17 December 2000: ILISU DAM CAMPAIGN

PRESS RELEASE... PRESS RELEASE...

for immediate release

17 December 2000

Campaign calls on Byers to drop controversial Ilisu Dam scheme as new export credit guidelines are released

The Ilisu Dam Campaign today called on Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, to withdraw his department's support for the Ilisu Dam project in South East Turkey. The call follows the publication of new guidelines for the Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) [1], which the Campaign claims would rule out consideration of the dam.

The new ECGD guidelines, which will be in force from January 2001, are referred to in an accompanying statement by Byers as an 'ethical code'. [2] The guidelines state that ECGD will look at "the underlying quality of the project, including its environmental, social andhuman rights impacts" and will "screen applications for cover to identify and thereafter analyse, any adverse or beneficial environmental, social orhuman rights aspects of relevant projects." The ECGD will also take account of "appropriate external standards" and ensure that its activities "take into account the Government's international policies on sustainable development, environment, human rights, good governance and trade".

The Ilisu Dam Campaign claims that the application for $200 million export credit backing for UK firm Balfour Beatty's construction of the dam would fail screening under the new guidelines on all counts. The dam will displace up to 78,000 people - more than three times the number estimated when Byers first announced he was "minded" to support the project in December 1999. Human rights violations remain widespread in the Ilisu area, which has been a war zone for the past 16 years. Ilisu also threatens Turkey's relations with downstream Syria and Iraq, which share the waters of the Tigris on which the dam will be built. The Campaign has documented how in resettlement terms alone, the project would contravene World Bank and OECD guidelines on 14 counts. [3]

Director of the Ilisu Dam Campaign, Nicholas Hildyard, said "The Ilisu Dam project is an acid test for these new guidelines. If the guidelines are to hold any credibility whatsoever, Stephen Byers must immediately employ them to rule out this disastrous project."

For more information, please contact:

Kate Geary, Ilisu Dam Campaign - 01865 200550
Nicholas Hildyard, The Corner House - 01258 473795.
Email:cornerhouse@gn.apc.org
Kerim Yildiz, Kurdish Human Rights Project - 0207 287 2772

Notes for Editors

[1] The ECGD guidelines, 'Statement of ECGD's Business Principles', were launched on the ECGD's web-site on 14 December, and will be published in January 2001.

[2] Byers' Foreword to the Business Principles states "Given the experience of others who have already adopted similar ethical codes this [the short time-span involved] was an ambitious timescale...".