COLLABORATING PARTNER SESSION

24 September | 09:00-10:00 ICT

Asserting Remedies, Justice and Corporate Accountability: Grounds for local, national, cross-border and transnational organizing

Organized by:

EarthRights International
International Rivers
Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy
Community Resource Centre - Thailand
ETO Watch Coalition-Thailand
3S Rivers Protection Network
Mekong Watch
Dibang Resistance
International Accountability Project
International Commission of Jurists
Just Ground
Defenders in Development Campaign

Background

Across the region, communities are confronted by attempts of powerful state-backed and private sector actors seeking to turn the current economic, food, energy and climate crises into business opportunities by extracting rare earths and other mineral deposits, building out new large-scale hydroelectric dams to churn out so-called ‘clean’ energy, or clearing vast expanses for export-driven agribusiness. These sites of sacrifice often overlap with customary territories of Indigenous Peoples, ethnic minorities and other already marginalized rural populations. As a result, in pursuing these projects, proponents are responsible for causing physical, economic, social and cultural dislocation among other human rights violations, as well as irreparable ecological loss and damage. Lines of accountability are blurred however, because not only is financing for these endeavors often sourced from a mix of public and private institutions, but also information about responsible actors often may be opaque, and the sites for where the minerals, energy or agricultural goods are destined are outside national or even regional boundaries.

As sites of development are upheld as matters of national security and may be under heavy surveillance by armed personnel, outspoken community members and their allies who raise critical questions and concerns – or seek remedy to harms – risk becoming the target of incarceration under trumped up charges, Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation suits and other retaliatory physical and psychological violence.

Impacts may also span across national borders, placing the burden on communities in neighboring states to prove they are also among populations experiencing harms, damages and losses which require redress.

In the face of such challenges, community rights defenders and allied groups are not only looking to domestic frameworks and mechanisms (such as B&HR National Action Plans, national human rights commissions and courts), but also leveraging accountability mechanisms of international financial institutions and launching cases in the jurisdictions where responsible parent companies are headquartered.

Discussants in this session will bring into focus cases from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and India, providing a snapshot of realities at project sites, what community concerns are arising and how civil society groups are collaborating in an effort to hold responsible state, business and financial actors to task for redress and remedy.

Objectives

To provide insights into the ways in which recent framing of extractive, energy and agribusiness activities in the name just transition and economic security serves to obscure rights violations and lines of accountability
To provide practical examples from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and India of how geographies that are subject to national security orders and /or are heavily militarized intensify the risks faced by community land and water defenders, and why pursuing accountability and remedy for harms and damages beyond national borders may be necessary
To explore the options available for community rights advocates to use the National Action Plans and the UNGPs in seeking remedy and redress, especially in cases where project impacts span across national borders
To provide clarity on why all project proponents must commit to ensuring that grievance mechanisms, remedial action, compensatory support and redress extend to all affected populations – including across national borders, and must have have the foresight to incorporate anticipatory budgets for remedial action for grievances arising
To assert the extraterritorial obligations of business actors in respecting and upholding human rights and avoiding irreparable harm and damage to planetary commons, conducting due diligence across their supply chains and in proactively addressing rights abuses at project sites wherever they are located
To discuss how multilateral development banks (MDBs) – such as the World Bank – that provide technical assistance, have indirect involvement through equity and shares in intermediary financial institutions, or have direct financial connections, also bear responsibility for remedy and redress
To share considerations for what remedy, redress and accountability could look like in cases of profound resource, development, climate, ecological and gender injustice compounded with racialized/ethnicized/gendered violence – from the perspectives of affected communities and allies

Key questions

How is the securitization surrounding the energy, water, food or climate crisis leading to exacerbated land, water and resource grabbing and other violence against resident populations?
What, if any, are the options available to leverage National Action Plans, the UNGPs and other rights-based frameworks to demand redress in the case of violations of peoples’ rights to livelihood, ancestral domains, water, a healthy environment, adequate housing and to live free of fear of persecution?
What are the obligations of state and private sector actors as well as MDBs to address the harms, losses and damages reported by community rights defenders, most especially when these occur in geographies outside the headquarters of corporate proponents or in where the risk of reprisals is severe?
What might remedy, redress, reparations for harms, damages and losses in communities affected by state-backed and private sector mining, energy and agribusiness interests look like?