World Bank’s IFC must pay reparations to Honduran farmers, US court rules

A Delaware Court has ordered the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to pay nearly $5 million in reparations to members of Honduran land defense movements who faced violence at the hands of security forces linked to Dinant Corporation, a Central American palm oil corporation to which the World Bank had loaned $30 million dollars in 2009. The IFC, one of the most influential lending institutions in the world, lost its “absolute immunity” granted by the U.S. government that protected it from prosecution after the Supreme Court heard a case regarding its financing of energy project in India — but until now, it has not been forced to pay reparations to a community adversely affected by its investments. Violence continues in the Aguán Valley region where Dinant plantations are concentrated, and land defenders who denounced alleged links between the Dinant Corporation and illegal armed groups have been killed in a resurgent wave of killings of land and water defenders. See All Key Ideas AGUÁN VALLEY, Honduras — In the years after 2018, during periods when the threats subsided and the paramilitary gunmen didn’t show up, nights in the village of Panamá were peaceful. People meandered freely through the dirt roads of...