World Vision International

"World Vision and similar missionary groups operate as external factors, which do not work for the local community respecting its organizational identity and its religiosity. . . . Its ideological mechanism constitutes a powerful tool which tends not only to accompany the process of real subsumption of peasant economies to capitalism, but also provokes a sudden atomization of the community, hastening a massive implantation of capitalist relations of productions in circumstances in which the development of the capitalist system in the country will never be able to absorb the de-peasantized labor force."

"World Vision played a role in the deaths of three Salvadoran refugees. The World Vision camp-coordinator took them to the local Honduran army post, where they were immediately arrested. After a short time, Honduran soldiers entered the camp and arrested two other refugees. World Vision administrators did not report the incident to the other relief agencies. Next day, one of the refugees was released, but three days later the bodies of the three others were found, [who were] shot to death on the Salvadoran side of the border. Aside from these ‘bad apples’, World Vision—as a policy—maintained records on all Salvadoran aid recipients and filed daily reports by telephone and telex with the World Vision office in Costa Rica. World Vision’s extensive information-gathering procedures bolstered charges that the group was collaborating with the CIA."

"World Vision has, on a number of occasions, functioned as an intelligence-gathering arm of the US government. In the 1970s World Vision was charged with having collected field data for the CIA in Vietnam. After US troops left the region, World Vision played a major role in the administration of refugee camps. . . . World Vision also became a crucial player in the ‘yellow rain’ campaign to discredit the Soviet Union. . . . World Vision was drawn into the plot when the US embassy in Bangkok requested that the relief agency send medical samples taken from among refugees who claimed to have been poisoned by ‘yellow rain’. According to a missionary working with the refugees in Thailand, World Vision’s dependence on US grant money obliged it to comply with requests that refugee blood samples be sent to the US embassy rather than to more impartial investigators."

"Between 1979 and 1985, World Vision provided more than $4.7 million in aid to Ecuador. . . . World Vision was also granted Ecuadorian government contracts during the 1980s for reforestation, water, rural electrification and small production projects in Ecuador’s Indian highlands. . . . State officials complained that World Vision outbid their programs, conditioned community aid on a monopoly of presence, and even induced villagers to destroy competing projects. . . . Funds were generally given to Indian evangelical congregations or emerging Protestant political associations to distribute. In several cases World Vision employees held simultaneous posts in municipal administration. This led to conflicts between traditional and evangelical sectors of Indian communities, including destruction of project property and even violence along with widespread maladministration of funds."

"[In Sri Lanka, the activities of World Vision raised a strong alarm. Lt Col A.S. Amarasekera of Sri Lanka writes:] After George Bush Jr became the president of the United States, he made a speech in which he said that he would no longer support the developing third-world countries through their respective governments but would channel American aid through the American Christian Relief Organizations in these countries. World Vision is one such organization. Based on the evidence led at the Presidential Commission of inquiry on Non Governmental Organizations, it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that World Vision was an American funded manipulative Christian evangelical organization, which was surreptitiously trying to convert Sinhalese Buddhists to Christianity through a program of work that was identified as ‘The Mustard Seed Project’. After they were thus exposed, they wound up the project and remained dormant for several years but have now recommenced their activities with renewed vigor."