Asia is drowning in plastic, with national production and imports from the global north having devastating environmental and public health impacts. According to a report by Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific, most South and East Asian countries lack proper waste management strategies, regulations and facilities to deal with the plastic waste crisis. Often, communities are forced to resort to…
Over 20 social organisations and networks from Latin America and the Caribbean are convening an open dialogue with government representatives and civil society to develop an international and mandatory tool to protect human rights against corporate abuse. Real World Radio interviewed Iván González, Political Coordinator at the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), member of the movement Continental Day…
Eleven years ago, the transnational oil company Chevron, formerly Texaco, received a historic sentence in Ecuador. It was forced by the justice of that country to pay a compensation of 9.5 billion dollars for the damages caused to indigenous communities and settlers in the provinces of Orellana and Sucumbíos in the Amazon region. This lawsuit was filed by the Union of…
A week into 2023, Jairo Bonilla and Alí Domínguez were murdered while working in Concepción, Colón Department, in Honduras, a few kilometres from their community, Guapinol. Both were defenders of the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers, and the Botaderos National Park, also called Carlos Escaleras, the source of 34 bodies of water. 10 days later in the same region, Omar…
The United Nations 2022 conference on biodiversity, widely known as the COP15, has adopted the new Global Biodiversity Framework, which will be in force until 2030. In the early hours of 19 December, the Chinese representative acting as President of the talks brought down the gavel to approve the new framework, ignoring opposition from the Democratic Republic of Congo and…
A series of highly repressive laws and decrees are threatening human rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom. The main concerns of civil society organisations include restrictions to the right to protest, discrimination and repression of ethnic minorities and the dismantling of the Human Rights Act. Real World Radio interviewed Denis Fernando, Rights and Justice Campaigner at Friends of the…
The annual UN climate talks took place in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh this year, from 6 to 20 November. This was the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as “COP27”. In a press release issued at the end of the talks, Friends of the Earth International celebrated…
Moisés Borges, leader of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) stated that the Ecuadorian Chair of the Working Group that is negotiating at the United Nations a legally binding tool on transnational corporations and human rights is promoting a text that legitimises violations. Borges, who is part of the national coordination of the MAB and is the coordinator…
The eighth round of United Nations negotiations for a Binding Treaty to regulate the human rights violations committed by transnational corporations begins this Monday 24 October 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. These international talks began in Geneva in 2015 at the UN Human Rights Council. This year, they present new challenges for social movements and organisations that have been pushing for…
Starting on Monday 10 October through to Thursday, the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) will hold its 50th session, in Rome, Italy. This year, it faces the challenge of the third massive hunger crisis to hit the world in the past 15 years. But, will it be able to put in motion the structural changes needed to…
