Major infrastructure projects carried out by governments, often with the participation of international organisations such as the World Bank, cause the forced displacement of countless local communities in developing countries. These projects are assessed on the basis of their most immediate aims, without taking into account their long-term consequences. Among which, all too often, is the forced — and at times violent — displacement of local communities, who lose their homes and their means of supporting themselves.

This is demonstrated by the report from the International Accountability Project (Iap), Back to Development: A Call For What Development Could Be. The organisation that fights against the forced displacement of people due to development projects interviewed 800 people across eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, all of whom are subject to infrastructure projects carried out by their respective governments.

84 per cent of those interviewed have been forced to abandon their homes because of the projects, or will be shortly. 88 per cent say they were not consulted during the planning phase, even though the projects threaten — or were the reason for — their eviction. The solution to the problem of forced displacement would be to create development models centred on improving quality of life and respecting human rights. Only local communities themselves can be the source of this paradigm shift, says Iap.

Judged on the basis of their most short-sighted aims, all eight major projects examined in the report gleam with an aura of progress. Beneath the surface, however, the rights of communities have been violated. Construction works in the Philippines to increase resilience to typhoons such as Haiyan in 2013, a dam to generate electricity in Panama, the construction of a solar power plant in Egypt: projects united by an impulse towards modernisation and by the fact that they will cause or have already caused the displacement of thousands of people, whose wishes have not been taken into consideration.

Very often the people evicted are indigenous individuals without official recognition of their ties to the land, or poor people, frequently without property rights over land they have inhabited for generations. The Iap report also revealed that compensation and resettlement programmes are typically inadequate or non-existent. 63 per cent of the 800 people interviewed received no compensation whatsoever. 91 per cent say they did not benefit from any assistance programme following forced displacement.

Data such as these compelled World Bank president Jim Yong Kim to publicly acknowledge that the Bank does not know how many people have been forced to leave their lands as a result of its projects, or what has become of many of them.

The stories of the 800 people interviewed by Iap prompt reflection on what development means for those who are subject to interventions carried out in its name. It is time for institutions to recognise local communities as the authors, not the victims, of their own destiny.