"Not Everyone And Not Enough: Arbitrary Resettlement and Compensation Schemes in the AIIB-funded Mandalika project", September 25, 2023

Nearly five years have passed since the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) approved a $248.4 million loan for the financing of Indonesia’s Mandalika Urban Development and Tourism Project...

The AIIB has made lofty promises to uphold high transparency standards and “best environmental and social practices,’...Yet, instead of upholding these standards, our investigations find that the bank has repeatedly failed to meet its own, most basic social and environmental safeguards...

More than four years and counting, project-affected communities in Mandalika have endured – and continue to face – internal displacement, loss of livelihoods, and the daily humiliations of project-induced poverty. In the midst of this messy and unfinished resettlement and compensation process, the AIIB has devised an exit strategy which is the opposite of the time-bound remedies and open resolutions that are needed...

Testimonies by project-affected communities also confirm how the discriminating and non-transparent resettlement eligibility, as well as inconsistent sets of resettlement data reflect the AIIB’s failures in meeting the most basic measures of accountability... the systematic exclusion of any meaningful involvement by the project-affected communities have resulted in a complete breakdown of a fair and orderly resettlement process...