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…
Agrcommodities have been ravaging forests across Malaysia and East Asia for decades. Since the 1990s, monoculture plantations have replaced logging, yet they are no less destructive on the environment or communities. “You can see the movement of the transnational logging industry first in the Philippines, then after the forest is gone, Thailand and then Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.…
On the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations, activist Sandra Escobar tells us a story of pain and joy, as peoples in Honduras struggle against the expansion of oil palm plantations and build alternatives together. Approximately 198,000 hectares of Honduras are planted with oil palm crops, representing almost 2% of the country’s land. Annually, it produces 2.4 million…
For many years, communities and civil society organisations in Japan have been repeatedly calling on their government to suspend support for new coal-fired power projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh, notably the Indramayu and Matarbari power plant projects. Not only would these projects fuel the climate crisis, they would also damage the livelihoods of local people and worsen the oversupply of…
On 23 August, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) together with social movements and organisations from the region held a public event in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to discuss the urgent need to agree an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and human rights. The goal is to gain the support of democratic governments…
Over the past 30 years, Colombia has seen eight presidential terms, six presidents, and the steady ascent of neoliberalism which is, today, firmly established. During these three decades, political and legislative transformations in the country have embraced the national and transnational private sector and changed the rules of the game for the local economy. From the early 1990s, a trade…
Costa Rica is internationally renowned as a “green country” for several reasons, including its extensive forest cover and “clean energy” generation. However, some of its agricultural and energy sector policies and laws, many of which are based on various Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and over 15 bilateral agreements, contradict the environment and national sovereignty principles. Comunidades Ecologistas La Ceiba – Friends…
Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) launched on Friday a new study entitled “Internationalist Solidarity and the struggle against corporate power. Reflections on the Covid 19 pandemic and corporate violations of peoples’ rights and their human rights.” The study responded to the need to better explain “the meaning of peoples’ rights and the direct link with…
“We've been expecting this sentence for almost a year. This opens a very important stage in order to realise this guilty verdict against one of the killers of my mother, our comrade Berta Cáceres,” said Bertha Zúniga, the coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). The leader warned that the judicial decision could still…
