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THE NEW EU DIRECTIVE ON DUE DILIGENCE – A RELEVANT STEP TOWARDS ENDING CORPORATE IMPUNITY?

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This is a critical time at the European Union (EU) when it comes to human suffering and climate impacts caused by transnational corporations, with particular emphasis on fossil fuel corporations, who continue to take deliberate actions to burn the planet. An important new law has been put forward, called the EU Due Diligence Act, which is still being discussed.

However, this law leaves much to be desired, and in its current form, can provide companies, investor states and financial institutions with an easy tick-box exercise, and loopholes, that will enable them to continue creating devastation of the earth, climate and peoples with impunity. The case of the gas industry in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique, is a concrete example of how this can happen and is already happening.

Many organisations in Europe including Friends of the Earth Europe have been fighting the passing of this law in its current form and partnered with JA!’s activists at the EU Commission in Brussels in May, to speak to Ministers in the European Parliament (MEP).

To see the full report by Friends of the Earth Europe, ‘‘INSIDE JOB: How business lobbyists used the Commission’s scrutiny procedures to weaken human rights and environmental legislation’’, click here: https://friendsoftheearth.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/INSIDE-JOB_-How-business-lobbyists-used-the-Commissions-scrutiny-procedures.pdf

The majority of players in the Cabo Delgado gas industry are international, and many are from countries within the EU, such as Total from France, Eni from Italy, Galp from Portugal and French, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish and Danish banks, to name a few.

Many of these oil, coal and gas companies register subsidiaries in the country where they operate, such as Mozambique, and because the current draft EU law says that only ‘big’ companies can be held accountable, this will enable these subsidiaries to get away with their abuses and violations at a domestic level, especially in countries with weakened systems of justice.

Another major issue is that the topic of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) needs to be clear and strong. For one, it is only mentioned in an annex, and uses the term ‘consultation’ rather than consent, meaning that communities will only have to be informed of the project. It fails to ensure a clear right to say ‘no’, when local communities do not accept a specific project in their territories for fearing its foreseeable impacts. Secondly, it does not take into account the difficulties that come with actually obtaining this consent, the fact that even consent can be bought, coerced or threatened into. This related to what is meant by ‘a legitimate consultation’. For example, in Cabo Delgado, Total’s consultation process with affected communities has been a sham. When Total representatives visited and visit communities for these consultation meetings, they are accompanied by a military entourage. This, along with the presence of leaders who have a beneficial relationship with the company, means that community members are too afraid to speak out and dissent, even if they disagree, and ultimately many signed compensation agreements in public and in a language they did not understand. Yet Total was able to tick the boxes required for a legitimate process.

In general, there is not enough emphasis on preventing harm, and far more on remedy. It does not deal with what should be the foundation of the discussion, which is that there should be no harm or violations committed in the first place, and that appropriate punitive and coercive sanctions must be put in place when they are committed.

Burden of proof is too high.

In many laws, including in this draft EU law, the burden is on the claimant to prove the crime, which in this case means that corporations are innocent until proven guilty, and the assumption is that communities are not telling the truth. Communities are expected to show that their human rights were violated, amongst all difficulties linked to the asymmetry of power and complicity with national governments, while companies will only need to show that they followed the required processes needed for a project to be developed in that area. In order for community complaints to be considered ‘credible’, they are expected to provide information that is not easy for them to come by, such as written documentation and emails, video and photographic evidence, and named testimonies and witnesses, to show that the companies did not act in compliance with the law and international norms and standards. Amidst global overlapping crisis strongly linked to the power and impunity of these transnational corporations, the burden of proof should be on the companies to prove they are not responsible for the harm, or that they cannot control companies in their global value chains.

The legislation does not recognise that people cannot provide this information – they often do not have access to technology, knowledge of the language used, information in writing and in many cases their lives would be at risk for speaking out.

In the case of Cabo Delgado many mainstream media articles coming out toe the government line and there have been instances where journalists who tell the truth have been arrested and tortured, or even disappeared. Media, civil society and government officials who enter the gas area are accompanied by a military and government entourage, which makes it unlikely that communities will talk about their experiences honestly. These obstacles are not taken into account.

And on climate change

The draft EU law is not clear about companies’ compliance with the Paris Agreement and keeping below the 1.5 oC degree emissions target. Instead, it speaks of ‘compatibility’ which leaves much room for industry to claim that the agreement is ‘open to interpretation’ as they have done before several times.

As long as essential issues in the draft EU law are not addressed, including binding law on compliance with climate agreements, the reversal of the burden of proof and the establishment of clear provisions to deal with neocolonial power dynamics and systemically exploitative nature of big transnational companies , it will be yet another stamp with which the industry will show off its deceiving processes to ‘meet requirements’.

When governments are questioned on their unwillingness to sanction companies and financiers, they often claim that ‘holding dialogue’ with these companies is more effective in the long run. They have said, in several instances, that sanctioning companies should be the last resort, and will lead to them having no input into companies’ actions whatsoever. This system of continued dialogue is clearly not working -companies are continuing to act with impunity – and instead, institutions like the EU need to take ‘take responsibility for the harms of its companies, with great impacts in the global South, and take a step further to actually sanctioning them.

The insufficiency and limitations of a regional legislation

At a broader level, and even though EU corporate regulation laws are undoubtedly needed, this Due Diligence directive will not solve the global problem of corporate impunity. A regional directive – especially one linked with such a weak concept as ‘due diligence’ – must complement the process towards a UN legally binding instrument to regulate transnational companies in international human rights law (the ‘UN binding treaty on TNCs’), ongoing since 2014. Surprisingly enough, the reluctance of the EU and most of its member States to adequately engage in the UN binding treaty negotiations has been reaffirmed session after session and, unsurprisingly, heavily criticized by civil society from across the world.

Without a global level playing field, companies will continue choosing the best places to violate human rights and cause economic, social, environmental and climate impacts. Or choosing the best jurisdiction to register their parent companies. Both the EU and UN laws must include direct legal obligations to companies, affirm the primacy of human rights over trade and investment agreements, and establish judicial enforcement mechanisms. The negotiations of these or any laws aimed at regulating corporate activities should logically be protected from corporate capture and influence. The EU must include several key elements in its new directive in order for it to be meaningful – and this effort must be accompanied by the EU finally taking up its responsibility to start engaging actively and constructively in the negotiations for an ambitious and effective UN binding treaty.

Ending corporate impunity must necessarily mean that we close the legal loopholes and gaps which allow transnational corporations to evade responsibility – at national, regional and international levels.

Source: ja4change.org

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NGO WORK

Communities stand up against corporate land grabs and State violence

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Across the global South, communities that oppose corporate control of their territories face not only corporate violence but also tear gas, batons and state repression. Challenging the expedient misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State” that governments use to protect corporate interests, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.”

This editorial is about the courage and determination of communities who are mobilizing to denounce and resist corporate control over community lands. Often, they face not only corporate violence and control over their lands but also tear gas, batons and state repression unleashed by governments resorting to ‘a greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”’ to protect corporate interests. (1)

This is what has been happening in the Litoral region of Cameroon, where the community of Apouh à Ngog is opposing the replanting of industrial oil palm plantations on their ancestral lands by Socapalm, a Cameroonian subsidiary of the notorious multinational Socfin. For nearly 50 years, the company operations have been making life miserable for the community of Apouh à Ngog, whose original village site was eradicated by the corporate oil palm plantations decades ago.

As Socapalm replaces sections of old oil palm plantations, it not only ignores community requests for retrocession of vital spaces immediately around the village; the new company plantings are creeping even closer to the village edge. “If they do not stop these operations, the women who live close to Socapalm in Edéa will have to endure another 50 years of suffering, abuse, rape, theft, hunger, frustration and violation of our rights, our privacy and our dignity”. This is what the Association of Women Neighbouring SOCAPALM Edéa (AFRISE) explains in a petition calling for an end to this occupation of the village’s vital life spaces by RSPO-certified Socapalm. (2)

In January 2025, the women of AFRISE planted banana saplings on some 35 hectares of disputed land being prepared for replanting by Socapalm. The company sprayed the young banana plants with chemicals shortly after and on 24 March, returned under the protection of dozens of armed military personnel to continue the replanting. Overcoming fear and facing tear gas and batons, the community stood in the way of the company’s bulldozers, blocking the corporate replanting for days. As the company forged on with its planting, over 60 organisations called for an immediate stop to the continued corporate encroachment on the community’s ancestral lands. They also urged the government of Cameroon to guarantee vital living space for the community of Apouh à Ngog – instead of sending in armed military forces to protect the corporate interest of Socfin, a company that like few others epitomizes the colonial pattern of exploitation of the region.

It is also what has been happening in the municipality of Aracruz, in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, where about 1000 women from the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) took action to demand agrarian reform and against the multiple forms of violence perpetrated against women. (3) Under the slogan, “Agribusiness means violence and environmental crimes. The struggle of women is against capital”, they occupied land controlled by Suzano, the world’s largest exporter of wood pulp.  For years, the company has gone about its business with impunity, amassing large areas of fertile land and committing violations against Indigenous Peoples, quilombola and landless peasant communities. In a press release, the MST points out that “Multinationals are not worried about obtaining land in order to solve the problem of hunger in the country” and that it would be possible to settle more than 100,000 families on the 2.7 million hectares of fertile land in Brazil that are held by Suzano. In 2011, Suzano agreed to provide 22 areas occupied by the corporation for settlements of landless peasants, but the company has been failing to comply with its commitment.
Just as AFRISE in Apouh à Ngog, the women occupying the land in Aracruz vow to continue their struggle for land to grow food, as they, too, are confronted with a state siding with the company, not peasants. (4)

It is also what has been happening in Cote d’Ivoire, where 20 members of the indigenous Winnin community were arrested in December 2024. The Winnin have been voicing their opposition to the privatization of their ancestral lands at the Monogaga forest. (5) The Winnin have called these forests their home for more than six centuries. The Ivorian Ministry of Water and Forests, meanwhile, granted a concession to Roots Wild Foundation whose operations have already been causing conflict with the communities. The arrests and the threats to individuals of the Winnin prior to their detention highlight serious concerns about the criminalization of land defenders in the region.

It is also what is happening in Indonesia, in Papua, and across the Mekong region, as we read in two declarations we share in this edition of the bulletin. In Papua, the Solidaritas Merauke Movement came together to share stories of collective suffering and trauma caused by state-corporate crimes, especially in the name of what the government of Indonesia declared National Strategic Projects (PSN). The declaration, collectively prepared by the Solidaritas Merauke Movement, highlights community struggles against the dispossession of their living space by such state-corporate mega-projects that defile what communities hold sacred. In Thailand, communities from the Mekong region and Punan communities from North Kalimantan in Indonesia came together to exchange and learn about community struggles against mega-hydrodam projects.  On the occasion of the International Day of Action Against Dams on 14 March, they reaffirm through a declaration the importance of standing together to show that “we are united and firm in the collective struggle to defend our rivers, forests and futures from false green solutions and corporate greed”.

In an interview with WRM in 2018, a leader of the Akroá-Gamela Peoples in Brazil explains why despite the fear of state repression and violence from greedy corporations, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands: “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.” (6)

Because land gives meaning to their existence, communities are standing up against corporate violence and governments’ greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”. In Apouhs à Ngog, Aracruz and the many other places, communities are organizing to protect and reclaim the lands of their ancestors – The struggle continues!

WRM Secretariat

(1) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. A Reflection from Africa: Conquer the Fear for Building Stronger Movements.  
(2) Petition. Cameroon: Testimony of women who reclaim their land back.
(3) Against capital and patriarchy, MST women hold day of struggle and occupy Suzano-owned eucalyptus plantations in Brazil.
(4) Brasil de Fato. 2025. Justiça determina despejo de ocupação de mulheres do MST em área da Suzano no ES.  
(5) Mongabay. 2025. Des leaders communautaires emprisonnés après s’être opposés à la privatisation controversée d’une forêt classée en Côte d’Ivoire.
(6) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. Brazil: I am Kum’tum, I am of the Akroá-Gamela People.  

Source: World Rainforest Movement

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NGO WORK

Under Guise of Climate Action, the World Bank Launches Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

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  • A new report exposes the exploitation of the climate crisis by the World Bank to advance a global land grab agenda for corporate interests that will fuel dispossession across the Global South.
  • Under the guise of accessing land for climate action, the Bank intends to open lands for agribusiness, mining, and carbon offsetting schemes – while undermining Indigenous and community land rights.
  • The Bank’s agenda to change land tenure directly contradicts recommendations made by climate experts, who uphold agroecology and the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation as real solutions to the climate crisis.

Ahead of the World Bank’s 2025 Land Conference starting on May 5th in Washington D.C., a new Oakland Institute report exposes how the financial institution is using the pretext of climate crisis to push a global land “reform” agenda that favors corporate interests at the expense of people and the planet.

Climatewash: 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.

“Hijacking the climate crisis, the Bank is attempting to breathe new life and political buy-in to an agenda it has pushed in the Global South for several decades – often met with resistance from local communities against the commodification of their land for exploitation and extraction,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute and lead author of the report. “Instead of strengthening and securing land rights, this plan will enable land grabs and exacerbate inequity and climate destruction,” he continued.

Climatewash 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.

“There is a blatant contradiction between the Bank’s narrative of accessing land for climate action and its support for industrial agriculture, which is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Andy Currier, Policy Analyst and co-author of the report. “The Bank’s fresh offensive on land rights highlights an untenable position of the institution. It claims to support climate action while it stands by its core objective – catering to corporate and financial powers seeking more economic growth and profits,” he concluded.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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NGO WORK

World Bank Fails to Remedy Harms it Caused in Tanzania, Despite a Scathing Investigation by its Inspection Panel

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Oakland, CA – A scathing investigation by the Inspection Panel of the World Bank confirms the responsibility of the Bank in enabling the expansion of Ruaha National Park and related severe human rights abuses in Tanzania. The Panel confirms “critical failures” of the institution in the planning and supervision of the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project that resulted in “serious harm” to communities and violated Bank’s safeguards and operating procedures.1

“The independent Inspection Panel has confirmed the Bank’s grave wrongdoing which devastated the lives of communities. Pastoralists and farmers who refused to be silenced amidst widespread government repression, are now vindicated, and Bank’s efforts to sweep human rights abuses under the rug laid bare,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

The REGROW project enabled the government to expand the Ruaha National Park and move ahead with eviction plans – formalized in October 2023 through Government Notice 754. The Bank directly funded TANAPA rangers who committed atrocities with no oversight. In a drastic turn from its initial defense of the project, the financial institution has been forced to recognize “weaknesses in the project design, preparation, implementation, and Bank supervision.” As a result, at least 84,000 people from 28 villages face eviction while pastoralists and farmers have suffered gruesome human rights abuses by Bank-funded rangers and over US$70 million in economic damages.

In documents made available today, the Bank’s management concedes that by “enhancing TANAPA’s capacity to enforce the law,” the project “increased the possibility of violent confrontations” between rangers and villagers. The Inspection Panel found the Bank to have failed to adequately supervise TANAPA and to be unaware of the agency’s operating framework which permits the rangers to use “excessive force,” in violation of international standards. As documented by the Institute, over the course of the project, at least 11 individuals were killed by police or rangers, five forcibly disappeared, and dozens suffered physical and psychological harm, including beatings and sexual violence. The Bank provided TANAPA rangers with 21 different types of equipment to strengthen their patrolling capacity in the project area – including bush knives that the Panel found “could potentially have been used to burn or strip naked” Maasai women in a May 2023 incident.

The Panel’s report documents the timeline of Bank’s failure to act after April 2023, when it was informed by the Oakland Institute about the abuses and violations of its safeguards. Instead, the Bank disbursed over US$33 million to the project over the next year. REGROW task team leader, Enos Esikuri, even publicly stated that the Bank was “very impressed with what is going on,” when meeting with government agencies implementing the project. In April 2024, disbursements were finally suspended as a result of Tanzania’s noncompliance with Bank safeguards, followed by cancelation of the project in November 2024.

“The World Bank failed to act after it was informed of the harms it was financing. It continued disbursements for a full year, allowing cattle seizures and farm closures to drain family savings, kept children out of school, and let TANAPA rangers murder more innocent villagers with impunity. No institution is above law and can be allowed to get away with crimes like this,” said Mittal.

The Bank’s Executive Directors, however, approved the Management Action Plan (MAP) that does not address the Panel’s findings. In blatant disregard of the facts and official documentation, the World Bank has conveniently refused to acknowledge its responsibility in allowing the park expansion, which it falsely claims took place prior to the project.  It is this expansion of Ruaha National Park that triggered murders, evictions, and decimated livelihoods. The MAP delusionally places trust in the government that there will be no resettlement while it is already well underway. The impacted communities conveyed their rejection of the MAP to the Bank’s Board and called for it to remedy the harms caused by park’s expansion by reverting boundaries to the 1998 borders, suspending livelihood restrictions, resuming basic services, and providing justice and reparations for victims.

“Instead of remedying harms identified by the Panel, the MAP patches together two projects that have nothing to do with REGROW and are in no way designed to provide redress. The Action Plan put forward by the World Bank is beyond shameful. Suggesting that tens of thousands of people forced out of their land can survive with “alternative livelihoods” such as clean cooking and microfinance is a slap on the face of the victims. It demonstrates World Bank’s continued lack of remorse for harms financed by tax dollars and makes a mockery of its own accountability mechanism. Financing of this institution – responsible for misery of the poor instead of ending poverty – must be challenged,” commented Mittal.

Despite fear of retribution from Tanzania’s repressive regime, the impacted communities were relentless in demanding justice till they forced the cancellation of the project. “For years we have waited for the World Bank to fix the disaster it created. Today the Board of the Bank has undoubtedly failed in its own mission, but we will not give up, no matter what it takes,” said a community representative.

“The World Bank’s financing commitments for operations in Tanzania amount to US$10 billion. It does have the leverage and authority to fix this catastrophe. The United States, as the largest shareholder and funder of the World Bank Group, must also take responsibility,” concluded Mittal.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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