Connect with us

NGO WORK

EU vote on corporate sustainability due diligence fails to fully recognise key role of human rights defenders

Published

3 years ago

on

Members of an indigenous delegation from Brazil take part in the Walk for Your Future climate march ahead of COP27 in Brussels.

JOINT STATEMENT

Last week the European Parliament’s legal affairs (JURI) committee adopted its position on the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Amid strong pressure, the text is a significant step towards ensuring mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence across the full value chain. It includes several important improvements and goes a long way towards aligning with the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

However, as organizations working closely with Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) across the globe, we are concerned that the text, compared to the European Parliament (EP) Rapporteur’s draft, the human rights, development and environment committees’ opinions and other positions, constitutes a missed opportunity to explicitly recognise and protect defenders as affected and legitimate stakeholders.

Defenders play a critical role in protecting human rights and the environment, but their work exposes them to enormous risks, too often resulting in reprisals and tragically the loss of life.

In 2022, Front Line Defenders and its HRD Memorial partners documented the death of 401 defenders worldwide – 48% of whom were HRDs defending land, environmental and indigenous peoples’ rights.

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) documented over 4,700 attacks on defenders related to business activities since 2015, which highlights this is a salient human rights issue in many business sectors. In a report released on Wednesday, BHRRC shows that 555 attacks took place in 2022 alone, revealing that on average more than 10 defenders were attacked every single week for raising legitimate concerns about irresponsible business activity. Indigenous defenders and communities continue to face disproportionate risks. Additionally, BHRRC data shows that approximately 1/3 of all attacks in 2020 stem from a lack of consultation or the failure to secure the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of affected indigenous peoples and affected local communities with customary tenure rights. In many cases, attacks can be traced directly back to business actors: for example, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are one well-documented tactic used by businesses to stop people raising concerns.

At the same time, while there is growing business acknowledgement of HRDs as affected stakeholders, the particular risks and impacts they face are still not sufficiently recognised by many EU companies. The 2021 UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights’ authoritative guidance clearly states that lead firms may cause, contribute to or be linked to such impacts across their value chains.

In light of the above, the final JURI text, despite promising elements regarding stakeholder engagement, reference to the Aarhus Convention and FPIC, as well as removal of some obstacles to access to justice, misses out on covering human rights defenders more comprehensively and explicitly beyond ‘other stakeholders’ to be consulted. There must be no ambiguity regarding the urgency of engaging with HRDs and ensuring their protection from retaliation and other adverse impacts as affected stakeholders.

A recent Front Line Defenders report documented three case studies – from Colombia, India and Uganda – demonstrating how HRDs and their communities would be better protected by a strong EU Directive that explicitly places defenders at its core.

For ILC, the protection of land and environmental defenders remains a top priority. The draft EU law is a huge step forward for communities across the globe. But to be effective it must be explicit in protecting Human Rights Defenders and how one can enforce those rights in case of violations
Eva Maria Anyango Okoth, HRD from Kenya, and the Senior Program Officer for Africa at the International Land Coalition (ILC)

As the negotiations move to the next step, the plenary vote in the European Parliament and then the trilogue negotiations, we reaffirm that to fully protect and recognise HRDs, it is critical that the legislation avoids ambiguities in protections and retains strong language that had been included in earlier drafts, including the EP Rapporteur’s proposal and the opinions from the human rights, development and environment committees. At a minimum we recommend that the final text of the Directive as agreed by co-legislators:

  • explicitly includes Human Rights Defenders as affected stakeholders in the corresponding stakeholder definition and covers them as such in provisions on mandatory stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanisms and non-retaliation;
  • similarly recognises organizations protecting human rights and the environment in the same definition and provisions; and
  • includes the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which breaks down key human rights for the specific context of defenders, in the Annex, along with important additional references e.g. to the Escazú Agreement.

We also point to concerns outlined by civil society organizations about the text’s remaining shortcomings regarding access to justice and other areas, both for defenders and all other rightsholders.

Source: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

Related posts:

Human Rights Defenders not safe in Uganda – Unwanted Witness report Human rights defenders & business in 2022: People challenging corporate power to protect our planet. Human rights defenders show remarkable courage in the face of attacks and killings – new report #COP27: HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES URGE PARTIES TO INCREASE RECOGNITION AND PROTECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND LAND DEFENDERS. THE NEW EU DIRECTIVE ON DUE DILIGENCE – A RELEVANT STEP TOWARDS ENDING CORPORATE IMPUNITY?

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

NGO WORK

Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Published

3 days ago

on

November 13, 2025

By

Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

This report details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

Read full report: Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Source: The Oakland Institute

Related posts:

Under Guise of Climate Action, the World Bank Launches Fresh Offensive on Land Rights 30 civil society organizations have written to the World Bank Group demanding to publicly disclose the Africa Energy Approach paper. World Bank’s new scheme to privatize land in the developing world exposed World Bank is backing dozens of new coal projects, despite climate pledges Communities Under Siege: New Report Reveals World Bank Failures in Safeguard Compliance and Human Rights Oversight in Tanzania
Continue Reading

NGO WORK

Africa’s Land Is Not Empty: New Report Debunks the Myth of “Unused Land” and Calls for a Just Future for the Continent’s Farmland

Published

3 days ago

on

November 13, 2025

By

A new report challenges one of the most persistent and harmful myths shaping Africa’s development agenda — the idea that the continent holds vast expanses of “unused” or “underutilised” land waiting to be transformed into industrial farms or carbon markets.

Titled Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025), the study exposes how this colonial-era narrative continues to justify large-scale land acquisitions, displacements, and ecological destruction in the name of progress.

Drawing on extensive literature reviews, satellite data, and interviews with farmers in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, the report systematically dismantles five false assumptions that underpin the “land abundance” narrative:

  1. That Africa has vast quantities of unused arable land available for cultivation

  2. That modern technology can solve Africa’s food crisis

  3. That smallholder farmers are unproductive and incapable of feeding the continent

  4. That markets and higher yields automatically improve food access and nutrition

  5. That industrial agriculture will generate millions of decent jobs

Each of these claims, the report finds, is deeply flawed. Much of the land labelled as “vacant” is, in reality, used for grazing, shifting cultivation, foraging, or sacred and ecological purposes. These multifunctional landscapes sustain millions of people and are far from empty.

The study also shows that Africa’s food systems are already dominated by small-scale farmers, who produce up to 80% of the continent’s food on 80% of its farmland. Rather than being inefficient, their agroecological practices are more resilient, locally adapted, and socially rooted than the industrial models promoted by external donors and corporations.

Meanwhile, the promise that industrial agriculture will lift millions out of poverty has not materialised. Mechanisation and land consolidation have displaced labour, while dependency on imported seeds and fertilisers has trapped farmers in cycles of debt and dependency.

A Continent Under Pressure

Beyond these myths, the report reveals a growing land squeeze as multiple global agendas compete for Africa’s territory: the expansion of mining for critical minerals, large-scale carbon-offset schemes, deforestation for timber and commodities, rapid urbanisation, and population growth.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa lost more than 3.9 million hectares of forest annually — the highest deforestation rate in the world. Grasslands, vital carbon sinks and grazing ecosystems, are disappearing at similar speed.

Powerful actors — from African governments and Gulf states to Chinese investors, multinational agribusinesses, and climate-finance institutions — are driving this race for land through opaque deals that sideline local communities and ignore customary tenure rights.

A Call for a New Vision

The report calls for a radical shift away from high-tech, market-driven, land-intensive models toward people-centred, ecologically grounded alternatives. Its key policy recommendations include:

  • Promoting agroecology as a pathway for food sovereignty, ecological regeneration, and rural livelihoods.

  • Reducing pressure on land by improving agroecological productivity, cutting food waste, and prioritising equitable distribution.

  • Rejecting carbon market schemes that commodify land and displace communities.

  • Legally recognising customary land rights, particularly for women and Indigenous peoples.

  • Upholding the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all land-based investments.

This report makes it clear: Africa’s land is not “empty” — it is lived on, worked on, and cared for. The future of African land must not be dictated by global capital or outdated development theories, but shaped by the people who depend on it.

Download the Report

Read the full report Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025) to explore the evidence and policy recommendations in detail.

Source: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

Related posts:

Africa Climate Summit 2023 Set to Surrender the Continent to Green Colonialism Financial Institutions from Africa have made a monumental commitment of $100 billion to Africa’s green industrialization, a decision of immense significance that has the potential to shape Africa’s future. Africa adopts the Africa Climate Innovation Compact (ACIC) Declaration to drive the continent towards innovative climate solutions. One in three people sleeps on an empty stomach – World Bank Report. Transforming Africa’s livestock sector is key to food security-Report
Continue Reading

NGO WORK

Discover How Foreign Interests and Resource Extraction Continue to Drive Congo’s Crisis

Published

4 days ago

on

November 12, 2025

By

Whereas Donald Trump hailed the “peace” agreement between Rwanda and DRC as marking the end of a deadly three-decade war, a new report from the Oakland Institute, Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC, exposes it as the latest US maneuver to control Congolese critical minerals.

Under the Guise of Peace

After three decades of deadly wars and atrocities, the June 2025 “peace” deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lays bare the United States’ role in entrenching the extraction of minerals under the guise of diplomacy. For decades, US backing of Rwanda and Uganda has fueled the violence, which has ripped millions of Congolese lives apart while enabling the looting of the country’s mineral wealth. Today, Washington presents itself as a broker of peace, yet its longstanding support for Rwanda made it possible for M23 to seize territory, capture key mining sites, and forced Kinshasa to the negotiation table with hands tied behind its back. By legitimizing Rwanda’s territorial advances, the US-brokered agreement effectively rewards aggression while sidelining accountability, justice for victims, and the sovereignty of the Congolese people.

The incorporation of “formalized” mineral supply chains from eastern DRC to Rwanda exposes the pact’s true aim: Securing access to and control over minerals under the guise of diplomacy and “regional integration.” Framed as peacemaking, this is part of United States’ broader geopolitical struggle with China for control over critical resources. Far from fostering peace – over a thousand civilians have been killed since the deal was signed while parallel negotiations with Rwanda’s rebel force have collapsed – this arrangement risks deepening Congo’s subjugation. Striking deals with the Trump administration and US firms, the DRC government is surrendering to a new era of exploitation while the raging war continues, driving the unbearable suffering of the Congolese people.

Introduction

The conflict in eastern DRC, which dates back three decades to the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent Congo Wars, has claimed over six million lives, displaced millions more, and inflicted widespread suffering. Since late 2021, Rwanda and its proxy militia, M23, have stormed through mineral-rich lands and regional capitals, inflicting brutal violence and triggering mass displacement. While billions of dollars in natural resources are extracted from the area, Congolese communities toil in extreme poverty.

On June 27, 2025, a “peace” agreement was signed between Rwanda and the DRC under the auspices of the Trump administration, with diplomatic assistance from Qatar.1 The deal included pledges to respect the territorial integrity of both countries, to promote peaceful relations through the disarmament of armed groups, the return of refugees, and the creation of a joint security mechanism. A key clause commits the countries to launch a regional economic integration framework that would entail “mutually beneficial partnerships and investment opportunities,” specifically for the extraction of the DRC’s mineral wealth by US private interests.

Placing the deal in a historical perspective – after three decades of conflict and over seven decades of US chess game around Congolese minerals – this report examines its implications for the Congolese people as well as the interests involved in the plunder of the country’s resources.

The report begins by retracing 30 years of war, fueled by the looting of Congo’s mineral wealth and devastating for the people of eastern DRC. It then examines how US policy in Central Africa, from the Cold War to the present, has been shaped by its interest in Congolese minerals, sustained alliances with Rwanda and Uganda, and a consistent pattern of overlooking atrocities in support of these allies.

The report then analyses the implications of the regional economic integration aspect of the deal, which aims to link mineral supply chains in the DRC and Rwanda with US investors. The last sections examine the prospect for lasting peace and security resulting from the deal and the impact of growing involvement of US private actors in DRC and Rwanda.

Original Source: Oakland Institute

Related posts:

Failed US-Brokered “Peace” Deal Was Never About Peace in DRC Profit off Peace? Meet the Corporations Poised to Benefit from the DRC Peace Deal DR Congo: RIAO-RDC calls for the immediate release of four leaders from the community of Mwingi who were arrested after a peaceful protest against the oil palm plantation company PHC DR Congo oil palm company bankrolled by development banks unleashes wave of violence against villagers after peaceful protests Operations of civil society organizations will continue to be stifled until government understands their work – New Book.
Continue Reading

Resource Center

Legal Framework

READ BY CATEGORY

Facebook

Newsletter

Subscribe to Witness Radio's newsletter



Trending

Subscribe to Witness Radio's newsletter