizations, and Iíd say even particularly those from the north, and their role in the development process and their relationship vis-‡-vis the Bank.

The book argues among other things that through the 90s the Bank bent much too much to the concern of NGOs, relatively unrepresentative NGOs. And that as a result, the Bank departed too much from itís competitive advantage in infrastructure, focusing perhaps too much on projects, softer projects such as social and education projects, that safeguard policies and other standards are too much for the poorer countries, and that projects vital to the worldís poor are being held up by fear of the activistsí resistance.

And among the projects that the book highlights in this regard is the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline, a project that Ms. Djiraibe has worked on for a long time, the past decade or so I assume, and worked for what she has just this week received the RFK Human Rights Award. Itís also a project that Mr. Rosenblum is familiar with and has worked on in both Chad and Cameroon.

So it seems that we have an excellent panel for exploring the role of activist NGOs with respect to development in the World Bank, both generally and with respect to the specific example of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline. And this project is, I think everyone would agree, a vital and important test of where the Bank is today and whether the Bank can indeed deliver poverty benefits to Africaís poor, particularly through larger infrastructure projects.

Everyone would agree that, I think everyone, including those at the Bank and critics of the Bank, that the outcome of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline is still uncertain in its ability to deliver benefits. And weíll have to wait and see to some extent how that outcome will come.

But while we embark on the debate today regarding Chad-Cameroon and the NGOs, I hope we also donít lose sight of some of the broader and perhaps ultimately more important themes that are in the book and also raised by the issue of NGOs and the World Bank, themes about how exactly to deliver development effectively. Whether development is best left to relationships between large institutions, such as the World Bank and host governments, what is, or is there any role of local communities, what is the role of NGOs in amplifying the voices of local communities. And I think also what is the role and should there be standards that apply to the development process of the Bank or should there be more discretion left for both Bank staff and the governments?

There are a number of such broader themes that I think the way that you answer them also probably explains how you line up in the question of the role of NGOs. And so I think as we discuss both the role of NGOs, the role of the Bank, Chad-Cameroon that we also may want to explore these broader questions about how to make development effective.

Now I know you didnít come here to listen to me. So Iíll be quiet. I invited everyone to give a few opening comments for no more than five minutes, Iíll try to be relatively strict with the watch, so that we can move more quickly to the question and answer and dialogue through questions.

Sebastian Mallaby (columnist, Washington Post, author of The Worldís Banker): All right, thank you very much. Thank you for having me here. Let me just describe a bit how I got into writing this book and then briefly talk a little bit about the points raised already. I set out to write this book in 2002, sort of in the wake of 9/11. And Iíd been interested in development myself for some time.

Iíd been an African correspondent for the Economists Magazine living in Zimbabwe and traveling around the continent. And I had spent a lot of time in Latin America and some bits of South Asia, Southeast Asia. And I had always been interested in development, but I realized that after 9/11 this interest was kind of breaking out of its ghetto and the concern for failed states, the connection to our security was something which had a broader audience.

And this is actually part of a historical pattern. The Bank was set up in 1944 precisely because in the end of the Second World War there was a connection between the 1930s unemployment and the desperation, the economic desperation, and then the desperate-isms, the political extremism that has come out of that desperation. And that connection, the fear that economic dislocation could lead to political cataclysm spurred the creation of the World Bank in 1944.

But in 1960 when the World Bank was substantially enlarged by the creation of the self-loan window, IDA, again this was about geopolitics. What had happened was that in 1959 the Cuban Revolution had taught people that if you didnít go out and help poor countries they could fall into the Communist column. And the classic development textbook at the time, which is Walt Rostowís Stages of Economic Growth, was subtitled A Non-communist Manifesto.

So youíve got these waves. And I could see that another wave was happening after 9/11, terrorism was leading to a new concern for failed states and therefore for development. And weíve seen that in the development of the Millenium Challenge Account, the Presidentís AIDS Initiative, the really quite substantial increase in development assistance in the last couple of years.

And then the final ingredient that led me to do this book is Jim Wolfensohn, who is the President of the World Bank, who is not a boring guy at all by any stretch of the imagination. He is way larger than life. As well as leading the bank in the last ten years, he made north of 100 million bucks on Wall Street. He was in the Olympics. He played the cello on the state of Carnegie Hall with Yo Yo Ma. He networks his way. His rolodex goes from the Dalai Lama to Harrison Ford. He is not a dull guy at all. So putting his ingredients together I wanted to do this book, in fact, his tenure the last ten years.

And when you look at that period itís sort of framed by two events, which lead directly to our topic today. One is that on the 50th anniversary of the World Bank you had this 50 years is enough campaign, that was in 1994, with a big demonstration in Madrid at the annual meeting, which was effectively an anti-globalization protest, although we didnít have that back then.

And then in 1995, the following year, you get a president, Jim Wolfensohn coming to the World Bank and his central mission is to reach out to the groups that have been encircling him, encircling the World Bank, the year before. And he spends the next five years basically I think trying to reach out, build bridges, both in the personal way, a kind of charm offensive. And heís pretty good at charming, thatís why he made so much money on Wall Street, and also in a substantive way, opening the bank up to various kinds of review panels, which would look at World Bank policy and give some input into World Bank policy, and pushing World Bank field offices to be open to NGOs in the field and much more inclusive. And then five years into his term, actually I suppose starting in the Seattle protest in late 1999, but then hitting the world which is about the WTO, but then hitting the World Bank in 2000, both in the spring meetings and the annual meetings there were big protests, you basically see a repeat of the encirclement of 1994.

So it raises the question what do you get if youíre the World Bank and you are the kind of gorilla in the field of big development institution? And you are basically trying to reduce poverty for the half of humanity that lives on $2 a day or less. And you may have made plenty of errors, which I donít stint on in the book. But I think basically the motivation is the correct one, youíre trying to do this job and you spent five years reaching out under a president who really knows how to reach out and youíre still encircled.

And that was kind of the conundrum that I came up against when I was doing my research. And this led me to feel that a subset of civil society does not have an off switch. And first of all itís not all of civil society. I think itís already been explained, Iím not talking about NGOs that do projects really. Iím talking about, Iím not really talking about NGOs in the south, which I regard as a really healthy expression of voice of sort of pluralism and so on, Iím talking about activist NGOs in the north, and even then only a small subset of them. So I just want to make that clear.

Iím picking up on a minority; a small minority who sometimes I think exaggerate the truth of their campaigns and attack the World Bank when they actually ought to say okay, you know weíve had a dialogue with these guys. We pushed them a lot.

This Bank is utterly different to the one it was 20 years ago in the early 1980s when it was an environmental monstrosity. Theyíve moved enough that we can actually work with them on occasion, and partner with them. And there are examples in the book of quite good partnership. I mean, OXFAM partnered with the World Bank and so did Jubilee 2000, sort of the antecedents of Jubilee 2000 in getting the first round of debt relief done, in doing either replenishment, more money for the self-loan window.

So there are plenty of examples, you know Education for All, the initiative launched in 2000 and carried over in 2001 for universal education in poor countries was very much a collaboration between civil society on the one hand and the World Bank on the other. So there are plenty of examples where they are not antagonists, they are in fact allies. But I am hitting on a small subset of this universe and Iím being very critical in specific instances of campaigns, which I think went over the line.

And to me the reaction, which has been somewhat of a hornetís nest is quite revealing. Itís a bit as though I was to attack CBS 60 Minutes for making one program based on documents that turned out to be forged and then I was accused of being against the First Amendment. Thatís not my attention.

I want to have a focused and narrow critic of particular examples where NGOs went over the edge. And I would hope that NGOs, in response to this, would have the reaction that I have as a journalist. When somebody says, well, look you made a mistake here and the Washington Post prints corrections of my newspaper on a pretty much daily basis, because when you publish 100,000 words a day you make errors. Now if you can make errors you should admit them and then move on. And then we would preserve whatís really great about civil society was sort of disciplining the kind of two percent or one percent that can go over the edge. Thank you.

David Hunter: Very good at staying on your time. Very good. Next weíll hear from Delphine.

Delphine Djiraibe (Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, 2004 Recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award): Thank you, David, and thank you all for coming. I will say a few comments about the Chad-Cameroon portion of Mallabyís writing, which I think is poorly researched, filled with misrepresentations and often inconsistent. He does not refer to the regularly published official project monitoring reports commissioned by the World Bank itself, the international advisory group and the external monitoring group. These are public reports that anyone with internet access can obtain. These reports consistently warn of the lack of adequate measures to protect the environment, the indigenous people, and public health and also to build the capacity of the Chadian and Cameroonian government.
His reference to the Bankís inspection panel report is simply wrong. And I will come back to that.

Mallaby bases much of his information on Ellen Brown. Ellen Brown is an anthropologist on Exxonís payroll.

To give you some examples of the misrepresentation of NGOs, I will point out some of the things that are said in the book. Mallaby shows that he has no understanding of the international coalition being formed by NGOs, effectively linking the local level to the level of the global decision making.

For example, Environmental Defense, who Mallaby refers to several times has worked with the Chadian and Cameroonian human rights and development organizations and their grassroots partners for almost a decade. If it was not for Environmental Defense and other international advocacy NGOs, it would be extremely difficult for us to make our voices heard at the international level, and even in our own countries.

For example, he says that northern NGOs were putting out the theory that oil was fueling human rights abuses by the northern military. But it was the Chadian human rights organizations that warned of these human rights abuses and asked NGOs in the north to help publicize these problems.

He says that the fighting and imprisonments brought down the wrath of the NGOs. Why should it not? The World Bank and Exxon certainly did not say anything about it.

The World Bank only became active in one single case and this was after I alerted my colleague Korinna Horta from Environmental Defense who then was able to alert Wolfensohn. This led to the release of Mr. Yorongar, a member of the parliament and candidate in the Chadian presidential elections, but only after he had been severely tortured. He had to be flown to Paris for medical treatment at the Primo Levy Clinic for the Victims of Torture.

World Bank staff had not done anything, nor had Exxon or Ellen Brown. It was thanks to the good cooperation of Chadian human rights organizations with what Mallaby calls an environmental outfit in Washington, which in this case may help save the life of a national leader in Chad.

He just refers to Environmental Defense pamphlet. I am the co author of those pamphlets and thatís our tools of information. So itís not a pamphlet, itís just a brochure we publish with the Cameroonian NGOs and our partners here in Washington, D.C. Itís just a consequence of our coalition. Mallaby says that our report , he calls it a pamphlet cunningly quoted Wolfensohn saying that development was impossible in a corrupt environment and then drew attention to Chadís lousy human rights record.

And just on the following page he continues, if you believe Wolfensohnís past pronouncements on corruption and governance, optimism on Chad was difficult. And yet with a few exceptions like the Environmental Defense Fund pamphlet his critics often failed to point this out. First, he called it cunning and on the next page you seem to indicate that it was worth pointing out.

Let me point to another sequence, inconsistency that directly mentioned me. And it was already said here so I am not coming back to that. But do you have something against Chadian voices being heard in Washington? Do you think the voices of the World Bank, Exxon and Elaine Brown, are sufficient? I don't think so.

But you also mentioned that you meet with NGOs in southern Chad and found them open and impressive. Yes, they are, the NGOs we are working with for a long time and who have fought for fair compensation for the villages. It was not Ellen Brown. Ellen Brown has evaluated the compensation about the mango tree at tree dollar one mango tree. But when the NGOs came in they fight and get the mango tree to be compensated up to now a thousand of dollar. So it was NGOs who work.

And you mention also that the inspection panelís report about the project did not find much to complain about. I think that is just wrong, because the Inspection Panel found that the Bank had violated his policy on environmental assessment because it had failed to carry out original cumulative environmental assessment that projects of this magnitude require.

The inspection panel also said that consultations in Chad at least prior to 1997, were carried out in the presence of armed guards. Therefore people could not speak freely. Therefore World Bank policy was violated, because you can have no genuine consultation under those circumstances. Is this what you call not much to complain about?

And then about the pollution, the dust claim. You just say that NGOs are just making nonsense complaints about the dust. But itís a real problem that has consequences in the health of people. So where there is no medical structure, people are given diseases from the raise of dust. It not like people are complaining about a tiny layer of dust.

I can go on and on pointing out some misrepresentations and some false facts in the book, but I will stop there and maybe come back to that later when there are questions. Thank you.

Peter Rosenblum (Director, Human Rights Law Clinic, Columbia University School of Law): Thank you very much for having me here. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here in the place of Samuel Nguiffo who could do a much better job of telling the stories obviously from the perspective of the Cameroonians and the Cameroonian civil society.

And I really appreciate Sebastianís willingness to be here because as he must know in some ways, and I guess heís been doing it all along with his book, that heís walked into potentially into a lionís den. There will be a lot of things to say about specific claims, specific facts or details that are mentioned in the book. And I have some that I would actually want to refer to. But I think that we should try also to reach out to address some of the broader issues and the question of the role of NGOs generally, positive and negative.

Iíve been an admirer and a critic of NGOs in the human rights movement and have a lot to say about the problems and the ways that NGOs have operated in different times and the limits of what NGOs can do when it comes to particular kinds of campaigns. And at the same time Iíve been a great enthusiast for the development of NGOs, particularly in the south, echoing something that Sebastian said, and the importance of the role that they play.

And I recognize, and I think as we all have, that giving them voice in the north in the centers of power is a constant struggle. And itís involved the work of NGOs and the work of activists in different places. And it never ends. And we can see that throughout the story of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline and the way in which voices from the south were heard or not heard at different moments in the process of developing the pipeline.

Iím pleased to hear the way in which Sebastian has framed his critic now as being a narrow critic of NGOs. But I feel from my reading of him so far that that isnít whatís coming out and thatís not whatís said in what heís written. And I hope that after todayís meeting heíll go and heíll write that article in that more affirmative way. Because from reading the book or from reading other articles what one picks up on immediately is even the language around the NGOs, the references to some of it his own, some of it coming from elsewhere but you hear about the swarming, we hear about the flakiness, we hear about the screaming of NGOs.

And in the contrast with the story of whatís happening in Chad we hear about the suaveness of a corporation that is bringing to bare awesome resources and awesome power in order to have a project adopted that in fact Sebastian acknowledges is a very problematic project. And in fact the way he writes about Chad in the book I think that it occupies a very complex space, my reading in the context of the book itself. Because from what I understand even within is own analysis the reason why some good things have happened in the project is because of NGOs.

The reason why Exxon Mobile brought Helen Brown in to play the role that she did, and Iíd like to come back to that also, is because of the pressure of NGOs. And the fear of the swarm that he refers will certainly have a lot to do with the pressures that came up through Shell Oil, one of the collaborators at that time.

In the sense that having seen what happened in Nigeria and what was going on elsewhere that the potential for being subject to pressures from the public over time were such that Exxon would have to take an affirmative role towards trying to allay the problems that would otherwise arise. And he says, and I think that itís an important thing to note, and that anyone of us I think would agree with, that to a large degree Exxon Mobile brought in the World Bank as a decoy to take the pressure off of them for what they would otherwise face. And I think we can agree around these issues. But letís come back to how important the NGOs were for even getting off the ground, even getting one step moving on the oil companiesí part.

And then what about the other steps, the steps from the World Bank towards pushing for a revenue management plan towards pushing for issues that would address issues of governments, of human rights, because in fact in this project human rights became a major issue. It was up on the website of the World Bank, discussed how can we do a project thatís so problematic in a country thatís so corrupt but also a country that is so known for its repressive apparatus and expect to come out with something good. And that came into play as a problem.

Now Sebastian in his book says that there was some good work done by the NGOs because they paid attention to some of the issues of governance. Because he even notes that this is a project that both because of the historic problems of oil, the Dutch disease, the problems of oil and mineral development, and particularly because of the problems of oil in Africa, that this was a project that looked as if it had very little likelihood of acceptance at the Bank, but also of success overall.

And one of the major issues was governance, was subjecting the revenues to some kind of meaningful transparent control and oversight. And those issues were brought up by the NGOs, but muddied by their particular concerns around issues of the environment or indigenous peoples.

Now I would say the problem there is not safeguard policies or NGOs or at least not the problem that those exist, but that there arenít either more of them or they arenít rationalized in some way to cover a broader range of human rights issues and governance issues. The reason why the NGOs fought along the lines they did was because thatís what the Bank was willing to listen to because they have those safeguard policies and they arenít open to because they donít have safeguard policies around governance and human rights.

So the NGOs had to struggle every which way in order to bring those issues in and to bring it in within the Bankís limited mandate. So the NGOs had their mandates that they were focusing on. But the Bankís mandate required them to phrase the discussions in ways that sometimes I think did distort the issues that were there.

So what did we need? More NGO activism from a broader range of NGOs, as I think Sebastian would agree to from the way that I read his chapter. You needed to have those working more on some of the governance and transparency issues earlier on.

Now the fact is theyíve come into this project. Sebastian focuses always on the negative. He says some NGOs didnít go to Chad. They didnít know the people. Well, actually some did. And that was one of the things that characterized the big difference in this project. They went, they learned, they adjusted their own advocacy.

So the groups that would have been inalterably opposed to whale exploitation perhaps when they first got stepped in met Chadian activists, realized that there was something else going on there. There were development issues that needed to be addressed and came back with other ideas and other ways of working and tried to extend even the limits of their own mandates, sometimes with resistance from other NGOs who were there.

But what we saw around Chad Cameroon was a building of coalitions around these issues and a pushing of barriers that the Bank itself had in place because of its limited safeguard policies to a point where some serious issues were taken on. They were taken on. How far we got with them is another question.

I just want to recite just three quick little anecdotes Ö one quick little anecdote Ö one minute. One is to say that without that the Bank itself and even within some sectors of the corporation there has been a frank acknowledgment that without the pressure and continuing pressures from the NGOs this project, even those measures that have been put in place, would not have been enforced.

One of the first Bank directors on the ground there, the predecessor to Gregor Binkert who is here in the room, expressed her concern at the time that the Bank when push came to shove, when they were really forced to enforce the positions that they had taken, that the Bank didnít have the culture that would enable it to step up to the plate, to play hardball. And the only way that they were going to be able to do that was from continuing pressure from the NGO community to make them stand up and to do that. Similar kinds of arguments have been heard from some of the corporations and others about being able to take the steps that they did in the first place and being able to then go further then they would have done as corporate actors.

Iíll just say a word about the Helen Brown story. I thought that the Helen Brown story was true. And then I traveled to the southern region of Chad last May. And I guess the problem is that the reality on the ground at this point, even for the story of compensation, which was the most discussed, and the most debated and went through the longest process of review of different groups, has actually turned out to be a disaster.

And when I asked Helen Brown, and I said so, itís a disaster, right? Weíve just been visiting these communities. Do you have any positive stories to tell? She said well, talk to my Chadian colleague. So I turned, the same bus, I turned and I asked the same question to the Chadian colleague. And he said well, there are two or three good examples, two or three, where compensation was in kind, where there was some effort to actually turn it into something productive and there was a positive outcome.

The story of compensation at this moment on the ground seems to be a growing tragedy. And it seems to be that the good intentions that were discussed by the anthropologists at some point have not been able to be implemented for a variety of reasons. And they go to the character, perhaps the character. Unfortunately we have, and everybody on the ground there, is focused too much on the character of an individual and the role that she played. I think the story is a much broader story than that.

But I, myself, I wanted to give up on that issue of compensation. I wanted to believe that it had been taken care of. And I was kind of beaten by reality into realizing that even that, the most debated issue in the project has turned out to be largely a failure and perhaps will contribute to reasons why the project itself still has so many hurdles to overcome.

David Hunter: Thank you, thank you, all three. I think weíve put a lot on the table and Iím going to use my prerogative to shift back to Sebastian with the broader question of what in fact were and are the impacts of NGOs and the Chad-Cameroon project and what lessons can we draw from that. And I may as well turn that question back to you again.

Sebastian Mallaby: Well, there is a lot there to talk about. And I probably leave stuff out. So remind me when I do that. I think that both Delphine and Peter make very good points. And particularly on this issue of the alliance between northern groups and southern NGOs and giving those southerners voice, you know Iím totally in favor of that.

And I think that is the spreading of pluralism, of democracy, of the creation of the kind of governance in developing countries, which you need to make any kind of economic progress happen. You need checks and balances, transparency, conversation, argument. And southern NGOs are very much central to that. And to the extent that northerners are kind of giving them voice and giving them funds to be able to protect that voice itís a good thing. So thatís one point to make.

Now Peter was saying that he finds my opening spiel more persuasive than the book, or maybe more balanced than the book. I think the reason for that is that frankly when I wrote the book I wasnít quite anticipating the extraordinary backlash. And so I didnít say, and maybe didnít emphasis things which I sort of thought we could basically take for granted, i.e., that 97, 98 percent of civil society work is excellent, that itís an incredibly productive thing to have pluralism in a society and so on. I mean, I do say it in the book. I mean, I do have, as I was indicating earlier, a lot of good things to say about some groups, you know OXFAM comes to mind. And I have fairly nuanced view I think of the Ö one of the things that we havenít specifically talked about, but in Chad the idea is to spend oil revenues. And the only plausible basis on which to have any optimism whatsoever about the spending of the oil revenue in Chad is that the money, the expenditures have to be approved by this (unintelligible) control which has on its board civil society representatives. And they in theory have the power to vet what the money is going to be spent on. Now it may not work in a dictatorship. I fully acknowledge that in the book. But if it did work it would be because of civil society participation. And I describe that body.

So I do make some points on the kind of positive side of the ledger in the book. But not as much space is devoted to that as to the description of episodes where I think that NGO campaigns exaggerate the facts and went over the edge. I emphasize the negative partly because I thought the positive was so well known and so sort of conventional wisdom at this point that you didnít need a book to kind of talk about that. I mean, it seems to me that one way of thinking about this issue is that back in the early 80s, or even in the mid 80s the World Bank had something like five environmentalists on the staff Ö five. Which is utterly insane for an institution with about 10,000 people that does infrastructure all around the world, which has enormous environmental consequences.

So at that point if you regard the rational center for the World Bank in terms of the balance between environmental checks on the one hand and getting projects out the door, which will hopefully reduce poverty on the other, the rational balance would be kind of the pendulum in the middle. So back in the 80s it was way over here, on the crazy sort of environmentally insensitive side.

And then by the early 90s it swung down to the middle roughly because they created the safeguards, they had an environmental department, an environmental vice presidency. And some critics of the Bank were saying that the center for thinking and work on an environment and development was the World Bank. So somewhere around the early mid 90s I think that you sort of get to a sort of central position.

And I would say that then that the pendulum swung a bit too far. And so I was trying to yank this pendulum and move it back to the rational center. I regard the rational center as being expressed in the comments over here. I mean, this is sort of measured reasonable criticism. We can have a reasonable debate about the details that Delphine referred to.

Iím happy to do that. But I want to get to the bigger issue here which is why did I attack; spend more pages attacking civil society than defending it? I sort of thought the defense was fairly much of a no-brainer at this point. And maybe that was an error on my part, or maybe not.

And the other thing is that sort of the phrases like the screamers and all that. If you read the book, which of course I hope you do, itís a vividly, I try to write vividly, I try to give a sense of drama, and these sorts of adjectives are not confined by any means to civil society. Jim Wolfensohn would have a few things to say about the use of this language and his volcanic eruption after the publication of the book sort of testifies to that.

Although I think on balance itís a positive book about him too. Itís a kind of warts and all portrayal of all the protagonists, both civil society and Jim Wolfensohn and the World Bank itself. And very much the big northern governments, the rich shareholders who I give an incredibly hard time to, because I think they also are responsible for messing the World Bank up through the board in numerous ways. So I try to give full praise where itís due and tough criticism where thatís also due. I think thatís the function of a journalist. And so, you know, hence the results the results that you get in the vocabulary.

David Hunter: Well, let me turn it back to Ö before turning it to the audience, back to the two of you. And both first a response to the response, but also secondly there is, and perhaps part of the backlash and the swarms that have turned on the book. It may also be partly because there is out there an ongoing debate about the representativeness of NGOs, a serious debate about it. And I want to give both of you Peter and Delphine, and Sebastian as well, a chance to comment on the representativeness, the legitimacy of NGOs and the development process.

Are NGOs legitimate, particularly northern activists NGOs, as well as groups like your own Delphine? And what are the conditions that give rise to that legitimacy if there is?

And either one of you can go first.

Delphine Djiraibe: Thank you. I think that when something is written then itís written. And Iím sorry but Mallaby would not be with every reader to explain what he means. Because in the book what comes out is only the negative role that NGOs have played. And that is really, really disturbing, because what is said about Wolfensohn, about the World Bank, could not happen if NGOs havenít played the role that they have played.

So I still have an example. When it is said in a language such as ìill founded NGOs concern goes onî, and like ìthe NGOs had maintained their critical chorus, but most of their objections looked emptyî I don't know. That means that everything that NGOs have done is just useless and is just meaningless Ö yeah, thatís what comes out from the book. And I was referring to the dust problem. And in your book you said that most of their objectives looked empty.

And you also said that ìExxonís new molasses-capped road they said was insufferably dusty. I found that just insulting, you know. Because we are talking about the dust and we are not talking about the dust that lies on the molasses. And I donít know if that could make sense. And I think also that development is about people and itís not about the international institutions or about the powerful companies. And the development could not be effective if the environment is not protected.

About the representation of the NGOs, I think that what is said by NGOs in the north is what their partners from the south wanted them to say. I mean, itís not NGOs in the north sitting here in the north and doing whatever they want. We donít have another mean to have our voices heard from the north. And thanks to the NGOs in the north we can do something here in Washington where this is a decision making place.

And when it comes to human rights we donít really need to prove that you are representing a group of people as long as you are saying something that is right in the point of view of the human rights while protecting peopleís rights. So itís of use, itís evident that you are representing those whose rights are violated by this project. So I think that itís not a real debate, itís just trying to phase out from real debate to ask for the legitimacy of NGOs who are talking on behalf of poor people. Yeah, I think thatís all.

Peter: I think that NGOs are not per say good or bad. I mean, debates that have arisen in recent times about NGOs and the NGO movements have pitted critics coming from the left and from the right to have raised issues about democracy deficit, about legitimacy. And I think that those are all important issues to debate. I think that thereís complexity and thereís subtlety into how NGO movements are evolving in different settings. And I really do think that it would be wonderful to have Sebastian pursue that subject in the affirmative way that heís referred to here in order to get the word out because I think heís right that he in overlooking the positive.

And his writing at this point serves the cause of those critics. And, in particular, I guess Iím aware of the critics coming from the American Enterprise Institute and from the right who have been on an assault against the NGO movement and particularly around these issues of democracy and credibility and legitimacy.

Theyíre serious issues. But are we addressing them with an intention to achieve what Sebastian refers to, this more pluralism, more democracy? Or as some of those writing in the American Enterprise or on NGO Watch on the website are I think intent on doing, really undermining the NGO movement to the advantage of the United States and the sole superpower and the role that it should play as a democracy and that others donít have the right to play.

I fear that his work provides legitimizing material for what has grown to be this assault and seems to be increasing as a wave against NGOs. I wish he had seen the meeting that I intended at the World Bank with Delphine and with several others where the World Bank several months before the project was adopted where somehow mysteriously the World Bank had mobilized to bring so-called NGO leaders from Chad and Cameroon. And no one knew who they were and how they got there, at first.

And they sat on one side of the table and they assaulted Delphine for half an hour, telling her that she was destroying the opportunities of the poor and suffering children of Chad because of her own self interest, and there she was sitting with those white people on the other side of the table and where was her legitimacy. Well, it turned out that many of these people in this group themselves had very dubious basis for being there in that meeting or themselves had been led into the meeting without knowing what they were doing.

The World Bank is new to this story of working with NGOs and sometimes does some very ugly things along the way. And that one I think was never apologized for at the extent it was. At least we on the other side of the table represented a long process of internal struggle and debate over issues of north/south collaboration and legitimacy and openness. So that when Delphine says the northern groups represented the voices of the south thatís not obvious.

Thatís not to be taken for granted. And I would nuance it by saying that some of the groups speaking in the north actually werenít listening to the groups in the south. Some of them were making declarations without it. And Iíve written about this myself in the case of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline. It wasnít all perfect. And it wonít be. But this issue of accountability, of legitimacy within the NGO movement is one that the credible NGOs have been dealing with for some time and will continue to struggle with. But I think that we have to be careful about feeding the frenzy that has grown in the attack on the NGO movement.

Sebastian Mallaby: Iíd like to respond. I totally agree with Peter that NGOs are not per se good or bad. And his accountability debate I completely agree again is kind of interesting, but itís not ultimately the key test. I mean, journalists are not accountable. Lots of people arenít accountable. People get up in the public square and say things, they should be held for the accuracy of what they say. You shouldnít be looking at whether they were elected. Because the fact is that (unintelligible) of that is a lot of people who act are not elected.

The issue is, do they speak the truth, are they responsible participants in the public square? So I think that Iím basically saying the same thing as Peter there. So I think that we agree on that. And heís been critical as he says of some NGOs in the human rights area and supportive of others. So I think that one has to be kind of case by case about this and simply be critical when a particular campaign goes over the edge and makes stuff up and so on.

I slight [sounds like] resent, and I think that itís actually just wrong to say Ö I take that back Ö I would push back against this idea about this being farther to the right. I can guarantee you that the right will hate the book. Theyíre going to hate the book because itís basically sympathetic towards the role the World Bank tries to play.

The right thinks you donít need the World Bank. It should be all handed over to private markets. These public institutions are a nightmare. And I attack, you know, just as fiercely the Wall Street Journal editorial page and that kind of right wing critic, the Allan Meltzer type of critic. And when I go in a couple of weeks to AEI to debate Allan Meltzer, I predict that heís not going to like me. So Iím not playing into the hands of the right.

And on this specific issue of NGOs, I think itís a difficult thing to talk about. But if I became playing into the hands of the right wing by criticizing NGOs for specific campaigns that go over the edge, what youíre saying is that you canít be critical of specific campaigns without being some kind of right wing, letís close down all NGOs.

The right way to deal with episodes where NGOs do, which by the way is not Chad-Cameroon, in my book there are other examples which I regard as much clearer, open and shut examples of NGO campaigns that were wrong, flat wrong. And I donít think this about Chad-Cameroon and the book doesnít say this about Chad-Cameroon.

I think aspects of the environmental claims, as Peter was saying, the kind of protest got funneled into the environmental area because the human rights area is harder to attack the Bank on, there arenít safe guards and so forth. I agree with that. So there are details of the NGO campaign on Chad-Cameroon on the environment, which I think were exaggerated. But in the large I donít regard it as a bad campaign.

I do regard opposition to western China poverty project, which the Tibetan (unintelligible) picked up as a very bad campaign. And I had a whole chapter about that, and itís not a subject of todayís debate.

But if one canít take specific examples of where NGOs go wrong, and say look, you guys you went wrong. And furthermore, and this gets to this point about why didnít I spend more time being affirmative about NGOs, the fact is that when NGO campaigns stand up and say the World Bank is wrong about this western China poverty reduction project, Chris Cox, Republican of California, issues a press statement siding with the NGOs, and Nancy Pelosi on the other pole of Congress, on the liberal side also sides with the NGOs.

Everybody sides with the NGOs. The media sides with the NGOs. Articles are written accepting the NGO line. Because itís in western China itís incredibly remote and nobody can go and check the facts. But the truth was that this was attacking a project for being in Tibet. It wasnít in Tibet. It just wasnít in Tibet. And it wasnít going to harm Tibetans as was alleged, I don't think. And so I do go after that campaign fairly aggressively.

But am I against the media because I think that when journalists make mistakes and use forged documents they should apologize? No, of course Iím not against the media. So I would just plead for the right to be critical whilst also being supportive of the other 90 percent of whatís going on.

David Hunter: All right, now itís your turn, Ms. Broad. Please, if you stand up, elevate your voice and tell who you are in ten seconds or less.

Robin Broad: Iím Robin Broad.

David Hunter: And Iíll ask, because I suspect looking at this crowd that weíll have lots of questions, that questions can be quick and answers also brief.

Robin Broad: Iím Robin Broad. Iím a professor of development at the American University. And Iíd like to be the calm academic voice of reason here. But in all honesty I am totally baffled and I guess outraged by the presentation today. Iíve read every word in your book. The book I read by Sebastian Mallaby on the World Bank is not the book you summarized today.

I think that youíve done a very clever job of talking to your audience. You provided what actually you critique NGOs for doing. I think that you provided a very biased, an inaccurate description of your book. And the outraged part of me says and you canít get away with it. Your book does not say I am going to look at one to two percent of NGO campaigns. Your book does not say 98 to 99 percent of campaigns, and therefore most of the campaigns have been really useful.

This is interesting that your book doesnít do it. Because what your book does do, and does a wonderful job of doing is saying let me look at James Wolfensohn warts and all, heís part good, part bad. Let me look at the good, let me look at the bad and then come up with what do I think of this man in the end and what do we think of him. Youíve just presented your book as if it does that on NGOs. Thatís not what you do. Thatís not what your articles on foreign policy do.

Sebastian Mallaby: And your question.

Robin Broad: Thatís not what your article in the Journal of Philanthropy would do. So I guess a comment and question. One is that, I would really like to hold you accountable and I would really ask that you write to every place where youíve been published and present and explain that what youíre doing only describes one to two percent of the campaigns.

Question, I can now become the presser again, on your methodology could you tell us how many hours you spent interviewing James Wolfensohn and World Bank people? And then how many days you spent on the ground in Chad-Cameroon and in China, and what resources besides Ö weíve heard a lot about Chad-Cameroon Ö but what resources besides Robert Wadeís work is your China chapter based on? So a methodological question.

David Hunter: Is it better to take a couple of questions? Okay, let me take a couple of questions that way you can chew on that one for a minute. In the back. Weíll take three questions and then weíll respond in due course.

Lou: Good morning everybody. My name is Lou. Iím a representative of Mr. Ngarlejy Yorongar, North America, the last elected president of the past election in Chad. We really appreciate the opportunity. It is a pleasure for me to be here myself. What the World Bank is doing in Chad it is catastrophic. Can you explain that people live in the region that oil is getting out, talk in presence of foreign oil that went to Chad, about composition of those three at the gun point.

My leader almost lost his life for the last election. He was in favor of the NGO, heís still alive. And Iím really surprised about what the World Bank is doing in the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline project is the wrong matter for other countries. Itís a disaster. Thank you.

David Hunter: Turn that into a question. And one more from John, first row.

John Cavanaugh: John Cavanaugh from the Institute for Policy Studies. I had a big picture question, although I found all this fascinating, getting back to Davidís thing at the beginning, which is that the World Bank justifies itself by saying that it has helped lift millions of people out of poverty over the last decade. Yet when you look at the figures you see that most of those millions come from two countries, India and China, where the World Bank really shouldnít be able to claim any credit.

I think that if you look at the rest of the world, Africa, Latin America there are more people who are poor. And so Iíd just throw out an observation for your reflection, which is that I had the pleasure of being one of 14 NGO people who met with Wolfensohn when he came into the World Bank. And wonderful little meeting, and we criticized structural adjustment. And he stood up there, and it was in front of all of the senior staff, and he said okay, a structural adjustment isnít helping the poor, in Africa and Latin America weíll change it, weíll fix it. And I thought, wow, this is amazing.

Then I looked around the room at all the senior staff and there were looks of complete horror on their faces. And the observation would be itís the wrong people in the wrong place for this vital job that we all agree to. It was economists trained in neoclassical economics, who believed in markets, who knew nothing about poverty. It was people who knew how to do projects with big oil companies who knew nothing about poverty.

So Iím curious just your reaction, I donít doubt as Sebastian Mallaby doesnít doubt in his book that Jim Wolfensohn was motivated by a desire to reduce poverty, but why the conclusion that this is the institution that can do the most to reduce it? Is it the right people with the right training with the right world view?

David Hunter: Iíll turn first to my left, you have several questions, including a research question. There is a broader question about, which I would pose to some extent is what do we think or comments on the future of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline. As weíve mentioned before itís vital, both for that region of the world and also for I think the way the Bank does business. And then the final question as well, addressed to all of us, or all of you, is it the wrong people? What do we think about the broader role of how the Bank and the Bank staff are working on these issues?

Sebastian Mallaby: On the methodology, I think that you asked how many hours did I spend with Wolfensohn. I spent 20 hours interviewing him on the record with a tape recorder on. And I guess about the same amount of time again, sort of an off the record time with him. It is a very interview based book. And itís called the Worldís Banker. Itís about the World Bank and about him as a central character. And so the primary research technique was to interview people at the Bank or who had been at the Bank before or who had interacted with the Bank who could fill in parts of the institutional story.

So I did about 200 interviews I guess all together, about two hours each with a tape recorder on, making big transcripts. And supporting that with documents to some extent. But this is a journalistic enterprise. Itís not based on access to World Bank archives because those archives were not opened up to me. Bits of it were leaked. Contemporaneous memos of Wolfensohnís meetings with his top staff were given to me in secret. So I have insight into those processes. But I didnít have systematic access to the archives.

I made trips to Chad, to Uganda, to Bosnia. I did not go to western China. So I think thatís the methodology. On the Chad political situation, I regard Idriss Deby as a dictator. I say so in the book. Heís clearly a thug who populates his cabinet with his relatives. I went to see Yorongar at his home, on the outskirts of Chad, one evening, and he showed me the marks in the wall where soldiers had come and shot and had dragged him away into prison. He told me a whole story about how he was jailed.

So Iím familiar with the political repression in Chad. I have met Delphine when I went. I met her before that in Washington with Korinna Horta from the Environmental Defense Fund. So I spent some time understanding, I spoke to Peter actually of where I went as well. So I went there and I talked to quite a broad cross section of the main NGOs in Chad. And itís perfectly obvious that this is a brutal dictatorship.

The question is how do you get out of a negative equilibrium where you have extreme poverty and extreme political repression? Where do you start the process of trying to rise up out of it? And there is no easy answer. And the question is is it worth a gamble to believe that if you say okay, you want to develop your oil; the quid pro quo for developing your oil is that you allow NGOs to help decide how you spend it? Thereby you create some income and some political space simultaneously. It seems to me itís a worthwhile gamble. I donít promise that it will work. It might well fail. And I say that in the book.

But anyway itís not that I minimize political repression in Chad, itís that I think that there is no obvious answer how to get out of it. And this oil for pluralism trade may be an experiment worth trying.

John Cavanaugh told a great story about Wolfensohn and his early meetings. In fact this morning heís told me two of those anecdotes already and I wish I had known them before I wrote the book so I could have included them.

I think on his question about is this just the wrong bunch of people. In a sense thatís the drama of the book. I mean, you have this institution very set it in its way, with 10,000 people, I believe people who joined the Bank because they actually do want to do something about poverty, they could have gone to Goldman Sachs or McKinsey and made three times as much people. But they chose to go to the World Bank with the economic PhDs because they, in fact, do care about development. But nonetheless itís a big bureaucracy. Itís slow. Itís painfully bureaucratic sometimes.

Can a dynamic leader, like Wolfensohn, come in, shake the place by the hair, turn it upside down, rattle it around, and then produce something which is more effective? Thatís one of the stories that runs through the book. And the verdict is mixed. He has succeeded to some extent in changing the culture. But not as much as he hoped to. I think that he ends his ten years as a fairly frustrated reformer in some respects.

But the reasons, and this comes back to our central theme again, the reasons why he sometimes has difficulty making the Bank faster, so that it can deliver better for poor country clients, is that there are external forces operating on the World Bank which make it very, very difficult to deliver quickly.

One of these sources is the shareholders. Can you imagine running a private corporation and having a board that meets twice a week, formally, and then on the other days informally, and asks you questions. And isnít staffed by most corporate boards where people are part-time, show up and ask a few questions, but basically rubberstamp what the CEO wants to do, and they go away again for sort of six weeks.

These are professional, full-time board members backed by their own staff of full-time finance ministry civil servants, whose job it is to generate questions for World Bank staff. And the questions get answered with long, long memos, which go out to the board, and then more questions are generated. And these memos ripple up and down the Bank.

And the result is itís painfully slow. So thereís an external force in the World Bank, which partly explains why these bureaucrats, why these economists seem so set in their way and stodgy, right, and they canít seem to kind of get out of the building and go do the work of reducing poverty, right?

Part of the frustration is external and equally part of it I think is driven by the fear that if you put wrong foot wrong in your environmental impact assessment it can have 17 volumes. If there is one bit wrong you will attract an NGO campaign, which will point out the one thing that you got wrong or the three things that you got wrong and leave aside the ones that you got right. And this will be debilitating. You will then have faced a media campaign, a reaction in Congress and so on.

So, again, my concern with pointing out what I regard as the excesses of NGOs is not just sort of gratuitous, you know letís just point out some errors, there are actually affects on the ability of the World Bank to deliver projects in a useful time frame. It slows the place down. You want an environmental impact assessment. Maybe the impact assessment should take a year. But if it takes five years it just, you know at a certain point you have to balance and say, look, there are people waiting for projects, they need to get out of poverty, one year of environmental study is enough.

Delphine: Thank you. About the future of the Chad-Cameroon project I think that the broad coalition of NGOs working on the project have been consistent by saying that the Chad-Cameroon project would not help elevate poverty in Chad in the context where there is no democracy, there is no good government, and where people are poor and where their view is not taken into account.

And that is exactly what is happening now. The project is over and money is coming to Chad. And there is no signal to show that the project is helping poor people in Chad. The main reason that the World Bank was given to say that this project would help elevate poverty was the law on the management of the revenue, which established the oversight committee.

But what is clear now is that the oversight committee would not be effective enough to allow the money to go to the benefit of the poor. Because as you all know the government of Chad will always find a way to go around all those and itís always already happening, because the oversight committee does not have the real power to take action against the misused of funds.

And we have some examples where the money, for example was disbursed to build high schools, and it appears that it was not the high schools that was built and they will go and show a primary school. And still nothing could happen because at the end of the process, the national justice is the one who should appeal those ones using the funds for their own purposes. And as you all know itís like a club of friends. And when the report from the oversight committee gets there, nothing would still happen.

So the future of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline would be exactly that we spent a decade warning the World Bank about: empowered the already repressive and corrupt government in the disadvantage of the people. And you all know that now Chad is getting in a very, very complicated situation where Deby is trying to change the constitution to be in power for ever in order to control the oil money. And the World Bank could not do anything about that or they are not willing to do anything about that, claiming that this is a political issue. But I don't know how this situation could be divided from the economic issue where everything is linked. So I would say that it is really the responsibility of the World Bank now to tell us what would be the future of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline.

Peter: Iíll try to be very brief. I think that the project has put us all into a very complicated position. For those of us who believe as Sebastian said that trading oil for pluralism is actually a positive goal, there was a lot to hope for this project, and thereís a lot still to try and use the project for. And if people like Dobian Assingar, whoís in the room today, and is a member of the oversight committee can be empowered, if civil society in Chad can be empowered to play a more important role in the country and in the spending of money. Thatís a good thing.

Is the cost going to turn out to be too high? I think what Delphine has said to us, it raises the specter that that cost is too high and will be too high. And if Deby does manage to change the constitution, if he continues to suppress the freedom of speech and political pluralism in the country and secure his position with the new oil money that wonít be subject to the law or the other money that he manages to divert, then I think that weíre going to look back at this as a tragedy.

And it wonít just be a tragedy for Chad, because I looked and we all do to the people of Equatorial Guinea, to the people in Cameroon, to the people in the other countries in the region who looked at Chad and say well, weíd like something like that. And the pressure to have something like that, something more participative, something with more transparency and more demands, only comes if we try and keep the pressure on in Chad to make whatís there work. If it fails and it brings down the rest of our efforts, I think that weíre in for a story of horrors that will reproduce the situation in Nigeria in its first 20 years of independence.

David Hunter: Back to three questions. Go ahead, Ms. Reisch, up front.

Nikki Reisch: My name is Nikki Reisch. I work at the Bank Information Center. And I wanted to bring us back to a broader question. A question weíve heard today, and for those of us who have read articles or pieces that discuss Mallabyís work, a central theme or discussion about the drags on, the things that are slowing down or placing drags on the implementation of projects.

I wanted to pose two questions I guess related to that. One is at what point do we stop and reflect whether or not these are the right projects to be rushing through and implementing? There seems to be a nostalgia for the time when infrastructure projects, which I understand from several articles and from hearing Mr. Mallaby speak before, are the solution to poverty. The time when those projects could push ahead without hindrances such as the social and environmental safeguard policies of the institution.

And Iíd like to explore a little more this dichotomy that Iíve heard described, certainly in the debate before, or discussion rather, between Mr. Mallaby and Mr. Manuel, describing social and environmental standards as rich country standards that are being imposed on poor countries. And this implies a dichotomy in my mind between poverty reduction and protecting society and the environment and human rights. When, in fact, it seems like that reducing poverty effectively demands that one respect the environment and society and human rights. But I guess I would like to go back, hear your thoughts on that. And also go back to this question about precisely what are the types of projects that are being pushed through and when do we examine the selection and not just the speed with which they get passed through this bureaucracy.

Thanks.

David Hunter: Korinna, and then the two people on the left.

Korinna Horta: I have a specific question, also a broader question, a specific question. Really the opening for that is really Sebastian saying that people should be held accountable for what they say and referring to journalistic standards. Sebastian you mentioned here again that NGOs have exaggerated, and I think that you seem to say that we have exaggerated on the environment. And in the Chad-Cameroon project we have exaggerated on the environment you claim because Exxon has provided 19 volumes of environmental assessment studies. And you are repeating that twice.

I wonder what the journalistic standard was that leads you to believe that the simple volume of paper provided by Exxon is actually addressing the environment when there are World Bank commissioned reports out there that have been out there for several years which show very clearly that everything from coastal resources to indigenous peoples, to fresh water sources is actually being threatened by mistakes made in the project. Thatís a specific question.

The broader one is you seem to believe that the poor are better off without NGO involvement, without World Bank safeguard policies, without the World Bank inspection panel. So Iím wondering if you have done some other thinking on how to hold the World Bank accountable for anything that it does, because these are the mechanisms that are more or less in place right now. Weíre all in favor of NGO accountability, but we are kind of surprised that you do not call for World Bank accountability nor for the accountability of the large transnational corporations.

David Hunter: These two over here on this side.

Deborah Brautigam: Hello, Iím Deborah Brautigam. I am also in the International Development Program at American University. And I want to pick up on something that Peter mentioned, although the question is not really addressed to him. But it was Peterís comment that the World Bank doesnít have safeguard policies about human rights and governance. And this is very true.

And based on this I want to ask a question, which deals with the larger issue of debt and World Bank loans to countries that do not have good governance or good human rights policies. Loans to countries like this create debt. And many people have been looking at the debt crisis, countries that are highly in debt, poor countries, many of which are in Africa. People at the IMF, at the NGOs, here at Carnegie, have raised the issue of odious debt, debt to regimes that might be called odious. Chad seems to fit that description.

And I wonder then there are two positions that could be taken on this. That countries like Chad should not get debt, I say that rather than credit, debt loans from the World Bank at all because this is an odious regime, the people should not be held responsible later for repaying this debt. On the other hand, the argument could be that these kinds of loans can have a positive contribution to poverty alleviation and they should go forward. So I wonder where Delphine and Sebastian stand on that issue.

David Hunter: Weíll take one more question, because I promised it.

Simonetta Nardin: Thank you. My name is Simonetta Nardin. I worked at the IMF. I would be the calm voice of the Bretton Woods Institutions. (Laughter) Iím not getting into this debate at all. I will let the World Bank deal with this, this one time.

My question is more on the linkages between transparency and human rights. It seems that this is an issue that is coming up more and more. I want Peter to hear this. Itís just because itís a question about the linkages between transparency and human rights. It seems that we are now, there is an agreement now that governance and transparency are important also for human rights. Human Rights Watch published a report on Angola at the beginning of the year I think where it says that the most important thing that the IMF can do for Angola is to continue pushing for a transparency because in the end it has an effect on human rights.

So I wanted to hear from the panelists about what you think, whether there can be, and maybe for other NGOs, and I am speaking for the IMF, whether it will increase work on governance, on public expenditure management, etc. And also whether you think there can be some work that can be done together on these issues.

David Hunter: Perhaps Iíll switch the order, Peter if that doesnít throw you for a loop since Iíve always gone to Sebastian first.

Peter: Thatís fine. I think that itís been very exciting to see the human rights people learn the language of transparency. I think that itís been due in part to the story of the great South African transition and the importance of transparency and participation, words that they brought into the human rights movement in a major way. And the economic sphere these were not common terms in the United States a decade ago when it came to the debates around human rights and around empowerment of civil society. I think itís an absolutely important first step.

And that the next step for us, the NGO community and the Banks and others is to ensure that itís used as a tool for empowering of local actors to be able to oversee and to participate in the ways in which revenues are spent and their countries are governed.

And you know we know already from the EITI, the Extraction Industry Transparency Initiative, and others that there can be transparency thatís meaningful and transparency thatís meaningless. And you need people who are trained in order to use that transparency and to render it meaningful. And I think that our story in Chad was one step in that direction.

But the danger, where we stand today with, for example, the oversight committee where there is really only four legitimate members of the oversight committee in Chad, those so-called NGO members and a staff of four people, professionals. Those four board members they have full-time lives and theyíre supposed to be overseeing all the expenditures and reviewing everything in advance, a staff of four at this point, maybe six eventually? We havenít taken that next step to actually use the tools of transparency and see how we can use them to empower the local actors.

Delphine: I agree that itís important that human rights and governments issue be in the World Bank policy. And that is one of the points that we always say to the World Bank. And I agree also that in any country where there is no democracy, no good governance and where there are massive violations of human rights then the World Bank should not invest in those countries. Because itís clear that it would be more burden on the poor, who will have to pay back this money anyway, the money which will be misused by the corrupt government. So I think that the report from the EIR was clear about that by warning the World Bank not to invest in countries where human rights are violated.

Sebastian: Okay, Iíll go in reverse order. I think on Simonettaís question about transparency and oil transparency I would think of as a terrific thing. And I agree that the IMFís main role in Angola should be to push public expenditure transparency.

On the question about the odiousness of debt, itís a really tough one. I mean, debt is clearly odious in retrospect, if it fails to produce growth and therefore becomes impossible to service. Then itís odious, particularly if the recipient government at the time was dictatorial. If it succeeds, itís not odious. Lending to Suhartoís dictatorship in Indonesia in the early years, not odious because it reduced poverty massively, lending towards the end when he became more corrupt then he had been before. Extremely odious. So you know there is no easy solution to that, which is why we continue to debate it. And probably will for a while.

On Korinnaís question, two questions. What is the sign of the environmental success of the project? Well, obviously itís not how many volumes of the study that you publish. I just pointed that out a couple of times, because 19 volumes would seem to me to be a fairly long and serious study. So the idea that there hasnít been an effort to take environmental issues seriously and social impacts seriously, I think it is. At least you have to pause and think about whether one can say that it was unserious after 19 volumes.

But I think obviously beyond that I mean the question is are there really significant environmental consequences, and Korinna may know some and be able to demonstrate some. And I imagine it takes time for the question to be answered definitively. But my sense was that in visiting this issue of the road and the dust came up that of course dust produces environmental pollution, lung complications and so forth. Itís an issue.

But I traveled on two different roads, which ran roughly parallel in the southern oil region. One was the one built by Exxon, which had this molasses capping, which was intended to contain some of the dust. And the other one was the road that had been there before. And it was clear to me that I got more dust in my lungs on the road that had been there before than on the new road which the oil company had built.

And you know I wish that both were covered in tarmac, but you know weíre talking about a massively poor country and things arenít covered in tarmac. So just to keep a perspective. I mean, you got to fight poverty step by step. And, of course, no dust is better than dust. But the idea that this road was sort of dustier than anything that had happened before in the south just struck me as wrong.

And on the safeguard question about would the poor be better off without them. No, they wouldnít be better off without them and I donít say so in the book. What I say is that the safeguards have kind of grown beyond the original intent. As in this picture that I drew for you before of the pendulum, right, in the early 90s or the mid 90s you had the safeguards then. And that was a good thing. Thatís what I regard as the sensible, middle ground in this balance between environmental caution and on the other hand needing to get projects out the door in order to try to help poor people.

There is a balance I think between speed and caution. And the right balance is that you should have safeguards. But what you shouldnít have is the sort of quasi-judicial process built on top of them, which leads to results where if you do a very complicated project and you get most of it right that you make two errors in your preparation documents, and that you can be effectively hauled up in front of the inspection panel, the internal tribunal. And you can be put through a process as a project manager which delays you for a long time, which causes you lots of extra studies and expense and so on and which has a huge disincentive effect on doing projects in a timely fashion.

I just think that the pendulum has swung a bit far on that. So Iím not against safeguards, Iím just against the overly, sort of legalistic interpretation of them, such that you lose sight of what weíre really trying to do, which is to balance environmental sustainability and poverty reduction.

Now Nikki Reisch had a question too, or may more than one question. I remember debating some of the same issues I think when we had lunch together when I was preparing the book and I was over at the Bank Information Center with some of her colleagues and with Nikki. And we talked about, I think that I had just come up with this phrase, do the NGOs have an off switch? And I test ran it in that meeting. (Laughter)

You know, you said is it right to rush through projects? Well, it isnít right to rush through projects. But my feeling now is that weíve gone again too far in the opposite direction. If the average project preparation time is two years, and the average is the infrastructure number is way bigger than that, I mean, in Nam Theun and Thailand this dam that theyíre talking about doing now has been on and off for ten years or so.

I mean, the Exxon project in Chad, again I think is more like six years than two. And thatís not point of completion, thatís just the signing, I mean, going through the board of the Bank. So itís not that we should rush through projects, itís just the balance between caution and due progress.

Is infrastructure the solution? No, in fact it is not the solution. Development is an extremely broad thing as I explained in the book. It does include not only physical infrastructure but human infrastructure, i.e., health and education. And not only human infrastructure, but social infrastructure, i.e., transparency, governance, pluralism and so on.

My point in the book is simply that if you think about what is the niche for the Bank in development youíve got lots of groups that could build schoolrooms, which can do clinics. And Iím all for the Bank doing some of that. But if you think about a big dam, which is going to produce hydropower for several different countries, thatís multinational. Well, the World Bank is multinational. Itís going to take a long time to build and the benefits would be over a very long period. But the Bank has very long-term loans it can give.

It has environmental consequences. Well, the Bank has environmentalists. It has social impact. Well, the Bank has some anthropologists, a few. Perhaps it should have more. It has engineering consequences. Well, the Bank has engineers. It has big economic and public revenue management issues. And the Bank has people in those areas.

This is what you need, a big multinational, multi sexual organization for. You donít need it necessarily to go and build schools in a village, which could be done by a smaller organization just as well. So thatís my only suggestion. That if you look at World Bank lending towards dams, it goes up in the 60s and 70s, peaks in the 80s, starts falling from the early 80s when the Environmental Defense Funds and other people started to shine the spotlight on the problems. And I think that they were right to do so at that point. It goes down, down, down, down, until it the first five years of Wolfensohnís leadership, between 95 and 2000, zero new big dam projects, zero new projects, zero. Maybe thatís just a bit too far. Maybe the pendulum again needs to swing back a little bit.

David Hunter: Iíve managed now with ten minutes left about seven people have caught my eye. So please keep your questions very short.

. . . Iím going to start here.

Merrill Smith: Merrill Smith from the U.S. Committee for Refugees. And this may be a little bit ambitious but Iíd like to ask about the implications of this Chad Pipeline trade off for the refugees in Chad and for the Sudanese refugees. It doesnít look like thereís going to be any intervention anytime soon. So it may well be that these refugees are going to be there for some time. And weíre very concerned that we may be seeing what we call the warehousing of refugees in the process in violation of their rights to work and freedom of movement, the right to live normal lives under the convention.

This is what happens all too often in Africa. And I realize that theyíre not Chadian citizens, so this may create some problems. Nevertheless, there is an international obligation to refugees to allow them to live normal lives and not be encamped. Secondly, there is also the local Chadianís communities on the border that hosted them, shoulder the international responsibility to host refugees, and theyíve never been compensated for that.

Anyway, thank you.

David Hunter: Question, right behind there.

Greg Binkert: Thank you very much. Iím Greg Binkert. I was the World Bank country manager for three years in Chad. So I met Delphine and the other ones. I finished my job by the end of the September, so I am no longer there. But Iíd just like to make maybe a few sort of general comments. On the role of NGOs I must say Iíve worked very well with them. And they play a very, very important role in this whole project.

Of course, given that I was in Chad I basically worked with the local NGOs and it was very important, and it was a very, very important feedback mechanism, particular NGOs in Moundou, in Doba. They had a lot of information that we would not have gotten otherwise. And they were very important also for the whole outreach and development planning that is not finished yet, but the process got underway. Itís very important for this inclusive type of governance to have a broader approach and it played a very positive role.

And the point of course about the college, which is also very important, the oversight body, it is true, I mean it is very unique. It is also true that it does not yet really have to fall, it is fully equipped.

I guess the thinking behind it when we first said well, letís hire about four staff, which was instead of creating a huge bureaucracy from the beginning we said weíll start and it will expand as the demand comes up. It is very clear it needs to be strengthened. They need to have more technical staff. But we did not want to start saying letís hire 50 people from the very beginning. But it needs to be strengthened and the point I think by Peter is certainly very well done. We need to learn how to use those instruments of transparency. It is very unique and we have to still go further along this way.

I think one of the main roles of the college, itís true it doesnít have judicial power, so it cannot invite people if they see there is an abuse of funds, but publishing is a very, very important thing to have, the role to publish. And we got that into the (unintelligible word) that can publish at any time that they see fit. And thatís very, very important. And the college itself has the oversight, but it has to get more use to it. Theyíre still not fully comfortable. They have to learn how to do that.

I just want to say that, I donít know if itís a question, but the comment, but I said we worked very well with NGOs. They do have a very important role to play. They had in the past. They will also in the future. But also the other thing in my three years there I had to get used to their language, which is a very, sort of an extreme language, which even today I encounter again, which is for example here peers say well, the compensation is a total tragedy, a total failure.

Well, probably you could have done it, thatís what I heard you say. You can correct me if I misunderstood. But thatís not the way that I saw it. For the three years that I traveled a lot through the villages I saw big things. I saw the number of bicycles going up and up. I saw sewing machines going up and up. I donít have the exact figure in mind, but itís about half to 60 percent of the compensations were paid in kind. So they were using those things.

Yes, some people did waste their money. Itís true. But I also went to Doba where I met people who had used the money, put it in the local credit and savings cooperative and set up businesses. So I was not revealing that cost with Ellen Brown. But I mean there are lots of positive examples. There are also negative examples. But I got used to that, the language where you can stand next to a school, a newly built school and not say we have not seen anything positive at all.

Itís a little bit like what Delphine was saying there is no sign whatsoever for poverty reduction. I saw many signs. But itís also true we have to try much harder. We have to go much further. The problems are not resolved. But when you say there is no sign whatsoever for poverty reduction, thatís a little bit too extreme, and I got used to that language. So all I can say is we have to work forward. We have to work together. And itís a good partnership, but the language sometimes is not always, can be a little bit extreme, maybe on both sides, whatever.

David Hunter: We have five minutes. Iím going to ask Ö I see at least two hands, three hands that are up. You get one minute to ask a question.

Male Voice: Good morning, my name is (unintelligible word) and Iím a graduate student at American University. Iím also revisiting the same issue of compensation. Iíd like to know more about that. We hear on one hand that there is compensation, there is reduction of poverty, people have seen it. And it seems to be described more generally as a disaster. And I read about it and to the panel today what have we learned about compensation in this case? What can be done? What should be done? And what are the prospects of that actually taking place considering the current situation?

Bruce Jenkins: Hello, my nameís Bruce Jenkins. Iím with the Bank Information Center as well. And I wanted to ask Sebastian about the he feels for the arc [sounds like] of his arguments. I agree with you Sebastian that nobody has a monopoly on the truth or virtue and that we all should be held accountable and responsible for what we write and what we say and what we put out there. And that applies to all the NGOs and that applies to everybody.

But when we look at Ö today you presented a much more nuanced picture of what youíre trying to say. But when you read your book, when you read your writings you get this arc of an argument that says NGOs bash the Bank, Wolfensohn opens up, NGOs continue to bash the Bank.

So whatís the conclusion? Close down the space? Close down the participatory space of the Bank for working with NGOs? And I ask this because weíre already hearing the Mallaby argument to be invoked inside of the World Bank, to dismiss criticisms of what the World Bank is doing. Because the way that your argument was presented in your writing leads to an easy conclusion that we donít need to be listening to these people.

Theyíre all flaky. They got it all wrong. And Iím kind of wondering what are your plans forward now that you put this argument into play in kind of tracking it forward? Because the consequence is potentially closing down a bit of the pluralistic space that you say that you value.

David Hunter: Last question over there.

Todd Howland: Thank you very much because Iím the director of the Center for Human Rights at the Robert Kennedy Memorial. (Laughter) It would have been the last time that you would have moderated for us.

(Laughter)

David Hunter: Iím sorry, youíre timeís up.

(Laughter)

Todd Howland: I wanted to say one of the reasons why we gave Delphine the award this year, and why the work thatís ahead of us is so interesting is that it highlights sort of the limits of the safeguards that exist today in the World Bank and the need for rethinking those safeguards to include economic rights, social rights, political rights and civil rights. And itís something that the Bank to a large degree has been resistant to. And itís been something that we canít understand why Jim Wolfensohn, who is someone who speaks about them rhetorically hasnít made those changes in the Bank itself.

So thatís why Iíd like for you to address in my question, is why havenít they done that? Why havenít they put those safeguards in, to say, if a big project is coming on, we have to look at what is the HIV rate in that country? And is there an increase because of that project? And just because the project will provide more money for a clinic, do we actually have a situation where HIV is going up, the amount of money is coming in, but itís inadequate to even provide for the medication for the people that are now infected?

Thank you very much.

David Hunter: Iím going to turn to Sebastian first, and then to Peter and then Delphine.

Sebastian: I think on the refugee issue in Chad I totally share your concern. Iíve written dozens of articles about the Darfur crisis, which has created this refugee mess. And I just have to say that I agree.

Greg Binkert I think was more making a comment than posing a question. So Iíll save time for the next one which was compensation. I think that with my understanding of that issue is that people that got compensation in kind, you know they were given the bicycle, the sewing machine that was useful. People who were given cash, a lump sum, may have often wasted it. And the extent of the waste should have been foreseen, but was in fact partially foreseen.

And the issue was that you had to train people, talk to them, counsel them about what they could use the money for. And clearly more of that should have been done. But I think that Ellen Brown take her word for what you will, her line is that, when I talked to her about this issue, she was perfectly up front and said yes, the compensation thing some people took the money. I tried to develop partnerships with local NGOs to go and counsel people on accepting in-client conversation or thinking about how youíre going to use the cash if you get cash. She thinks that the cooperation from the NGO side in doing early counseling with villagers on this issue of money management that they didnít cooperate because as much as they should have because they were often more trying to kind of attack the whole project. And that if there would be a better partnership there, there might have been a better compensation story. I mean, Peter might know more. But I think those are just some comments on that one.

The question about a lack of spaceÖ To some extent people will take the book and use it for whatever purpose they want. Some people use it to attack the Bank. Some people use it to defend the Bank. As I said before, you know, itís been sited by people who think that Wolfensohn is the best thing since sliced bread. Itís been sited by Wolfensohn as an outrageous attack on him.

I mean, it gets seen by different angles frankly. And it seems to me that the public space opened up around the Bank for civil society participation, including very importantly the public (unintelligible) strategy papers, which build a sort of consultation process in in-country for creating national development plans.

It would be horrible if you lost all that progress. Horrible. But I think that itís so entrenched and so developed that weíre talking more about whether the bank pushes back on certain projects like Nam Theun 2, I imagine. And there you know what I think about that depends on what the facts are in the Nam Theun argument, which I havenít looked at yet. But perhaps I will.

I mean, you know, if itís the case that this is a project which has been very well assessed and the environmental equities have been properly assessed, and the NGO community continues to be critical and try to block the thing, then the Bank will probably push back. And perhaps theyíre right to do so. If not, not. So I donít want to judge that one.

But it seems to me that insofar as there is a Mallaby thesis, which is being cited in the Bank, the thesis ought to be, I don't know how itís been cited, but if it is, it ought to be simply look, you know we will listen to your arguments. We will engage with you for a few years on difficult projects. We will try to do the best we can to balance these different issues, the environment, social impact and development. And then if you carry on arguing forever, Iím sorry but there are poor people who need a project and if we think itís a good project we will give it to the board, and if they sign off on it, weíre going to do it. So thatís how Iíd respond to that.

There is one last thing, why not more action on human rights? I don't know. But my guess is that it has quite a lot to do with the way that the existing safeguards have sort of taken on a life of their own since their creation in the late 80s and early 90s.

And that particularly experiences like the one that I describe in my book with western China poverty, where the inspection panel played a very central role, and it became an incredibly sort of bruising experience from all points of view I think. Because even if you wanted the project to have more environmental protections the fact is that the criticism of the Bank drove the Bank after the project so that the Chinese then went ahead and did the project by themselves, relocated twice as many people as they were going to, scraped a lot of the environmental protections the Bank had built into the project. And so even, you know from any perspective, whether youíre an environmentalist, someone who cares about Tibetan rights, anything, it seems like the outcome was appalling, because the Chinese just went ahead and did it on their own without any safeguards at all.

So I think its experiences like that, which have kind of gotten into the psyche of the Bank management. And theyíre frankly scared of creating new safeguards, even though they probably should in human rights, because of the way the other safeguards have been interpreted.

Peter: Iíd like to say something quickly about the three subjects, the refugee question, compensation and then the questions of democracy. I think Merrillís question is a good question. But I think I would want people to phrase it the other way around. I think the problem is that people arenít asking the question whatís the impact of the refugee crisis on Chad? And Iím still haunted by what happened in Rwanda and the Congo where I felt that Zaire was seen as being an empty space for Rwanda refugees, and no one seriously paid attention to the impact on Zaire. And thatís the reason why we had war and the invasion that was allowed from Rwanda, Uganda and the rest.

And I think that from the start nobodyís been paying attention to the impact of Darfur on Chad. There was a coo attempt in Chad in May that didnít make it to the pages of the New York Times. I donít know if it made it to the Washington Post. And it was all about Chad. It was all about Sudan and it was all about oil. And it disruptedÖ And it wasnít covered anywhere. But the impact of whatís happening in Sudan and the refugee crisis on Chad is I think extremely important and could disrupt any movement forward in Chad in terms of political developments in the country.

On the issue of compensation, I want to say again, and maybe I havenít said it clearly Iím one of those characters who actually wants to see the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline project succeed. Iíve looked at every step of the way, through ways in which linkages could be used in order to empower democracy, open up political space and enable people to take control of their lives. And so every element in the Pipeline project thatís been positive Iíve noted, I called it to peopleís attention.

We havenít talked at all about the prosecution of HissËne HabrÈ the former leader of Chad. I don't think that it would have even been able to get started without the project, the Pipeline project. The scrutiny that was brought by the international communityÖ

There are small moments where things look as if they might be able to move forward. Itís important. Iím looking for those. Iím a hope monger. I go looking for things to be hopeful about when I go into these countries. And thatís why I was so upset when I got to the region to the south and we started to look at compensation issues which I didnít even want to look at. I wish Gregor had been on the bus with us. Maybe he would have had some time arguments. Because no one else had themÖ

But then when we looked at the weird disparities and how compensation was being felt in villages and how it wasnít meeting, at least in the most enclave-y, the most cut-off sections, it wasnít leading to any sense that there was an increase in legitimacy or credibility that would help them to build this process that we so want to see of a participative involvement and a hopeful project towards spending of money. Instead what we learned about was how the so-called compensation for villages wasnít compensation at all.

It had nothing to do with the amount of land that was taken out of control or use by the village. It was a fixed amount for each village and it translated into a two-room building that had no electricity, no water and no money for the expenditures for teachers or for the school supplies or other things. And it was something that was only even allowed to happen once the villagers came forward with their participative project as if this was a development project that they had to prove their ability to undertake rather than compensation for having lost some use of their village and their land.

Now I can understand how that came about in some ways, but the effect that it was having, at least in those areas, and the way that it was responded to was so negative. And the inability of the Exxon compensation crew to explain or to come up with other examples of positive things was something that was dramatic, and then to see them on the ground.

Now one reason why Ellen Brown is probably the most hated person in these three villages is because sheís the most visible person in those villages. She goes there and none of these people in these villages has seen an office, a government official from agriculture, water, health or anything else in probably the last decade. They see someone who represents money and means. And theyíre not getting what they want.

And it seems like the tensionÖ What we saw was the increase in tension and frustration. And then going into things like compensation, those bicycles for one year of use of land? Youíre out then looking at the long-term Ö It had a bizarreness to it that only was experienced, where we only felt like it when we were on the ground.

And then in the reaction from Exxon Mobileís team how hard it was for them to explain and then to learn from the other oil consortium in the country that this compensation scheme was such a wonderful thing that they were employing the same people from Exxon Mobile for the work that they were going to do, seemed somewhat scary. I may be overstating because I havenít seen those other cases and I wasnít able to hear people tell the story or hear Exxon, the compensator tell about that story.

Finally, just on the democracy question, and the human rights question in terms of the Bank, this was a haphazard, awkward foray of the Bank and issues of human rights and democracy during which some interesting and nice things were done. Having Jim Wolfensohn call up Idriss Deby and say release (unintelligible) is to see the leader of the head of the World Bank act like a president in a bilateral relationship, but in a way that doesnít have a sustained investment in whatís happening in that country. So he took a personal interest on some issues. They wrote about human rights on the website. They saw it as something to be able to do.

But then when you come back and you say okay, what are you going to do to make sure that the courts can function and do the right thing when they learn from the oversight committee there are problems? What about when the radio station is closed? What about when the pluralism within the parliament which is necessary for this law that you helped to adopt is being squashed? What are you going to do? And thatís when you hear about all the political limits on the Bank. And thatís where I say I don't know if you need more safeguards, but you need to rationalizing of thinking around what is possibly and what can be sustained.

Delphine: Thank you. I certainly agree with Peter on what he said on the refugees because this is a situation that would clearly impact the overall situation in Chad and not only the rights of the refugees.

I would say something about the good project -- who should decide that a given project is a good project? Is it the World Bank, the oil companies, or the governments? And where is the poor peopleís place, because the development projects are about them. Do they have a voice? Do they have something to say about that? So I feel if they have a voice and if they have something to do about that then NGOs need to play a role. And I thank Binkert for raising that NGOs have played a positive role in the Chad-Cameroon project.

But still I would say that the World Bank has really missed an opportunity to really help the poor in Chad by not taking into account what the civil society have warned them about. That was a lack of responsibility on the government and a very complicated situation of our conflicts. And if they had at least agreed with the civil society on the two years moratorium that we asked then we would be able to get some conditions in place, some safeguards that would prevent what is happening now from happening.

I want to say a few things about the language that Binkert talked about. It could be extreme. But when you are in Chad and when you see what is happening that is not extreme because what does that mean for a person who lost his leg to have a bicycle? And I would say that most of those bicycles already broke down and they donít have means to repair them.

So is that a development, and what does that mean for a person who lost his means of production to get some money that he cannot invest? Most of those people, they got money, they use the money. And now they are left with nothing. And if you see the overall situation of the conflicts that are going on in the country you cannot say that this project is a development project, for example Bebedja, the main city in the oil region, is burnt down.

So are we talking about the same development? The development has to be sustainable. And in this case what the World Bank and the consortium are trying to show as development signals is for us meaningless. They would show that a family who has gotten compensation has bought a new dress for kids and a new sewing machine. But who is going to pay them for a dress or for any services, I don't know.

I think that itís more complicated. Itís more important than that. And we need things that could really be sustainable. And the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline is not giving us opportunity for a sustainable development in Chad.

Thank you.

David: Never speak after someone like Delphine. Itís my job now to wrap up and thank everybody variously. I do want to thank the RFK Center again and Miriam and the crowd that have their name tags on please make sure you thank them as you go out for organizing this. I am also looking forward to the next debate on China Tibet, although I understand that I wonít be able to moderate it apparently.

Finally I want to say that I really feel that weíve had a very exhilarating conversation. Any conversation truly that you can talk both about the future of development and standards and at the same time link it to this serious issues of the price of mangos and whether bicycles are working, I think that youíve actually started to have a debate about what development is about.

And I want to thank the panelists for coming. Peter, for getting on that plane this morning. And Sebastian for setting this in motion with a very interesting account, and also for being willing to put it out here on the table. And finally, and mostly I want to thank Ms. Djiraibe and congratulate her publicly. It will be my only chance to do so for the award that she richly deserves and for your continued hard work.

(Applause) You truly are elegant Ö Thank you.