ABSTRACT
The World Bank-financed Uganda Transport Sector Development Project (UTSDP) epitomizes the harm created by boomtown risks and impacts and the risks of displacement for communities located near extractive industries infrastructure and infrastructure projects. In the case presented, the World Bank categorically failed in its responsibility to recognize and address in advance the severe social risks of a particular project and to prevent, plan to mitigate, respond to, supervise, identify, and provide redress for harms caused by the influx of project workers along the Kamwenge–Fort Portal roadway in Western Uganda. Relying on research and focus group discussions carried out in the affected communities by a local civil society organization, Joy for Children Uganda, along with an in-depth analysis of World Bank policy and project performance, the authors discuss what must be done to both prevent the intrinsic risks and correct the harm caused by this project and to fully account for and include boomtown risks in the basic paradigm for designing, financing, and supervising such projects. Lessons are distilled and recommendations provided for addressing boomtown risks together with, and as part of, the impoverishment risks that occur under large-scale infrastructure projects and the various amounts of forced population displacement they trigger.
