“This is a state of war. The Governments and corporations declared war against people and the planet and their favourite weapon of mass destruction currently is called climate crisis. This is a deliberate act of violence,” said Sinan Eden, activist of Climáximo, in a roundtable interview with Real World Radio.

Sinan was interviewed together with Fadhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University in Ohio, and also the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity (GISP); and Juliana Senna, from the Transnational Institute, and co-facilitator of the Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power.

During the conversation, the interviewees shared their views on the main causes of the policrisis, they linked the structural causes of poverty in Global South countries with the practices that developed countries continue to engage in today, and they dismantled the colonisation processes.

“The decolonisation of the African continent, an economic, structural decolonisation, becomes the prerequisite for democracy, for justice, for human rights, for development,” stated Fadhel Kaboub. The academic also called for “a new international economic order, a new multipolar world in which the Global South seats at the centre.”

Our interviewees also identified transnational corporations as the key actors of the ruling economic system, with their architecture of impunity.

“50 per cent of the biggest entities in the world today are not countries, they are corporations. They have no accountability, there is no system of control, there is no one looking at what they do and making them accountable for whatever they do in our territories,” warned Juliana Senna.

In the context of next week’s 11th round of negotiations on the United Nations Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, Juliana’s reflections are particularly interesting to hear.

We invite you to listen to the whole conversation among Eden, Fadhel and Juliana. Their thoughts are really key to understand the world we live in. And they also reflect on the possible solutions for a world with justice for the peoples.

The interview was done in Maputo, Mozambique, during the 9th Maputo Workshop on Corporate Impunity and Human Rights, held from 29 July to 1 August and organised by Justica Ambiental – Friends of the Earth Mozambique.

* Photos by Ghislaine Fandel, member of the Communications team at Friends of the Earth International.