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NGO WORK

Millions forced to choose between hunger or Covid-19

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4 years ago

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On the eve of May Day 2020, in full coronavirus pandemic, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released some hair raising statistics. About 1.6 billion workers from the informal sector are in dire straits because of the lockdowns governments have imposed to stop the spread of the virus. According to the ILO, some 60% of the world’s workers are in the informal economy, working without contracts, safety nets or savings.1 Depending on the country, women represent a higher or lower share of the informal workforce, but either way they are paid less than men.2
Now, because of quarantines and confinement, stoppages and curfews, there is no work. No work means no income. No income, no food. Without alternative income sources, the ILO warned, “these workers and their families will have no means to survive”.3
If workers in the informal sector are not able to feed themselves, they are also unable to continue feeding millions, if not billions more. Informal labour is what keeps food systems functioning in most of the world: it accounts for 94% of on-farm labour globally, and a big part of the workforce in food trade, retail, preparation and delivery in many parts of the world.4
The coronavirus crisis has laid bare our dependence not only on well functioning health and food systems, but the gross injustices inflicted on those working in these essential sectors in the “best” of times: low wages, no access to health care, no child care, no safety protection at work, often no legal status and no representation in negotiating work conditions. This is true in both the informal and the formal sectors of the global food system. Indeed, the contrast between the wealth at the top of the largest food companies and the plight of their frontline workers is extreme. Nestlé, for instance, the world’s number one food company, awarded its shareholders US$8 billion in dividends at the end of April 2020, an amount that surpasses the annual budget of the UN World Food Programme (WFP).5
The only question that matters now is how to ensure everyone has access to food while keeping people safe and healthy at every step from farm to consumer. Unfortunately, this has not been the priority that has shaped food systems over the past decades. But getting there is not as complicated as it may appear.
Shutdown leading to hunger
The shutdown of much of the world economy since March 2020 has meant that many people are confined to their homes or their communities and cannot work. Factories have stopped, construction projects halted, eateries and transportation closed, offices shut. In many countries, migrant workers and students immediately tried to go home, where they have family to lean on, but many got blocked for lack of transport or border closures.
These measures seem to have been implemented without much thought about the actual workings of food systems. Farmers have been mostly able (not always) to continue working on their farms, but they lack labour – precisely when it’s harvest or birthing time in many parts of the world – and the means to move produce and livestock off the farm to cooperatives, collection points, slaughterhouses, traders or markets. Closures of schools, offices and restaurants have choked the system, leading to enormous waste. As a consequence, milk is being dumped, animals are being euthanised and crops are being ploughed into the soil. Similarly, fisherfolk who fish at night in place likes Uganda have been grounded because of curfews.6
In the cities, violence, abuse and corruption have accompanied these shutdowns in incomprehensible ways. In East Africa, as in parts of Asia, street vendors caught out in the streets have been met with whips and rubber bullets.7 Riots have arisen in urban and peri-urban communities when scarce food aid arrived.8 In Lebanon, one person was even killed in such riots.9 And in eSwatini, formerly Swaziland, the government has simply decided that it will not feed the cities, only focus on the rural areas.10
Meanwhile food companies have been granted lockdown exemptions that have greatly exacerbated the health crisis, without necessarily keeping people fed. Some of the world’s worst outbreaks of Covid-19 have been at meat processing plants owned by multinational corporations in Brazil, Canada, Spain, Germany and the US. Although these plants mostly produce meat for export, they were deemed an “essential service” and allowed to operate at full capacity, knowingly putting their workers and the surrounding communities at grave risk of infection.11 In the US, as of 6 May 2020, 12,000 meat plant workers have fallen ill and 48 have died.12 Seafood processing plants are hotspots too, such as in Ghana, where an outbreak at a tuna canning plant owned by Thai Union is responsible for 11% of the Covid-19 cases in the entire country.13 Supermarket workers and ecommerce platform employees have also been facing the huge difficulty of staying safe while keeping open for the purpose of rendering so-called “essential services”, exempt from the lockdowns. Oil palm plantations have mostly kept operational — to serve the production of much-needed soaps to fight the pandemic, their owners claim – but some have defied local ordinances or not provided the necessary protections for workers.14
The cure is at risk of becoming worse than the disease. People who have no work or wages since the pandemic broke – most of the informal sector, but also workers from the formal sector – are now facing the growing reality of hunger. The WFP says that the risk is highest right now in about ten countries, most of them engulfed in armed conflict, such as Somalia or South Sudan. But the lack of access to food due to Covid-19 work closures, and the resulting global recession that we are told will last for months, is now threatening many other countries. In India, 50% of rural people are eating less due to the lockdown.15 Worldwide, the number of people suffering acute hunger could double from 135 million today to 265 million by the end of the year, WFP says.16
Already, those hardest hit have been feeling the pain. The saying “I would rather die of coronavirus than hunger” is commonly heard in Haiti, Angola, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mayotte, India and Latin America, according to news reports.17 In Belgium, it’s “Either we die of hunger or of coronavirus. We have to choose.”18 In West Africa, the saying is “Hunger will kill us before corona does”.
What’s clear is that if this spreading hunger does reach the scale of a global crisis, it will not be for lack of production or even because of hoarding. There is plenty of supply. It’s the distribution system that has shown its incapacity to feed us safely – especially the highly concentrated and globalised part that cannot respond to the crisis.
Creative community responses
One of the first measures many authorities took to halt the spread of coronavirus was to shut down restaurants, cafés, food stalls and fresh markets. As a response, communities have devised many other ways to get food to where it is needed, often using social media. On Facebook and Whatsapp, groups have been formed to collectively identify where food stocks are located or to collectively procure produce from farmers. Shuttered restaurants and cantines are using their resources to access and repackage bulk food supplies like flour or grains, repackage them and sell them in small quantities. “Repurposing” has become the word of the day, as communities come together, or take form, to find and move food through creative means.
Farmers have also devised innovative ways to sell and move their produce. In Europe, they have started home sales, deliveries to hospitals and online sales, in addition to connecting with consumers directly through community-supported agriculture schemes and farmers’ markets.19 In Asia, farmers have been going online through social media or ecommerce tools to organise alternative markets.20 For example in Karnataka, India, farmers have started using Twitter to post videos of their produce and connect with buyers. Others are resuscitating traditional systems of bartering, to overcome their lack of cash and match supply with demand.21 In Indonesia, a union of fisherfolk in Indramayu, West Java, has started an initiative to barter with local farmers’ groups through a collective action called “fisherfolks’ food barn”. As restaurants and markets have shut down, the fisherfolk have no buyers. So they exchange fish for rice and vegetables with farmers. This is providing food and livelihood security to the different communities.22
In Latin America, rural communities are the ones least affected by the virus. Many of them are organising to give away food to the poor in the cities. In Cauca, Colombia, the Nasa people – who consider themselves longterm survivors of viruses, wars and the incursion of agribusiness – have collectively organised a “food march” and brought supplies from their harvest to impoverished neighbourhoods in the cities, defying the lockdown.23 In Brazil, without any state support, the Landless Workers Movement has donated 600 tonnes of healthy food to hospitals, homeless people and other vulnerable communities in 24 states across the country.24 Members are also converting urban cafés into soup kitchens and educational facilities into makeshift hospitals, where allied healthcare workers are rendering their services.25
In Zimbabwe, the lockdown has crippled the movement of agriculture produce off of large farms across the country. Small farmers, will limited support, are hustling to fill the gap, finding new ways to get vegetables and other supplies to markets. Peasant movement organisers say this shift in the food matrix shows that the country’s 1.5 million small holders are capable of feeding the nation.26
Local governments, private citizens and companies have also been doing their share. In Vietnam, public dispensers called “rice ATMs” have been invented to allow families to access a free daily ration of rice without physical contact or hoarding.27 In India, the state of Kerala has launched a campaign called “Subhiksha Keralam” aimed at achieving self sufficiency in food production through subsidies, infrastructure and other support mechanisms.28 In Thailand, mobile vegetable shops have been revived under the quarantine with support from Bangkok’s local authorities. The city wholesale market is providing small producers and traders hundreds of trucks to allow them to shift to door-to-door deliveries.29 And in many parts of Africa, motorbike delivery services are adjusting their practices to help get food supplies to people who need them.30
Whether it’s through solidarity, mutual aid, volunteer work or cooperatives, and whether it’s formal or informal, this surge in community-oriented efforts to get food to where it’s needed is crucial and needs resourcing, urgently. While grassroots initiatives are not “the” solution, they certainly point in the right direction.
Shift to community-based food systems
To prevent the disaster that both ILO and WFP are warning us about, we would call for three kinds of measures.
Immediate:
1) Resource community initiatives: As a matter of urgency, we need massive recognition of and support to community efforts to feed those in need. Funds, tools and other resources should be allocated to these efforts. This can mean funding or materials for neighbourhood groups or indigenous communities who need personal protective equipment, rooms or spaces in which to organise and transport food pantries. It can mean resources for regional and local governments to do the work together with community-based organisations, cooperatives and farmers. And it should mean support from local governments themselves, whether through policy measures or infrastructure. Many are already doing this, but it needs scaling up, massively and quickly. While the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other donors help governments face health crisis funding needs, most of it is going to big business. It would be better to allocate more to local governments so they can support community efforts.
Longer term:
2) Improve conditions for farmers and workers: We need to uplift the position of food system workers, from production or procurement all the way to retail, delivery and food service. This means things like: higher wages or a universal basic income that will pay low-income workers much better or reach people outside the wage economy; a seat at the table to redefine work and renegotiate work processes, as many unions are clamouring for; full rights to health care, hazard pay, safe working conditions and child care; and, perhaps most importantly, a better status in society. Farmers must also be supported with safe systems to get produce to markets and fair prices that provide for their livelihoods. At the same time, farm labourers must receive decent wages and healthy work conditions. The Covid-19 crisis has made it clear how important farm work, transportation, food distribution and delivery are to our well being. People working in the system are frontliners as much as the health care workers. They deserve a better place, better pay and a fairer distribution of benefits – and now is the time to make that structural change.
3) Rebuild public food systems: We need to reinvent and reinforce public, community-controlled markets in the food sphere, from the local level up. And we need to connect these markets to the produce of small scale farmers and fishers. The coronavirus lockdown has shown us, quite starkly, how we cannot rely on global trade as a strategy and how corporate sector control over key segments of our food supply makes survival precarious. We need to put an end to public funds going to large food or agribusiness corporations, except as support for workers. We also need to address concentration in the food industry through measures like anti-trust or anti-factory farm legislation, and direct support towards small scale fisheries, abattoirs, dairies and wholesale markets. We know that more pandemics will come. Now is the chance to move forward and consolidate a public orientation to our food systems, somewhat like in the health sector where we have public medical research, public hospitals and generic medicines outside the grip of patent laws that serve corporate greed. Food is not merely a public good; it’s a social good and needs to be guaranteed, protected and provided to all like healthcare.
If one thing positive comes from this crisis, it could be that we regain and reassert public systems in our countries, after decades of privatisation and encroaching corporate control. These systems should support and build on solutions that local communities are already providing. Food, like health, is a crucial place to start.
___________________
1 Domestic workers who are contracted and farmers or vendors who have registered businesses are not part of the informal economy definition.
2 ILO, “Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture”, 2018, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf, page 21.
3 ILO, “As job losses escalate, nearly half of global workforce at risk of losing livelihoods”, 29 April 2020, https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_743036/lang–en/index.htm
4 ILO, “Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture”, 2018, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_626831.pdf, page 21.
5 Nestlé, “Results of the 153rd Annual General Meeting of Nestlé S.A. held on April 23, 2020”, https://www.nestle.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/annual-general-meeting-2020-summary-minutes-en.pdf. In 2018, the WFP raised US$7.2 billion, see: https://www.wfp.org/overview
6 International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, “COVID-19 and the crisis in food systems”, April 2020, http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/covid19
7 Alex Esagala et al, “Canes, tears in Kampala over coronavirus”, Daily Monitor, 26 March 2020, https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Photos-that-will-compel-you-cancel-your-journey-Kampala/688334-5505362-g3u0ib/index.html and Boitumelo Metsing, “Food parcel protest turns ugly as cops fire rubber bullets at hungry residents”, The Star, 29 Apr 2020, https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/sport/food-parcel-protest-turns-ugly-as-cops-fire-rubber-bullets-at-hungry-residents-47325962
8 Tom Odula and Idi Ali Juma, “Stampede in Kenya as slum residents surge for food aid”, Associated Press, 10 April 2020 https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/stampede-in-kenya-as-slum-residents-surge-for-food-aid
9 Jean Shaoul, “Protester killed in Lebanon during riots against soaring food prices”, World Socialist Website, 29 April 2020, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/29/leba-a29.html
10 ”Swaziland govt. confirms it will not feed the starving in towns and cities during coronavirus lockdown”, Swazi Media Commentary, 29 April 2020, https://allafrica.com/stories/202004290702.html
11 United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, “UFCW calls on USDA and White House to protect meatpacking workers and America’s food supply”, 30 April 2020, http://www.ufcw.org/2020/04/30/covidpacking/. While European meat packers are also experiencing outbreaks, they have not been as deep and widespread as in the US where corporate concentration is higher, says IPES (op cit).
12 Leah Douglas, “Mapping Covid-19 in meat and food processing plants”, Food and Environment Reporting Network, 22 April 2020, https://thefern.org/2020/04/mapping-covid-19-in-meat-and-food-processing-plants/
13 Rachel Sapin and Drew Cherry, “Thai Union plant is source of coronavirus outbreak that sickened over 500, officials say”, IntraFish, 12 May 2020, https://www.intrafish.com/processing/thai-union-plant-is-source-of-coronavirus-outbreak-that-sickened-over-500-officials-say/2-1-807547
14 ARD, Green Advocates, JUSTICITIZ, MALOA, NMJD, RADD, Synaparcam and YVE, “We demand justice and safety for workers on Socfin’s rubber/oil palm plantations during the Covid-19 pandemic”, Open letter to Socfin, 29 April 2020, https://farmlandgrab.org/29602
15 “Coronavirus impact | Half of rural India is eating less due to COVID-19 lockdown: Survey”, Monetcontrol, 13 May 2020, https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/covid-19-impact-half-of-rural-population-eating-less-amid-coronavirus-crisis-5259491.html
16 Paul Anthem, “Risk of hunger pandemic as COVID-19 set to almost double acute hunger by end of 2020”, WFP, 16 April 2020, https://insight.wfp.org/covid-19-will-almost-double-people-in-acute-hunger-by-end-of-2020-59df0c4a8072
17 Bello, “Choosing between livelihoods and lives in Latin America”, The Economist, 2 May 2020, https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2020/05/02/choosing-between-livelihoods-and-lives-in-latin-america; “Lebanon: A New Surge in the Popular Struggle”, International Socialist League, May 4, 2020, http://lis-isl.org/en/2020/05/04/libano-un-nuevo-salto-en-la-rebelion-popular/; La Rédaction, « Ici, on a plus peur de mourir de faim que du coronavirus ! », Charlie Hebdo, 6 avril 2020, https://charliehebdo.fr/2020/04/courrier/courrier-des-lecteurs-mayotte-on-a-plus-peur-de-mourir-de-faim-que-du-coronavirus/; AFP, “Dans l’Inde confinée, les pauvres luttent pour survivre”, 9 avril 2020, https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/04/09/dans-linde-confinee-les-pauvres-luttent-pour-survivre; AFP, “Haïti: mourir de faim aujourd’hui ou du coronavirus demain”, 3 May 2020, https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Haiti-mourir-faim-aujourd-hui-coronavirus-demain-2020-05-03-1301092306; AFP, “«Mieux vaut mourir de cette maladie que mourir de faim»: les Angolais bravent le verrouillage du virus”, 6 Avril 2020, https://www.fr24news.com/fr/a/2020/04/mieux-vaut-mourir-de-cette-maladie-que-mourir-de-faim-les-angolais-bravent-le-verrouillage-du-virus.html.
18 Annick Ovine, “’Nous, on doit choisir: mourir de faim ou crever du coronavirus’”, La Libre, 16 March 2020, https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/societe/nous-on-doit-choisir-mourir-de-faim-ou-crever-du-coronavirus-5e6f91fc9978e201d8bcf20c
19 European Coordination Via Campesina, “ECVC survey on the impact of Covid-19 on peasant farming”, April 2020, https://www.eurovia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ECVC-SURVEY-ON-THE-IMPACT-OF-COVID-19-ON-PEASANT-FARMING.pdf
20 Zhenzhong Si, “Commentary: How China ensured no one went hungry during coronavirus lockdown”, Channel News Asia, 19 April 2020, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/coronavirus-covid-19-china-grocery-food-security-price-delivery-12640426
21 Shahroz Afridi, “Madhya Pradesh: Left without cash, lockdown forces villagers to adopt barter system”, Free Press Journal, 22 April 2020, https://www.freepressjournal.in/bhopal/madhya-pradesh-left-without-cash-lockdown-forces-villagers-to-adopt-barter-system
22 Pandangan Jogja, “Barter Ikan Nelayan dengan Beras Petani, Cara Nelayan Bertahan di Tengah Pandemi”, Kumparan, 11 Mei 2020, https://kumparan.com/pandangan-jogja/barter-ikan-nelayan-dengan-beras-petani-cara-nelayan-bertahan-di-tengah-pandemi-1tOVhGXPMQr
23 Rita Valencia, “Los nasa de Colombia dicen: Porque no seremos los mismos, hay que liberar”, Ojarasca, 9 May 2020, https://ojarasca.jornada.com.mx/2020/05/09/nasa-de-colombia-porque-no-seremos-los-mismos-hay-que-liberar-1000.html
24 MST, “Produzir alimentos saudáveis e plantar árvores: a Reforma Agrária Popular no combate ao Coronavírus”, 29 de março de 2020, https://mst.org.br/2020/03/29/produzir-alimentos-saudaveis-e-plantar-arvores-a-reforma-agraria-popular-no-combate-ao-coronavirus/
25 Rebecca Tarlau, “Activist farmers in Brazil feed the hungry and aid the sick as president downplays coronavirus crisis”, The Conversation, 5 May 2020, https://theconversation.com/activist-farmers-in-brazil-feed-the-hungry-and-aid-the-sick-as-president-downplays-coronavirus-crisis-136914
26 Ignatius Banda, “COVID-19: Zimbabwe’s smallholder farmers step into the food supply gap”, IPS, 12 May 2020, http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/05/covid-19-zimbabwes-smallholder-farmers-step-food-supply-gap/
27 ”Vietnam entrepreneur sets up free ‘rice ATM’ to feed the poor amid coronavirus lockdown”, 16 April 2020, https://youtu.be/lWLuIO1DGAA
28 Samuel Philip Matthew, “COVID-19 in Kerala: Staying ahead of the curve”, Newsclick, 9 May 2020, https://www.newsclick.in/COVID-19-Kerala-Highest-Recovery-Rate-Pandemic
29 Juarawee Kittisilpa, “Thai grocery trucks get new life from coronavirus shutdown”, Reuters, 14 April 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-thailand-grocery-t/thai-grocery-trucks-get-new-life-from-coronavirus-shutdown-idUSKCN21W0O4?il=0
30 AFP, “African e-commerce firms get coronavirus boost”, 15 May 2020, https://news.yahoo.com/african-e-commerce-firms-coronavirus-boost-033743948.html

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NGO WORK

World Bank Project Cancelled in a Landmark Victory for Tanzanian Villagers

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6 hours ago

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January 22, 2025

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—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—

January 21, 2025; 9:00 AM PST

Media Contact: amittal@oaklandinstitute.org, +1 510-469-5228

  • In a major victory for Tanzanian pastoralists and farmers, the World Bank funded REGROW project, which enabled extrajudicial killings, human rights abuses, livelihood restrictions and forced evictions to expand Ruaha National Park (RUNAPA) is cancelled.
  • Amidst an ongoing investigation by the independent Inspection Panel, the Bank first suspended the project in April 2024, citing the Tanzanian government’s noncompliance with safeguards for resettlement and grievance mechanisms.
  • The cancellation comes after nine United Nations Special Rapporteurs expressed their concerns and demands to the Tanzanian government and the World Bank around forced evictions and human rights abuses linked to the project.
  • Over 84,000 people in 28 villages remain at risk of eviction, abuses, and livelihood restrictions. Impacted communities call on the World Bank and the government of Tanzania to cancel the park expansion so they can remain on their lands and reclaim their lives.

Oakland, CA – The World Bank’s US$150 million Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project in Tanzania is cancelled. The decision came after 16 months of advocacy by the Oakland Institute to hold the Bank accountable for enabling the expansion of RUNAPA and supporting TANAPA, the paramilitary Tanzania National Parks Authority. Its rangers are responsible for egregious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and crippling livelihood restrictions that have terrorized farmer and pastoralist communities in the Mbarali District. The expansion of the Park from one to over two million hectares threatens over 84,000 people.

“This landmark decision is a major victory for the villagers who courageously stood up to stop the project,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “Though forced to stop funding the terror it unleashed, the Bank must now urgently address the serious harms it has enabled and respond to the demands of the communities whose lives are on hold.”

Villagers mobilizing against World Bank-funded evictions in Tanzania

When initially informed of the abuses and violations of its own safeguards in April 2023, the World Bank failed to take action. In June, the Institute filed a request for inspection on behalf of the impacted villagers with the Bank’s Inspection Panel and followed up in September 2023 with a widely covered report, Unaccountable & Complicit.

As a result, the Inspection Panel launched an investigation in November 2023. Amidst the investigation, in a rare move, the World Bank suspended disbursements to the project in April 2024, citing(link is external) the Tanzanian government’s “non-compliance with their Environmental and Social (E&S) obligations… non-compliance related to involuntary resettlement planning activities taking place in RUNAPA,” as well as the absence of a grievance redress mechanism. Continued advocacy led to the project being eventually cancelled in November 2024.

Additional pressure(link is external) to hold the Tanzanian government and the World Bank accountable came from nine United Nations Special Rapporteurs who urged “all necessary interim measures … to prevent any irreparable harm” to affected villagers.

“The initiative of the UN experts is vital given the extent of abuses inflicted by paramilitary rangers on local communities in a country where there is no rule of law,” continued Mittal. “The government and the Bank must be held accountable for the harms caused by their disregard for basic human rights for the sole purpose of increasing tourism revenue,” she concluded.

Impacted communities are demanding the following actions:

  1. Removal of beacons placed marking the expansion of the park and to officially revert park boundaries to the 1998 borders established by GN 436a.
  2. Provide comprehensive compensation for damages incurred by livelihood restrictions and violence inflicted by TANAPA rangers, including:
    1. Value of fines paid by pastoralists to reclaim cattle illegally seized.
    2. Value of cattle auctioned.
    3. Compensation for the loss of agricultural production for three seasons (2023, 2024, 2025).
    4. Compensation for the victims of violence and killings by TANAPA.
  3. Establish a multistakeholder independent mechanism to oversee reparations.
  4. Restore social services to villages impacted by GN 754.
    1. Complete construction on Luhanga Secondary School and provide it with government teachers.
    2. Reopen Mlonga Primary School that was closed in October 2022.
    3. Ensure all villages located within GN 754 boundaries are provided with the power, water, and social services they are entitled to like other villages.

“We call on the World Bank to fully assume its responsibility and urgently take these necessary steps to answer our pleas for justice. Our lives are on hold as the threat of eviction looms over us every single day. Our livelihoods have been undermined for years, our children are out of school, our farms sit fallow and our cattle are still being forcibly seized. We cannot continue living like this. The Bank must adequately address our past and ongoing suffering.”

– Statement by impacted villagers in Mbarali, January 2025

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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Campaign Victory: World Bank Suspends Funding for REGROW, a Conservation Project Responsible for Evictions & Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania URGENT ALERT: Tanzanian Government on a Rampage Against Indigenous People Justice Denied: East African Court of Justice Grants Tanzanian Government Impunity to Trample Human Rights of the Maasai World Bank extends the Lubigi drainage project dispute resolution process for another six months. CSOs call for meaningful changes in the World Bank’s Dispute Resolution Service to foster access to justice for project-affected communities.
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NGO WORK

West and Central African grassroots organisations reaffirm their commitment against tree monocultures and in defence of their ancestral lands and forests

Published

4 weeks ago

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December 24, 2024

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For almost 10 years, the Informal Alliance against the expansion of Industrial Monocultures in West and Central Africa has had an important role in connecting grassroots organisations and activists and strengthening the resistance against land grabbing and other attacks by oil palm and other plantation companies in the region.

Last November, community activists and grassroots organisations that are part of the Alliance, from 10 countries, gathered at their General Assembly to renew their commitment to the defence of ancestral lands and to keep resisting against neo colonial interests and the corporate takeover of communities’ lands.

See below the full declaration:

Gabon, November 2024

THE MOUILA DECLARATION
of the
Informal Alliance against the expansion o Industrial Monocultures

We, the 60 members gathered at the 6th General Assembly of the Informal Alliance against the expansion of Industrial Monoculture Plantations, in Mouila, Gabon from November 19 to 22, 2024, representing communities and organizations of Gabon, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Congo Brazaville, Liberia, Ghana, Congo Kinshasa, Ivory Coast and Uganda are deeply committed to the fight against land grabbing, particularly by tree plantation companies. LET US ADOPTE this Declaration which marks our conviction in the vital importance of the recognition and return to ancestral community land ownership in Africa, for the well-being of the first occupants.

WE RECOGNIZE THAT:

  • Ancestral lands are home to communities of people with traditional culture and knowledge of nature;
  • Women play a critical role in the defense of their ancestral lands and forests;
  • Community ancestral land in Africa has intrinsic worth and warrants respect regardless of it usefulness in habitants and humanity as a whole;
  • The natural wealth, rights and freedom to their land is being eroded this day at  a frantic and unprecedented  manner and rate because of delibrate harmful development policies clade in colonial legancy;
  • Ancestral community territories illegally occupied during colonial and post-colonial government regimes as concessions to corporations for business development violate the rights of the people and therefore, constitutes serious crimes against human, an illegality is an illegality regardless of the time they were committed;

WE FURTHER ACKNOWLEADGE THAT:

  • Post-colonial governments have failed in their responsibilities by giving true independence to the communities by prioritizing colonial interests by foreign agents by enacting neo-community laws to dislodged and robbed communities of their ancestral land using various opaque notions of national land and/or government land ownership;
  • The threats caused by the senseless acts of grabbing ancestral land and awarding them as concessions to business has brought untold hardship, violence and irreparable damage such loss of lives and biodiversity, entrenched poverty due loss of livelihoods and community property, early child pregnancy, and gender-based violence, etc.
  • African countries that got independence in the 1960s and 70s, today consider communities as belonging to the State and governments and sit in the comfort of their armchairs in faraway land to grant concessions to corporations without Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of the true of the ancestral landowners.

WE ARE COMMITTED TO:

  • Promote and defend agroecological practices and food sovereignty as a form of resistance;
  • Facilitate the establishment of effective and efficient network of communities, activists and NGOs cooperating at local and international level to understand the strategies and tactics used by corporations to steal communities ancestral land and to develop further strategies and tactics to guide communities to stop land grabbing and recover previous illegal occupied land according to the Alliance objectives;
  • Develop mechanisms that permit all sectors of society, especially the longstanding local populations to nonviolently start the journey to assert their ancestral rights to land fondly referred to by some governments as national land and/or state own land, be partners in planning, establishment of initiative that add value to the ancestral land;
  • Strengthen nonviolent resistance education and provide training that will improve their ability to confront governments and corporations that want to take over their territories.
  • Strengthen education for nonviolent resistance and provide training that will improve their ability to confront governments and corporations that want to take over their territories.
  • Plead for the authorities to provide young people with access to land in rural areas, facilitate their training and support.

RECOGNIZING that action to protect the living riches and beauty of ancestral land depends, on the full commitment of the affected local people, WE PLEDGE OURSELVES to work wholeheartedly to implement the provisions of this Declaration.

EMPHASZING that the recognition of ancestral land is essential to sustaining human society and conserving our planet, WE INVITE THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE ALLIANCE to convey this Declaration far and wide with the purpose of ensuring that the conclusions acre incorporated in daily activities.

Signatories:

• Community members from Gabon
• Musiru Divag de Fougamou Gabon
• Institute of sustainable Agriculture, Grand Bassa county, Jogba clan, Liberia
• Women’s Network Against Rural Plantations Injustice (WoNARPI), Sierra Leone
• Alliance Uganda Chapter
• Witness Radio, Uganda
• Nature Cameroon
• Synaparcam, Cameroon
• COPACO, DRC
• RADD, Cameroon
• Struggle to Economize Future Environment (SEFE), Mundemba, Cameroon
• CPPH, Cote d’Ivoire
• Collectif des Ressortissants et Écologistes des Plateaux Bateke, Gabon
• REFEB, Cote d’Ivoire
• YVE Ghana
• JVE Côte d’Ivoire
• Association Gulusenu du village Doubou, Gabon
• Muyissi Environnement, Gabon
• Komolo Agro Farmers Association Kiryandongo, Uganda
• Ndagize julius, East African, Uganda
• LOOK GREEN, CARE FOUNDATION, Nigeria
• Association les Rassembleurs du Village Mboukou, Gabon
• Joegba United Women Empowerment and Development Organization (JUWEDO), Liberia
• COLLECTIF ADIAKE. Cote d’Ivoire
• CNOP, Congo
• Maloa, Sierra Leone
• World Rainforest Movement
• GRAIN

Source: World Rainforest Movement

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NGO WORK

Urgent Call for Conditionalities on New IFC and EBRD Loan to Oyu Tolgoi Mine

Published

1 month ago

on

December 17, 2024

By

By Accountability Counsel and partners

Joint Statement

December 9, 2024

We, the undersigned civil society organizations (CSOs) and representatives of herders from Mongolia, strongly condemn the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in providing a $100 million loan each, to Oyu Tolgoi (OT). This decision blatantly disregards years of unresolved grievances, environmental harm, and the failure of OT to comply with IFC and EBRD’s safeguard standards, as well as widespread rejection from local herders, CSOs, and even the Mongolian government.

Unresolved Harms and Non-Compliance

OT has failed to address critical issues, including its commitments under the 2017 Herders Complaint Resolution Agreements and IFC and EBRD’s social and environmental safeguards. Longstanding issues include:

  1. Failures in completing Resolution Agreements: Herders continue to struggle to sustain their livelihoods and protect the environment, as the agreements resulting from CAO complaints remain incomplete. The Tripartite Council (TPC), tasked with implementing the 2017 Agreements, has failed to ensure meaningful involvement of herders in safeguarding their rights and livelihoods.
  2. Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) Seepage: Despite implementing a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) as required by lenders to address the seepage from tailings cell 1 (TC1), OT has neither adequately mitigated the seepage nor transparently disclosed its full extent. Recent data reveals worsening water quality, with Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) levels rising dramatically downstream.
  3. Pasture and Water Scarcity: The mine’s expansion plans threaten vital grazing lands and water resources. Springs that once supported herders’ livelihoods have dried up, forcing herders to compete for limited resources. Moreover, the Dugat-Khaliv river, a key water source for herders, has been diverted around TC2 in a diversion channel without capacity to convey flood-level flows during rainy periods, leading to significant water loss for downstream herders.
  4. Environmental Failures: OT consistently fails to meet the design goal of 64% tailings solid content, resulting in inevitable seepage from the additional pressure exerted by excess water in the tailings cell. This and other design inefficiencies directly lead to massive water wastage estimated at up to $1.46 million per year.
  5. Inadequate Community Engagement: Herders were not meaningfully consulted about the RAP or OT’s expansion plans, violating IFC and EBRD principles of transparency and participation.

Water Mismanagement and Wastage

OT’s operations exacerbate water scarcity through inefficient tailings management. Water wasted due to tailings solids being below design criteria results in significant financial and environmental costs:

  • From 2013-2017, OT achieved 56% solids (8% below design standard), wasting $1.46 million worth of water annually. From 2018-2024, OT achieved nearly 60% solids (4% below design standard) on average, meaning OT wastes $730,000 annually on replacement water. OT has approximately wasted $12.41 million since 2017 from losing 248.2 million liters of water.
  • Oyu Tolgoi (OT) must attain the highest percentage of solid content as specified by its design criteria, 64%, to effectively prevent water scarcity in the South Gobi Desert and ensure improved water access for herders. While lenders argue that the 60-64% range meets the standard, 2012 ESIA states that “Final concentrate will be thickened to 65% solids” which proves otherwise. The TSF operating consistently below 60% results in excessive water waste, posing severe risks to the fragile desert ecosystem and the livelihoods of herders who rely on limited freshwater resources. Achieving the 64% target is not merely an option but a critical necessity to minimize environmental harm, optimize resource use, and uphold OT’s responsibility to local communities.
  • This inefficiency compounds the structural weakness of tailings dams, necessitating costly redesigns and increasing the risk of catastrophic failure. Concerns Over Project Categorization and Political Risks We are deeply concerned that IFC and EBRD categorized OT’s expansion as a Category B project, despite its significant and irreversible impacts on herders and the environment. This misclassification downplays the scale of the risks, undermining proper oversight. Additionally, the Mongolian government is in a disagreement on additional financing that will add more debt, and the Mongolian Parliament Resolution #103 requires an independent audit of underground mine cost overrun which has not been disclosed. Approving new financing in such a contentious political and social environment poses significant risks to the project’s viability.

Recommendations and Conditionalities

IFC and EBRD must impose strict conditionalities on OT before any disbursements begin and ensure the conditionalities are placed in the lending agreement, including:

  1. Fulfillment of Past Commitments:
    • Include the 2017 Herders Complaint Resolution Agreements (HCRAs) in lenders’ compliance requirements and fully implement them.
    • Amend the RAP to include routine medical assessments for herders and their animals impacted by the contaminated water from the TSF seepage, and update Stakeholder Engagement Plan to involve the wider herder community impacted by the seepage.
    • Disclose all the important data from the attachments and annexes of the RAP.
  2. Water and Tailings Management Improvements:
    • Achieve the 64% as the highest solid content target for tailings as per the original ESIA.
    • Disclose the full extent of TSF seepage impacts, including chemical contamination and health risks.
  3. Protection of Herders’ Livelihoods:
    • Permanently halt land acquisitions that displace herders and prioritize using existing lease areas for future tailings cells.
    • Construct a permanent Dugat-Khaliv diversion channel based on maximum flood probabilities.
  4. Transparency and Meaningful Engagement:
    • Disclose all environmental and social impact assessments (ESIA) for expansion plans, implementation of the ESAP from the initial OT project loan, and OT Green Investment Plan.
    • Take actions to strengthen TPC functions through assessing TPC Charter and the implementation of the HCRAs
    • Ensure meaningful consultation with affected communities on all project aspects. This includes consultations on the expansion plans, environmental and social assessment related documents and strengthening of the Tripartite Council with valid herder representation as the body responsible to address herders’ concerns around the OT project.

The approval of new financing to OT without addressing these critical issues perpetuates harm to herders and the environment while eroding public trust in IFC’s and EBRD’s commitment to sustainable development. We call on IFC and EBRD to uphold their safeguards and suspend agreement signing and financing until OT achieves full compliance and fulfills its obligations to herders and the environment.

(Link to full statement in English and Mongolian)

Contact Information:
Sukhgerel Dugersuren, Oyu Tolgoi Watch, 976-99185828, otwatch@gmail.com
Battsengel Lkhamdoorov, Gobi Soil, 976-88705595, tsengel_5595@yahoo.com
Julio Castor Achmadi, Accountability Counsel, julio@accountabilitycounsel.org
Nina Lesikhina, Bankwatch Network, ninalesikhina@bankwatch.org

Signatories:
Gobi Soil, Mongolia
Oyu Tolgoi Watch, Mongolia
Center for Human Rights and Development, Mongolia
AFE, Mongolia
APPDO, Mongolia
CA NGO, Mongolia
GFS, Mongolia
MFSW, Mongolia
RwB Mongolia
SR NGO, Mongolia
SWA, Mongolia
SWB NGO, Mongolia
Accountability Counsel
CEE Bankwatch Network, Regional
Bank Climate Advocates, USA
Bank Information Center, USA
Both ENDS, the Netherlands
Center for Community Mobilization and Support, Armenia
Centre for Research and Advocacy, Manipur, India
Earth Thrive, UK/Serbia
Friends with Environment in Development (FED), Uganda
GAIA, Regional
Gender Action, USA
Green Advocates
Initiative for Right View (IRV), Bangladesh
International Accountability Project
INWOLAG
Kazakhstan International bureau for human rights, Kazakhstan
London Mining Network
LSD, Senegal
NGO Forum on ADB, Regional
Peace Point Development Foundation-PDF, Nigeria
Recourse
Samata & mm&P, India
Sinergia Animal, Brazil
Urgewald, Germany
Witness Radio, Uganda.

Source: Accountability Counsel.

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