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Honduras: Expanding Palm Oil Empires In The Name Of ‘Green Energy’ And “Sustainable Development”

Written by Rights Action, Rainforest Rescue, Biofuelwatch, and Food First | August 6, 2013

From 6th-8th August, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is holding its 4th Latin American Conference on so-called sustainable palm oil in Honduras [1]. Environmental and social campaigners have been shocked to learn that one event sponsor is the palm oil company Dinant Corporation, owned and controlled by Miguel Facusse, the largest landowner in Honduras. They are calling on World Wildlife Fund WWF and three other organisations to withdraw from and denounce the conference being held in Honduras due to the Dinant’s sponsorship of the event and the serious human rights implications [2].

Mr. Facusse was a key supporter and beneficiary of the June 2009 military coup in Honduras [3], has been associated with narco-trafficking [4], and, along with other large oil palm growers, has been linked to the targeted killing of more than 88 members and supporters of peasant organisations since June 2009 in the Aguan Valley [5], one of the main palm oil producing regions in Honduras.

Annie Bird from Rights Action states: “By holding its conference in Honduras and by allowing Dinant Corporation to sponsor the event and hold a stall, the RSPO is turning a blind eye to systemic and severe human rights abuses, including forced evictions of entire communities and over 88 killings for which palm oil companies, especially Dinant, are responsible. The RSPO Conference serves to reinforce the impunity with which the large-scale palm producers operate.”

RSPO is overwhelmingly dominated by the interests of large corporations like Nestlé, Rabobank and Unilever—all linked to cases of “land grabbing” in Asia, Latin America and Africa.” [6]

According to Tanya Kerssen, Research Coordinator for Food First, “The case of Dinant is emblematic of how large, elite-controlled companies use palm oil to expand their control over land and other resources. The RSPO is merely window dressing for this continued corporate expansion, which—whether classed as ‘sustainable’ or not—necessarily means the replacement of forests, biodiversity and food production with a large-scale monoculture crop for biofuel and unhealthy edible oils.” [7]

Guadalupe Rodriguez from Rainforest Rescue adds: “WWF and the three other organisations involved in this RSPO conference must pull out of and denounce this process. They must not, however indirectly, associate themselves with palm oil businessmen involved in repressing, evicting and killing peasants in Honduras’s Aguan Valley.”

The European Commission considers all biofuels from RSPO-certified palm oil to be sustainable and thus eligible for government support [8]. This is despite growing evidence by a large number of organisations, which shows that the RSPO has not been enforcing its own standards on its member companies and cannot guarantee environmental or social sustainability of palm oil [9].

Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch states: “The RSPO Secretariat’s decision to hold a conference in Honduras and allow Dinant Corporation to contribute sponsorship and hold a stall further undermines any pretence that the RSPO’s aim is to make palm oil sustainable. Far from addressing any of the most serious impacts of palm oil production, the RSPO continues to serve as an instrument of greenwashing for the industry”.

NOTES

[1] The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a stakeholder forum which provides voluntary certification for palm oil. The great majority of RSPO members represent industry interests. (Conference website: http://rspo2013.com/)

[2] See http://rightsaction.org/action-content/open-letter-world-wildlife-fund-solidaridad-network-snv-netherlands-development for an Open Letter to WWF, Solidaridad, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and Forest Ethics on this issue.

[3] In June 2009, the democratically elected Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup.  Manuel Zelaya’s government had begun listening to and acting on the demands of peasant organisations for land reform, including in the Aguan Valley region.  The land reform process was ended by the military rulers after the coup.  Since then, Dinant Corporation and their armed security forces have been collaborating with military forces and police forces in repressing local communities who have been trying to reclaim land controlled by Dinant.  See for example: http://www.enca.org.uk/documents/ENCA56_Sep_2012.pdf .

[4] Published Wikileaks Cables revealed that the US embassy in Honduras has had evidence linking Miguel Facusse to drug trafficking since at least 2004 and that several aeroplanes with drugs have landed on his private property.  See http://www.thenation.com/article/164120/wikileaks-honduras-us-linked-brutal-businessman#

[5] For a report by Rights Action about killings and other human rights abuses in the Aguan Valley, see http://rightsaction.org/sites/default/files/Rpt_130220_Aguan_Final.pdf .

[6] See, for example: “The bloody products of the house of Unilever” Rainforest Rescue, 2011. https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/mailalert/747/the-bloody-products-from-the-house-of-unilever

[7] For more on the link between palm oil expansion and corporate control, see Kerssen, Tanya. Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras. Food First Books, 2013.

[8] See http://www.rspo.org/news_details.php?nid=137

[9] Previously, over 250 organisations condemned the RSPO for ‘greenwashing’ of palm oil: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2008/rspo-declaration-english/ . More recently, the RSPO has been denounced for example by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth; http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2008/rspo-declaration-english/

August 8, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Environmentalism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

World Bank Must End Support for Honduran Palm Oil Company Implicated in Murder

Upside Down World | March 22, 2013

On March 19 several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) condemned a statement by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, IFC [1] which defends the record of a Honduran palm oil company, Grupo Dinant, implicated in dozens of murders as well as other human rights abuses. The IFC statement explicitly admits to supporting training for the company’s armed security guards.

The NGOs are : Friends of the Earth International, Global Forest Coalition, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Urgewald, Rights Action, Rettet den Regenwald/Rainforest Rescue, Global Justice Ecology Project, and Biofuelwatch.

A World Bank Ombudsman [2] is currently investigating an IFC loan of $30 million for Grupo Dinant which was approved in 2009, at least half of which has already been disbursed.

This month, an Open Letter by 17 NGOs [3] and an international petition signed by over 63,000 people [4] have protested the loan and called on the World Bank to immediately cease their support for Grupo Dinant.

Since 2009, international human rights bodies have documented dozens of murders of peasant activists and their supporters in connection with land conflicts involving Grupo Dinant, the company’s armed security guards and Honduran military and police.

The evidence includes a fact-finding mission report by international human rights organisations in March 2011, a hearing before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in October 2011, an international public hearing on human rights in the region in May 2012 [5] and a report about human rights abuses attributed to military forces in the region by Rights Action, published this month [6].

The recent Rights Action report confirms that at least 88 members and supporters of peasant movements have been murdered in targeted killings in the Bajo Aguan Valley over the past three years. It documents the direct involvement of Grupo Dinant’s armed security forces in the violence against peasant movements. Contrary to the World Bank’s claims that the violence ended in 2012, two peasant activists were found tortured and murdered in February 2013. [7]

Annie Bird from Rights Action says: “It is a serious indictment of World Bank’s role in Honduras’s land conflicts that their International Finance Corporation admits to directly engaging with the training of Grupo Dinant’s paramilitary ‘security guards’. It is not clear whether this engagement is a response to concerns over human rights abuses but retraining paramilitaries implicated in killings is never an acceptable response. The World Bank must cease such engagement and stop supporting Grupo Dinant at once.”

Almuth Ernsting from Global Forest Coalition and Biofuelwatch adds: “The World Bank’s claims that killings are being investigated by Honduran courts with full cooperation from Grupo Dinant contradict the findings of human rights missions which show a state of total impunity surrounding those murders. Such a state of impunity has been confirmed by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries. Not only must the World Bank cancel its loan but there needs to be a full investigation into their role in human rights abuses in Honduras.”

In 2011, the German development bank, DEG, cancelled a loan for Grupo Dinant due to the company’s involvement in serious human rights abuses.Yet the World Bank continues to back the company and dismiss all independent evidence, as their recent statement shows.

Jeff Conant from Friends of the Earth US adds: “The World Bank’s statement on Bajo Aguan reveals the extent of their complicity with a palm oil company implicated in some of the most serious human rights abuses in Central America today. Years after a damning audit of their palm oil funding and a supposed overhaul of their policies, the World Bank is legitimising the use of armed paramilitaries in land conflicts against peasants who are trying to reclaim their own land, dismissing a vast volume of evidence from independent fact finding missions.”

The NGOs demand cancellation of the World Bank’s loan to Grupo Dinant and an immediate full and independent investigation into the World Bank’s involvement with Grupo Dinant, which must go beyond the remit of the current Ombudsman investigation.

NOTES:

[1] www1.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/REGION__EXT_Content/Regions/Latin%20America%20and%20the%20Caribbean/Strategy/Corporacion_Dinant?

[2] A complaint submitted by Rights Action is currently being investigated by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO). The CAO is an independent agency which investigates complaints filed by communities affected by project funded by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).

[3] www.fian.org/fileadmin/media/publications/International_Statement_CAO_-_Lower_Aguan_Honduras_-_01-.pdf

[4] www.rainforest-rescue.org/mailalert/909/honduras-world-bank-palm-oil-loans-linked-to-murders

[5] www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/honduras573ang.pdf; http://hrbrief.org/2011/10/human-rights-situation-in-the-bajo-aguan-honduras/; www.lawg.org/storage/documents/Honduras/declaration%20international%20public%20hearing%20bajo%20aguan.pdf

[6] http://rightsaction.org/sites/default/files//Rpt_130220_Aguan_Final.pdf

[7] See http://www.coha.org/21693/

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March 23, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Will the World Bank Stop Investing in Campesino Assassinations?

By Arthur Phillips | CEPR Americas Blog | March 8, 2013

On February 27, the office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) for the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched an audit of the lending arm’s $30 million investment in Tegucigalpa-based Corporación Dinant, which produces palm oil and food products. The audit comes in response to widespread claims of violence, intimidation, and illegal evictions carried out by Dinant’s private security guards in Honduras’ Bajo Aguán valley, the center of the country’s ongoing land struggle. In offering its resources and reputation to the company, the World Bank and its member countries are complicit in the deaths of countless innocent farmers.

The COA’s review began just two days after the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries urged the Honduran government “to properly investigate and prosecute crimes committed by private security guards and to ensure that victims receive effective remedies.” A delegation from the Working Group was in the country from February 18 to 22, when it met with government officials and representatives of civil society and the private sector, including security firms. The delegates voiced their particular concern about the “alleged involvement of private security companies hired by landowners in widespread human rights violations including killings, disappearances, forced evictions and sexual violence against representatives of peasant associations in the Bajo Aguán region.” Dinant is the largest single landholder in the region.

An appointed panel of unnamed experts is currently convened in Washington, D.C., to review both the IFC’s adherence to its social and environmental policies and the role Dinant has played in the abuses. Many human rights observers consider the company’s owner, Miguel Facussé, to be one of the country’s most powerful men and hold him responsible for the killings of dozens of campesinos.

The audit had been a long time coming. On November 19, 2010, the human rights organization Rights Action wrote a letter to the World Bank’s then-president Robert Zoellick demanding that the financial institution suspend its funding to Honduras. The group cited the “context of grave human rights abuses and lack of independence of the justice system” as grounds to withhold funding, and characterized support for Dinant as “a case of gross negligence of the World Bank’s human rights and due diligence obligations.” In the letter, Rights Action also noted that “at least 19 farmers in this region have been killed in the context of conflicts with biofuel industry interests.” (In a new report released two weeks ago, the same group declared that 88 farmers and their supporters have been killed in Bajo Aguán since January 2010, most of them in targeted assassinations.)

In the ensuing period, the office of the CAO maintained discussions with local civil society organizations and in April 2012, CAO Vice President Meg Taylor informed the IFC that her office was initiating an appraisal of the funding group’s investment in Dinant. That appraisal, having found sufficient grounds for further investigation, culminated this August in the decision to conduct the current audit.

A diverse group of international organizations, including Oxfam, Vía Campesina and the Latin American Working Group, welcomed CAO’s decision. In a co-signed letter, though, the groups expressed their firm demand that the IFC halt its financial cooperation with the palm oil company

until a) clear evidence is provided of significant progress in overcoming impunity of crimes and human rights abuses committed against organized peasants and their supporters in the Lower Aguán; and b) a comprehensive, just, peaceful and sustainable resolution is provided to the conflicts over land between the Corporación Dinant, the government of Honduras and the local peasant movements.

The panel is scheduled to conclude its audit on March 8.

On Friday, March 1, while the CAO panel gathered in Washington, journalist Carlos Augusto Lara Cruz was reportedly threatened by a Dinant employee while covering a confrontation between campesinos and a military unit. It must be noted that Honduran human rights defenders have consistently and credibly accused military and police units of collaborating with Dinant security guards in kidnapping, torturing, and murdering land rights activists.

One of the latest assassinations in the area took place on Thursday, February 21, when lawyer José Andrés Andrade Soto was shot dead in the town of Tocoa. Andrade Soto led the regional office of the National Agrarian Institute until former president Manuel Zelaya was deposed in the June 2009 coup. Today, farmer organizations continue to struggle for land titles that the Zelaya government granted to them shortly before it was overthrown.

As part of its Summary of Proposed Investment, written before the program’s approval in order to boost the institution’s transparency, the IFC described its cooperation with Dinant as an opportunity to help small farmers in Bajo Aguán. It also declared that there was no controversy regarding the land in question. “Land acquisition is on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, and there is no involuntary displacement of any people,” the report assured.

Since that report was published, scores of campesinos have been assassinated for efforts to re-appropriate their rightful land. The World Bank and its member countries bear some degree of responsibility for their deaths. No matter the outcome of the CAO audit, the IFC should apologize for the suffering in which it has been complicit and should immediately revoke its support for Facussé and Corporación Dinant.

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March 8, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | Leave a comment