This report looks at the gender impacts of the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline and West African Gas Pipelines (WAGP). It argues that IFI involvement failed to adequately protect vulnerable social groups in affected communities, particularly women. Through desk research and fieldwork in four countries (Cameroon for the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline, and Nigeria, Ghana and Togo for WAGP), Gender Action and Friends of the Earth regional member groups assessed the gender differential impacts of the pipelines on local women and men. Surveys, focus groups and testimonials revealed that women have suffered disproportionately from the pipelines in large part because project architects failed to take pervasive gender inequalities into account in project design. In all of the communities surveyed, women experience marginalization in income-generation, decision-making, and access to critical resources like education, land, credit and technology. IFIs reinforced this second-class status by sidelining women in consultation processes, discriminating against women in compensation schemes and employment opportunities, and undermining women’s critical livelihoods.
The IFIs’ Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline and WAGP investments demonstrate how these development institutions break their public commitments to reduce poverty and gender inequality. To genuinely live up to their stated promises, Gender Action and Friends of the Earth member groups recommend that IFIs comprehensively integrate gender into all investments at all project stages, including planning, implementation and evaluation. IFIs must conduct gender analyses of their projects to determine differential gender impacts, and collect and analyze sex-disaggregated data throughout the project in order to determine the project’s immediate outcomes on women and men. Community consultation should ensure the equal participation of women and men. Accountability measures must be strengthened to achieve redress and justice for human rights violations on the part of IFIs and multinational companies, and help communities receive sufficient compensation for losses. Finally, IFIs should not fund extractive industries projects if environmental, social, and gender assessments indicate unavoidable human rights violations, compromised livelihoods or environmental degradation.