36 HOUSING RIGHTS recommendations, which do not have the force of law. Moreover, the Panel is not concerned with the breach of human rights standards per se, but merely with compliance with the Bank’s own policies and procedures (although of course the former can and do inform the latter in a limited way, as in the case of the Operational Directive issued with respect to indigenous people).41 The most high-profile case dealt with by the Panel to date has been the Qinghai component of the China Western Poverty Reduction Project. This involved the resettlement of over 57,000 poor farmers, mainly Han and Hui Chinese, who practised high-altitude rain-fed agriculture in Haidong (Tib.: Tsoshar) Prefecture in Dulan (Tib.: Tulan) County, in Haixi (Tib.: Tsonub) Tibetan and Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture. The resettlement was accompanied by the construction of a dam and irrigation channels, and conversion of fragile, arid lands used as pasture by indigenous nomads into areas for intensive agricultural production. The population transfer would increase the Chinese population in the area, making Tibetans and Mongolians an even more marginalized minority. Tibetans and a number of international environmental and human rights NGOs, led by the US-based Information Campaign for Tibet, called on the Bank to withdraw its support from the Project, stating that it would have a disastrous effect on the local environment and the housing, land and cultural rights of the indigenous population. The Board took the unprecedented step of recommending that all Bank work on the project should cease until the Panel had carried out its investigation. The Panel found a lack of sufficient planning and consultation both, in relation to the impact on the area left behind by the settlers and the area they were being moved to. It concluded that the Project failed to consider the appropriateness of implanting largescale irrigated agriculture on traditional forms of land use. It found the Environmental Assessment to be ‘uninformative’ and ‘silent’ on the layout of the new towns and villages, their infrastructure and facilities, together with waste management. In sum, it found the Project to be inconsistent with the Bank’s policy towards indigenous people. The Board decided to cease its funding of the Project. For some Bank staff, the decision was the wrong one.42 Moreover, the victory might be seen as meaningless given that China announced that it would continue funding the Project anyway. However, it demonstrated that the Panel was not only prepared to listen to the weak, but also to take action on their behalf, and important lessons were learnt about the conduct of future projects. Many observers pointed out that the case only received so much attention because it had been brought by a US-based NGO working on a country that was already the subject of a high-profile campaign. However, the majority of Panel requests have been brought directly by organizations based in the South.43 What is needed are the organizational skills and capacities to collect sufficient evidence to present a case, and to ensure that the findings are made available to local and international media in order to maximize impact.