IFC’s FPIC and the Cultural Genocide of Uyghurs A failure to apply PS7 in Xinjiang links IFC to gross human rights violations KENDYL SALCITO March 2021 IFC’s 2012 Performance Standards purport to safeguard the indigenous right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for impacts on their lands, livelihoods and culture associated with IFC investments. Performance Standard 7 should assure that development projects on indigenous lands directly benefit and are accepted by indigenous peoples. Yet IFC has never implemented its FPIC standard in Xinjiang, despite having investments in agriculture, energy and surveillance technology in the region. The failure to adequately implement PS7 has made IFC complicit in the ethnic cleansing underway in the region. This report outlines these findings and proposes mitigation measures. 0 Executive Summary The World Bank’s private lending arm, the financing is contributing to the Uyghur cul- • The UK government has modified its International Finance Corporation (IFC), tural genocide in Xinjiang. modern slavery fines to directly penal- has committed to upholding the rights of ize companies credibly linked Xinjiang NomoGaia alerted the IFC to these con- indigenous peoples since at least 2012, abuses;ii cerns in November 2020 and engaged with with the launch of its updated Perfor- • the bank to seek evidence demonstrating The Australian and Japanese govern- mance Standards. Implementation of this that these risks are managed. Two Xinjiang ments have proposed bills to sanction commitment has come under scrutiny in products from Xinjiang;iii investments have been divested in that the past. Today, evidence suggests that period. Some of IFC’s inquiries into client • Auditors from French, UK, German and failure to adequately safeguard indigenous operations in the region have documented US firms refuse to conduct audits in the peoples is contributing to an ongoing cul- a degree of risk mitigation. Newer invest- region (citing safety risks to their audi- tural genocide. As the research in this re- ments now articulate when operations are tors and extreme restrictions on access port lays out, the IFC has investments in iv “not located in or linked to Xinjiang prov- to information and laborers); and Xinjiang Province, China, home to indige- ince.” • The Fair Labor Association has barred nous Uyghur populations and host to a cul- all members from sourcing any materi- tural genocide. Several of these invest- However, the implementation of Perfor- als from Xinjiang.v ments have links to the government’s mance Standards remains opaque at best. campaign of repression against the Uy- Censorship and surveillance are ubiquitous These governments, businesses and asso- ghurs. in Xinjiang, and IFC states that it has no ciations have taken unprecedented and special access or privileges in the region. public actions in the face of irrefutable evi- Chinese authorities have incarcerated over Its team faced intimidation and police dence of crimes against humanity ongoing 1 million Uyghurs and conscripted millions questioning on a 24-hour 2019 monitoring against Uyghurs in the region. That IFC has more into forced labor. They have system- visit and has not conducted follow-up not done the same raises questions about atically erased cultural heritage, both fieldwork in the region since then. To date, implementation of its own safeguards. through physical destruction and through IFC has not documented any systematic the institutionalization and indoctrination In conducting the initial research for this assessment of its clients’ social impacts on of children and adults. IFC’s investments in project in 2020, we had no intention or ex- Uyghur communities hosting IFC clients or the region include industries that (1) pectation of finding credible links between Uyghur contractors in its clients’ supply source raw materials that are credibly IFC investments and Uyghur cultural eras- chain. Only one ESIA has been produced linked to forced labor associated with Uy- ure. In many ways this report should stand for all these projects, but it cannot be read ghur detention, (2) are historically tied to alone, rather than within a series. We de- without the creation of a WeChat account Xinjiang prison labor where Uyghurs are cided to publish it within the series be- and issuance of a payment. sent for “unpatriotic” thoughts, (3) are cause it demonstrates how catastrophi- credibly linked to surveillance technology If IFC cannot monitor compliance with in- cally harmful weak implementation of in- used to penalize Uyghur culture and reli- digenous rights standards in its Xinjiang cli- digenous safeguards can be. Disregard for gious practices, and (4) are visibly linked to ents, IFC should divest from all financing in indigenous peoples is rarely recognized as the destruction of critical cultural heritage. the region. This response would not be ex- an urgent issue, which is why Performance Some IFC investments are located adjacent treme. Worldwide, private, public and fi- Standard 7 (PS7) is so rarely applied. But to vast Uyghur internment camps. nancial decisionmakers have issued sanc- the cost of failure can be as high as geno- tions and bans on materials and goods cide. That point should drive a much Using satellite imagery of IFC’s client oper- sourced from Xinjiang. To name a few: broader and deeper commitment to indig- ations, supplemented with IFC project doc- enous protections across development fi- umentation, public reports, and leaked • The US government has banned cotton nance. Chinese documents, this report presents and tomato imports from Xinjiang;i evidence of credible risks that IFC 1 Figure 1 - Uighur woman drying peppers Miyake Juin 11 Oct 2011 Creative Commons Introduction About this series and report This is the second report in a series evalu- Uyghurs. Although the region historically ating IFC’s implementation of its Indige- was nearly devoid of Chinese ethnic-ma- nous Peoples Performance Standard, PS7. jority Han people and home to ethnic mi- The first examined how fulsomely PS7 was norities with deep religious and cultural implemented in the 29 projects where it ties to the land, IFC has not consistently vi was nominally applied. The third report, applied PS7 across its investments in the forthcoming, examines the dozens of pro- region. vii At the one investment where IFC jects where indigenous peoples were pre- did apply PS7 in Xinjiang, it did not require sent and impacted but PS7 was completely clients to obtain the Free, Prior and In- bypassed. Those two reports informed the formed Consent of impacted Uyghurs af- preliminary research for this report, which fected by the IFC investment in question, focuses on an indigenous community that as provided for in PS7 and as consistent has gained global attention in recent years with the Declaration of the Rights of Indig- for the extreme levels of persecution they enous Peoples. This report looks not only are currently experiencing: the ethnic Tur- at the apparent inconsistency in considera- kic Uyghurs of Northwestern China. tion of Uyghurs as indigenous but also the role of IFC contributing to the repression IFC has funded numerous projects located of Uyghurs. in Xinjiang, the ancestral homeland of the 2 Xinjiang and the Uyghurs Ethnicity, religion, language, history Uyghurs are an ethnic Turkic population including violent protests in 2009 and lands and into urban settlements discon- who inhabit the land formerly known as 2014. In response, China has simultane- nected from their communities and cul- Eastern Turki, now called Xinjiang (“The ously rolled out “anti-terrorist” surveil- tural practices.xiii Their new apartments New Frontier” in Mandarin). Uyghurs have lance programs and “poverty alleviation” are outfitted with video cameras, whose a distinct language, written in Perso-Arabic strategies designed to reduce the potential feeds track facial expressions and link script (not Mandarin characters) and re- of violent extremism across the region. movements to a growing database of bio- lated to Uzbek. Unlike the Han Chinese “These schemes operate on a continuum metric information on every resident.xiv population, they are majority-Muslim. of coercion, and they are becoming heavily Their cultural practices in agriculture and intertwined,” experts concluded in 2019.x livestock are distinct from Han practices Poverty alleviation and so-called efforts to The Daily Clues Report and Beijing’s industrialized agribusiness, counter violent extremism are linked con- both in the irrigation approaches engaged cepts, and, as a result, the systems used to “In this document, these clues are re- to support traditional crops, and in the track both have become circular and inter- ferred to as “dig, reduce, shovel halal slaughter practices and traditions twined. “Collaborations between enter- clues”. The relationship between the around animal sales (at traditional mar- prises, industrial parks, and different types village-based work teams and the kets) and husbandry. of training institutions—both real voca- IJOP is evidently circular: Through An independent political entity until the tional schools and vocational internment the IJOP app (⼀体化APP) and other lo- late 18th century, Uyghurs have seen their camps—ensure that former camp detain- cal reporting mechanisms, the lands occupied by military and colonizing ees end up working alongside other train- teams, along with local cadres and forces (predominantly from China but for a ees. Differentiating forced internment government staff, feed