Advocates Redesign

Author: acaredesign

  • Sierra Leone Villagers Seek Mining Justice at ECOWAS Court

    29 August 2019 – The government of Sierra Leone shot and beat protesters and helped a mining company pollute and unjustly grab traditional lands, according to a human rights lawsuit filed by residents of Koidu, Sierra Leone at the ECOWAS Court of Justice.  The plaintiffs are asking for proper relocation, enforcement of the Mining Lease Agreement between the government and mining company, investigation of incidents of violence in 2007 and 2012, and compensation for their suffering and losses.

    Many Koidu residents live in the shadow of the immense waste dump of a diamond mine operated by the Octea Group. These individuals have been awaiting relocation for over a decade, with no end in sight. The proximity of the mine to their homes means mining activities have disrupted their livelihoods and access to basic living necessities. Explosions from the mine have sent rubble flying onto their farmland and crashing through their roofs. With support from the State, the company has diverted water onto their land, flooding it. Women who previously farmed small plots have lost that land and are now reduced to taking rocks from the company’s giant rubble pile and breaking them into gravel to sell to construction crews. “This back-breaking work is ruining my health, but what choice do I have?” complained Aminata Bangura, leader of the cooperative of women stone-breakers. “I can barely make enough to feed my kids, but I don’t have land to grow food for them anymore.”

    Madam Kumba King, Tankoro Queen Mother and representative of the Marginalized Affected Property Owners Association, lamented the destruction of their community. “We used to farm and live in peace, but now our lands and water sources are poisoned and covered in rubble. Our homes are shaken by explosives every day.” Tremors from blasting cracks residents’ walls and collapses their ceilings. Throughout the community, those who once had ready access to well water now find their wells dry during the dry season because the mine has disturbed the water table.

    Despite the residents’ complaints, the government has failed in its legal obligation to ensure the relocation of these individuals and the proper replacement of their land and homes. Even those that have received relocation report that the resettlement site lacks basic living essentials.  Their new houses are smaller than their old homes and have already started crumbling after just a matter of months due to poor construction.

    The complaint further alleges that the Sierra Leone repeatedly committed unjustified violence against demonstrators in Koidu.  According to several witnesses, police officers used firearms to disperse peaceful protesters, resulting in two deaths and several grave injuries in 2007 and again in 2012. After the shooting in December 2007, the government created the Jenkins-Johnston Commission of Inquiry, which found the government and the company to be jointly responsible for the violence and recommended important police reforms. Although the government officially accepted these proposals, it failed to implement any of them, and violence struck again in December 2012. For both incidents, the government did not hold any security officers responsible, nor did it provide assistance to the victims and their family members, who continue to wait for justice to this day. The community is represented by a consortium of West African lawyers from the Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa (PILIWA), as well as C&J Partners of Makeni, Sierra Leone.

    Koidu ECOWAS ComplaintDownload

  • Donkro Nkwanta Communities near completion of their projects

    In no time, the communities shall be decked with many different projects that come together to fulfill the ultimate visions of Donkro Nkwanta communities. The communities began the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP) in April 2017 with eight to ten months of planning, and they will soon complete the implementation phase where they have prioritized various goals and pathways.

    In 2011, Donkro Nkwanta and its three neighboring communities made history after fighting and successfully stopping a mining activity that was to take place on their fields by a gigantic American gold mining company, Newmont. The communities resisted with a vision for a livelihood that could be beneficial to many generations. If the company had succeeded in their quest, the communities would have lost the pride of being the highest maize producers in the Municipality providing communities full of poverty, sicknesses and extreme hunger.

    Five years after the communities’ fight with the mining company, ACA began working with them; residents in Salamkrom, Kyeradeso, Donkro Nkwanta and Nwoase were worried that the company would return. Poverty and internal wrangling had sapped their strength to resist.

    However, through FCAP, communities have come together to define their goals and determined how best to achieve them. ACA has so far committed a total amount of USD 45,000.00 to support these four communities on various projects.

    Kyeradeso received a microgrant of USD 9,000 to build a Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound to improve the health of their community and others within the health zone. Similarly, Salamkrom also sought to improve health by building a nurses’ quarters to support the already active nurses in their clinic who have no place to lay their heads with USD 9,000.00. Nwoase also received the same amount to construct a five-bedroom house for their teachers who have been posted to the community to teach in order to improve education. And finally, the biggest community Donkro Nkwanta received double the amount of the microgrants (USD 18,000) to build a community center to help them continually meet and take vital development decisions, as well as to hire out and generate additional income for the community to implement other goals of the community in the near future.

    Below are pictures of the ongoing projects.

  • 22 Liberian Indigenous communities accuse the Salala Rubber Corporation (SRC), a Subsidiary of SOCFIN, a transnational corporation based in Luxembourg and an International Finance Corporation (IFC) Client, of grave human rights and environmental abuses using World Bank financing.

    Press Contacts
    Alfred Brownell
    Email: alfred.brownell@greenadvocates.org
    Green Advocates USA
    Skype: alfredbrownell
    Phone#:+1541 255 2399

    Francis K. Colee 
    Green Advocates International 
    Email: francis.colee@greenadvocates.org 
    Phone# +231777077206 

    Simpson D L Snoh 
    Alliance for Rural Democracy 
    Email: simpsonsnoh.ard@gmail.com 
    Phone# +231777529064 

    Kakata City, Liberia, May 27th, 2019 – In a complaint filed today, 22 Liberian indigenous villagers say, the Salala Rubber Corporation (SRC) is using World Bank money to expand and operate its Liberian plantations through illegal land grabs, sexual violence, and intimidation of human rights defenders, according to a complaint filed today. Residents of 22 Indigenous Villages in Margibi and Bong Counties are asking the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm, to intercede and take special steps to protect community based Land, Environmental and Human Rights Defenders from harm and reprisals as a result of their complaints consistent with the IFC October 2018 Position Statement on Retaliation Against Civil Society and Project Stakeholders.

    SRC, a Liberian subsidiary of Luxembourg-based agricultural giant Socfin, took over the Weala Rubber Company in 2007, after the end of Liberia’s civil war. SRC received an IFC loan in 2008 to expand and modernize its rubber plantations. But according to villagers, that expansion has undermined their livelihoods and has been accompanied by violence against women and community leaders. The company has forcibly taken over traditional territory and even lands for which locals hold formal title deeds, without regard for land rights and without compensating the owners. One resident explained, “Our ancestors resided upon these lands before the Republic of Liberia even existed.” But now many villages are surrounded by plantation, their farmlands and forests cleared and engulfed by rubber trees. 

    Without the farmland or the forest, communities have entered a period of food scarcity. “When I was a child, our parents fed us three times per day. We had plenty of land for farming, and we grew enough food to feed the family and sell some for profit,” one woman said. “The forest was used for hunting, medicine, and rivers for catching fish. Now I can only feed my two children once per day.” SRC also sprays pesticides and other chemicals around the villages, polluting sources of water. Community members report that their water sources including creeks, rivers and streams have changed color, smell foul, and often cause rashes and diarrhea when imbibed soon after rounds of spraying. They also complained that their sacred sites – tombs, shrines, Sande (women traditional schools and universities) and Poro (male traditional schools and universities) and areas of forest reserved for medicinal plants and religious activities – have been destroyed and desecrated.

    Living near SRC’s plantations brings other perils as well. The few women who find employment with the company are subject to harassment by the contractor heads who manage them; they often face demands for sex just to receive payment that is due to them. Women who walk through the plantations at night – often a necessity because villages are literally surrounded by rubber trees – fear running into plantation guards, who humiliate them and threaten them with rape. Activists and community leaders who voice their opposition to the company or seek redress for the damages have been arrested and their legitimate grievances criminalized on spurious charges and put under continuous surveillance. The communities’ complaint asks the IFC to take special steps to protect these organizers, land, environmental and human rights defenders from harm. 

    In January 2019, a Swiss organization, Bread for All, published a detailed report revealing the abuses and impacts on communities of SRC’s operations, but the company has yet to respond. Frustrated with this failure to address their concerns, the communities have directed their complaints toward the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), an office of the IFC that investigates allegations that IFC-funded projects are in breach of IFC’s own strict social and environmental safeguard policies. 

    Green Advocates International, the Liberian organization filing the complaint and supporting the Indigenous communities, hopes the IFC complaint will have a better outcome. “SRC has harmed these communities on such a massive scale that the IFC must compel the SRC to remedy these abuses and make them whole again. The IFC has a duty, an obligation and a responsibility to protect, respect and fulfill the rights of these indigenous villagers,” says Alfred Lahai Gbabai Brownell Sr, the lawyer representing the indigenous communities and the 2019 Goldman Prize Winner, Lead Campaigner and Founder of Green Advocates International. “With the interventions of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), we hope the IFC will hold SRC accountable for its actions. This would be an important and sizable symbolic victory for all of our impacted communities that have continuously suffered these abuses for almost half a century without and form of remedy IT IS TIME to hold the IFC, SOCFIN and its subsidiary, the SRC fully accountable,” says Brownell.

    Green Advocates International 

    Green Advocates International is Liberia’s first public interest environmental law and human rights organization dedicated to ensuring the protection of the environment, defending human rights, empowering and amplifying the voices of poor people who are victimized in resource exploitation and by using the rule of law to hold state and non-state actors accountable for their actions. The program activities of Green Advocates are conceptualized to amplify environmental protection, a transparent and accountable system of governance in natural resources management to benefit indigenous people who are the custodians of natural resources, the intellectual and cultural rights of rural people, and the link to the protection of the human rights of marginalize people. 

    Quotations from Affected Community Members 

    “Human rights defenders in the communities have been systematically targeted by the IFC’s client, SRC, as a result of their activities in seeking redress for legitimate grievances regarding SRC’s activities, and are continuously surveilled by local police and SRC’s private security contractors”
     – Says Francis K. Colee, Head of Programs Green Advocates 

    “During the SRC expansions in the 1960s and 1979/80, many of us were forced to evacuate to indigenous tribal ‘reserve land.’ Once we were evicted from the reserve land, we had nowhere to go. The government knew we were there, we paid taxes.”
    – An elderly male member of the community 

    “SRC cleared sacred places such as our traditional revered snake bushes, Sande bush, Poro bush, taboo trees, sacred rivers, ritual lands, and ancestral graves while expanding its rubber plantation. We used snake bushes to cure those bitten by snakes. SRC destroyed many of these sites during the clearing of the bush or the demolition of towns.” 
    – Youth leader from the community 

    “Our ancestors resided upon these lands before the Republic of Liberia even existed. Now SRC’s expansion is making our entire way of life impossible to continue.”
    – An elderly male member of the community 

    “When I was a child, our parents fed us three times each day. They had plenty of land for farming and grew enough food to feed the family and sell some for profit. The forest was used for hunting, medicine, and rivers for catching fish. Now I can only feed my two children once per day.” 
    – An Indigenous women leader 

    “The same bulldozers which destroyed farmlands have also demolished many graveyards, or cut the them off from the surrounding forest, robbing them of spiritual value. We can no longer honor our ancestors.”
    – A chief from one of the villages 

    “We now must use water from the creek in the swamp within the planation, even though the water is unsuitable to drink.” 
    – Another women leader 

    “If a woman travels after 6 (six) PM in the evening, she can expect to get raped.” 
    – Woman land rights defender 

    “SRC has harmed our communities on such a massive scale that making us whole again could prove to be impossible.” 
    – A young female Land Rights Defender 

    SRC IFC COMPLAINTDownload
    Annex 1Download
    Annex 2 Representive and Comunity Advisors SignaturesDownload
    Annex 3 Client SignaturesDownload

  • First University Legal Clinic in Côte d’Ivoire Launched at Boauké

    The Université Alassane Ouattara in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire, has launched the first ever university legal clinic in the country – and one of the first in Francophone Africa.  In partnership with ACA, the Groupe de recherce et de plaidoyer sur les industries extractives (GRPIE), the Réseau des Cliniques Juridiques Francophones (RCJF), and the Association des Femmes Juristes de Côte d’Ivoire, the Bouaké clinic will help communities affected by extractive industries seek justice and find legal redress for human rights and environmental abuse.

    Clinical legal education is a complement to traditional instruction at law schools, in which students put their classroom-learned skills to work by collaborating with external partners on actual cases, for real clients, and then reflect on the experience with faculty.  At the same time, clinical students help to fill the justice gap, providing legal services to poor and marginalized populations that can’t normally afford a lawyer.  While clinics have been common in the United States since the 1960s and 70s, when they were an important part of the legal fight for civil rights, there are few university clinics in the Francophone world. 

    The Boauké clinic – a part of a new Masters Program in the legal profession – is the brainchild of M. Adama Yéo, a member of the National Human Rights Commission of Côte d’Ivoire and a professor at the university, and Prof. Silué Nanga, the Dean of the Law Faculty.  Students will receive practical training in public interest law skills – interviewing, fact-finding, drafting, and argumentation – from university faculty and skilled clinical practitioners from the Association des Femmes Juristes de Côte d’Ivoire, which operates a legal aid bureau in Bouaké.  They will work with GRPIE to apply those lessons in a real-life setting: the villages surrounding Bondoukou, where communities are facing environmental destruction and constructive eviction by an Indian manganese mining company.  ACA will provide technical support, developing curricula and materials and helping to connect the clinic to other innovative learning initiatives in Africa and elsewhere.

  • Sierra Leone communities win right to sue Octéa mining companies jointly in local courts

    Plaintiffs from Gbense and Tankoro Chiefdoms near Koidu City in Kono District, Sierra Leone, have won an ex parte ruling allowing them to serve lawsuit documents on six companies of the Octéa Group and their Managing Directors at Koidu Limited’s address in Freetown.  This court order will allow them to sue all six companies together, despite their attempts to avoid service by failing to register in Sierra Leone.

    The National Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD), a Sierra Leone non-profit that has worked with the Koidu communities for years, and Benedict Jalloh of C&J Partners filed this action on behalf of the communities on March 6, 2019. The judge delivered a judgment in their favor a week later on March 13, 2019.

    In order to commence a lawsuit against the defendants, the plaintiffs first needed to serve the Octéa companies with papers informing them of the legal action. However, they were initially barred from taking this first step. “Before we could even begin our lawsuit, we had to jump a major hurdle,” said Daniel Fofanah, Legal Officer NMJD. “Most of the defendants had no listed address in Sierra Leone, even though we know they operate here.” Lawyers for the plaintiffs tried to contact the defendants through normal channels but did not receive a response. The lawyers thus filed an originating summons so that the Octéa group could not avoid legal repercussions by hiding behind its corporate structure.

    The evidence presented to the judge included documents from the Panama Papers in which an Octéa parent company’s bankers discussed sending important documents to the company’s “operational” address that it shares with Koidu Ltd. in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. With the court’s recent ruling, NMJD and C&J Partners can now serve documents on all the defendants at this same address. “We told the Court that the Octéa companies were trying to avoid being served with lawsuits, and the Court agreed,” said Benedict Jalloh, Principal of C and J Partners and attorney for the plaintiffs.  “Now we can serve papers on all the defendants at the address of Koidu Ltd., and they won’t be able to argue that they’re all separate entities.”

    ACA supported this legal action by providing strategic advice, international law research, and analysis of evidentiary submissions (such as the Panama Papers documents).  NMJD is the beneficiary of a grant from the Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa that supports the legal fees and covers logistical costs for the case.

    Documents:

    Koidu Limited – BackgrounderDownload
    Koidu filing timeline – final 3.7.2019Download
    Koidu lawsuit press release – final 3.7.2019Download
    Koidu lawsuit press release – final 3.14.2019Download
    3.13.2019 Judgment on Service – MAPO v. Koidu Ltd.Download
    MPAO vs Koidu Ltd – originating summonsDownload
    Affidavit supporting OSDownload

  • Guinée : Zoghota à l’honneur (Guinea: Zoghota honored)

    Français

    Notre ami Me Pépé Antoine Lama est un jeune avocat Guinéen, membre de de l’ONG « les Mêmes Droits pour Tous », membre du réseau PILIWA, avocat accompagnant les victimes du massacre de Zoghota devant les juridictions nationales et la Cour de Justice de la CEDEAO.

    Il a remporté le premier prix du concours international de plaidoiries pour les droits de l’homme organisé en Mauritanie par l’Institut international des droits de l’homme et de la paix le 5 décembre 2018. Ce concours a vu la participation de huit candidats venus de la Mauritanie, l’Algérie, le Canada et la Guinée.

    Il a consacré sa plaidoirie sur le massacre de Zoghota afin de porter non seulement la voix des victimes hors des frontières de la Guinée, mais aussi inciter les autorités guinéennes à mener des enquêtes effectives et indépendantes sur les évènements malheureux de Zoghota « Mon objectif en choisissant le cas de Zoghota est que justice soit rendue aux victimes du massacre de Zoghota et que les responsables puissent répondre de leurs actes » dit Me Pépé Antoine Lama.

    English

    Our friend Mr. Pépé Antoine Lama is a young Guinean lawyer accompanying the victims of the Zoghota massacre before the national courts and the ECOWAS Court of Justice. He is also a member of the NGO “Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous” and a member of the PILIWA network.

    He won first prize in the International Human Rights Moot Court Competition organized in Mauritania by the International Institute for Human Rights and Peace on December 5, 2018. This competition was attended by eight candidates from Mauritania, Algeria, Canada and Guinea.

    He devoted his speech to the massacre of Zoghota to carry not only the voices of the victims beyond the borders of Guinea, but also to incite the Guinean authorities to carry out effective and independent investigations on the unfortunate events of Zoghota. “My objective in choosing Zoghota’s case is that justice is done to the victims of the Zoghota massacre, and that those responsible can answer for their actions,” says Mr. Pépé Antoine Lama.

  • Donkro Nkwanta Communities Begin The Next Phase of Their Projects

    English:

    The communities in Donkro Nkwanta have continued to make headway on their development projects. All four communities – Donkro Nkwanta, Nwoase, Salamkrom, and Kyeredeso – have laid foundations for their building projects. Nwoase and Salamkrom have already begun to build the walls to their compounds.

    Additionally, one of the communities had previously developed a culturally appropriate strategy for challenging its traditional chief in a land dispute. Though they have met some obstacles, its members are moving forward to the next step in their strategy and have continued to push for a resolution.

    French:

    Les communautés de Donkro Nkwanta continuent à progresser dans leurs projets de développement. Les quatre communautés – Donkro Nkwanta, Nwoase, Salamkrom et Kyeredeso – ont jeté les bases de leurs projets de construction. Nwoase et Salamkrom ont déjà beaucoup avancé dans la construction des murs.

    En outre, l’une des communautés avait précédemment développé une stratégie culturellement appropriée pour contester son chef traditionnel dans un conflit foncier. Bien qu’ils se soient heurtés à des obstacles, ses membres avancent pour la prochaine étape de leur stratégie et ont continué à faire pression pour une résolution.

  • Zoghota Massacre Victims Accuse Mining Company of Complicity in Murder

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  • Donkro Nkwanta Residents Become Active and Engaged Citizens Through CICONET

    Fifty residents of the villages of Donkro Nkwanta, Kyeredeso, Nwoase, and Salamkrom have completed their fourth month of activities through the Citizens Community Network, or CICONET.  As part of their commitment to engage with local authorities and practice active citizenry, CICONET members have learned how local government works, hosted Town Hall Meetings with government officials, and chosen advocacy projects to improve their communities’ governance.

     

    CICONET began in April 2018 with a keynote address from the Municipal Chief Executive of Nkoranza South Municipality, Ghana, Ms. Diana Ataa-Kusiwaa.  Since that time, the network members have met monthly and learned to interact with local and traditional government leaders.  They have held the Municipal Assembly to account for incorporating their own community development vision into Nkoranza South’s Medium-Term Development Plan, exercised oversight over development projects in the area, and communicated community grievances in a positive and constructive way.

     

    Through CICONET, community members have also developed the solidarity and confidence to advocate on their own behalf with their leaders.  Most recently, they decided to tackle a land dispute with the traditional chief of one of the four villages.  The participants developed and put into practice an assertive but culturally appropriate strategy to ensure that community land is used and governed appropriately.

  • Donkro Nkwanta Communities Break Ground on Community Projects

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    In the past month, two of the communities at Donkro Nkwanta in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana – Salamkrom and Kyeredeso – have broke ground on community-driven development projects with ACA’s support.  Each of the villages has created its own development and advocacy vision that will keep it safe from the destructive impacts of mining for years to come.

     

    In both Kyeredeso and Salamkrom, community artisans have cleared building sites and molded concrete blocks, and they expect to start construction in August.  Kyeredeso is building a health clinic, and Salamkrom is preparing accommodations for the village school’s teachers.  Both communities have signed grant agreements with ACA, and they have received the first disbursements on these “microgrants.”

     

    The villages are two of the four communities that ACA supports in Ghana to choose their own development trajectory in the face of threats from the mining and petroleum industries.

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