PBI-Canada hosts webinar on UN COP and Binding Treaty processes and the protection of environmental defenders

Published by Brent Patterson on October 25, 2024October 25, 2024

On October 24, Peace Brigades International-Canada held a webinar focused on the United Nations COP16 biodiversity conference in Colombia, the upcoming negotiations in Geneva on the UN Binding Treaty on business and human rights, and the crucial protection needs of environmental defenders.

Target 22 of the framework being negotiated at COP16 pledges: “the full protection of environmental human rights defenders.” The draft of the Binding Treaty says: “State Parties shall adopt appropriate legislative, regulatory, and other measures to … protect the safety of human rights defenders, journalists, workers, members of indigenous peoples, among others, as well as those who may be subject to retaliation.”

Can UN processes fulfill these promises? What do the negotiations look like? What are the challenges and obstacles?

Our panel commenting on these questions was Michel Forst, Berenice Celeita, Javier Garate and Yannick Wild. The webinar was moderated by Meera Karunananthan, a member of the PBI-Canada Board of Directors.

Michel Forst

Michel Forst is the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders (Aarhus Convention). He joined us from Cali, Colombia.

Forst highlighted that it was important for him to be at COP16 “simply to show solidarity with those who are currently heavily pushing for concrete results.”

He added: “There are people who are willing to push for good results and at the same time we know that we also have people who are not our allies who are pushing also for counter-results and trying to delete paragraphs and good wording that some of us, some of them, would like to introduce.”

Forst also mentioned that he spent time in the Green Zone. This is the area outside the main conference venue for communities and NGOs, distinct from the Blue Zone where member countries and accredited observers hold their official bilateral and multilateral meetings and negotiations.

He commented: “People invited to participate say that they are not in fact feeling they are participating rightly in the discussion, being relegated in the Green Zone. Many shared with me mixed feelings about COP16, they do recognize that Colombia has made concrete efforts to prepare a more inclusive and a more participatory COP process, but at the same time the challenge the way discussions are organized, many of them feel not respected and their voices are not heard when they try to introduce new language in the outcome document, when they are meeting with delegations to try to push for wording, then we have the same usual suspects who block the discussions.”   

Berenice Celeita

Berenice Celeita is the president of the PBI-Colombia accompanied Association for Research and Social Action (Nomadesc) based in Cali.

Celeita noted: “So much has been said by the government in relation to the importance that the agreement of the COP reflects the historic fight to defend life, and understanding that life is not just being alive, for us it is essential that there is respect for culture, and respect for culture is protecting the rivers, biodiversity, the common goods and the natural goods that exist in our large home.”

She added: “For us, the division between the green zone and the blue zone shows what has historically been the massive negative leadership model because they are not thinking about the future of the planet or those people defending the planet.”

Celeita highlighted: “We feel that the 23 goals are just a theory because in practice we’ve seen in the last three decades in our country the murder of at least 30,000 defenders of land, they aren’t always called human rights defenders. This is a first element of debate, who is considered by the decision-makers, who is or is not a defender.”

She then commented: “We are being very sincere when we say that the blue zone is a business negotiation space, they are taking about past business plans and the renewal of agreements, they are still talking about carrying out large-scale mining, hydroelectric dams, and other pilot projects related to fracking which all have negative impacts on nature.”

Celeita also asked: “What is the next step after the COP? What are the true commitments to take care of our Mother Earth and to defend her? To protect and take care of life? And to take care of culture?”

Javier Garate

Javier Garate is the Washington, DC-based US Policy Advisor on Land and Environmental Defenders at Global Witness. He joined us from the Nomadesc office in Cali.

Garate noted: “We are clearly seeing that this COP is important, but that there are multiple COPs and that is something that is very visible here and the other COPs we have participated, this is not the exception. We see that there are thousands of events, but at the same time there is a very select and small group and the majority of them we don’t even really who they are, and we see their areas where the doors are closed and we can’t go in, and those are the spaces where the negotiations are taking place.”

He added: “On one hand there is a beautiful rich conversation with broad participation from civil society organizations and communities who are calling for the inclusion of key points, we ask, how can we address the causes of the environmental crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the human rights crisis, how can we go down to the roots of the cause with the economic and development and the model of democracy and participation that we have, but this is not being addressed in the negotiations.”

Garate also noted: “This is the first space in a COP where there is clear language about defenders and communities. But in this COP what they are really going to talk about is indicators, but there are main and secondary goals, and there are other indicators that include attacks against environmental defenders and this is a secondary indicator, where the countries only have to say yes or no, this is a voluntary report, this means in reality countries don’t have the obligation to report on how defenders are being threatened or attacked in their countries.”

He highlighted: “One of the points that we’ve had during the COP is to ensure that indicators exist on the situation of attacks against defenders, that this becomes a principal indicator, and it becomes an indicator that requires countries to do reporting on the attacks against defenders.”

Garate concluded: “We know that there are some countries in Latin America following the Escazu Agreement who are promoting language that is more favourable for human rights and defenders at this COP, but we know there are other countries that are blocking this language and it’s not included. We also know that oil companies have more access to those closed much more than we do and that they can influence the messaging and language that is used.”

Yannick Wild

Yannick Wild is the Advocacy Coordinator for PBI-Switzerland who regularly intervenes at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Wild talked about the Binding Treaty on business and human rights.

He explained: “The idea of the Binding Treaty was launched in 2014 with a Human Rights Council resolution with the idea to establish an Open Ended Intergovernmental Working Group to establish a legally-binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations.”

Wild also noted: “The idea was really to go beyond the voluntary basis of the Guiding Principles on business and human rights and to create this binding piece of international law because as we know business are guided by profit maximization and it’s asking a lot for them to voluntary do something to reduce those profits and some companies are actively violating human rights so definitely voluntary measures are not enough.”

He commented: “There are actually only two mentions of human rights defenders in the actual draft right now.”

“There is one in the preamble that provides the recognition of human rights defenders in preventing and seeking remedies for human rights violations committed by companies and it also formulates the obligations of states to ensure the safety of human rights defenders. Just a preamble but it establishes already the recognition that States must give to human rights defenders and this obligation to their safety.”

And then the most important article that says: “Measures by States to prevent involvement of business enterprises in human rights abuse shall include legally enforceable requirements for businesses while carrying out human rights due diligence to protect the safety of human rights defenders, journalists, workers, members of Indigenous peoples, among others, as well as those who may be subject to retaliation.”

Wild shared the link to the latest draft here.

Wild added: “There is opposition by some States that are skeptical about the role of human rights defenders. On the other hand, there have been also pushes to include more language about human rights defenders especially by Palestine in the last sessions.”

He further noted: “One of the bigger movements for the Binding Treaty is one that we are also part of as Peace Brigades International. The link to that movement is here. This is a coalition of 250 organizations and social movements that are affected by the activities of transnational corporations, groups that resist land grabs, mining activities, environmental destruction that are caused by transnational corporations globally. They are calling for a stronger Binding Treaty and they have also drafted their own draft treaty, the Peoples’ Treaty, where they are mentioning human rights defenders. One is that human rights lawyers and human rights defenders are allowed to act in litigation processes against transnational corporations. And the second part would be for human rights defenders to be recognized to respond to accusations against them in order to avoid criminalization and persecution.”

Key dates

The COP16 biodiversity conference now underway in Cali concludes on November 1. Shortly afterwards, the COP29 climate conference will take place from November 11 to 22 in Azerbaijan. Following that, the next round of negotiations on the Binding Treaty on business and human rights will take place from December 16 to 20 in Geneva (postponed with little notice, as Wild noted, from October 21 to 25).

Next year, the anticipated COP30 climate conference will take place on November 10 to 21 in Belém, Brazil.

Just prior to COP28, Global Witness highlighted that at least 1,390 land and environmental defenders had been killed since COP21 in December 2015.

The key question remains: What can be done to stop the killings, threats against, and harassment, criminalization and judicialization of environmental defenders and uphold the land, water and territories they protect?

We continue to follow all these processes.

The Peace Brigades International-Canada team has one staffperson and eleven volunteer Board members who support the accompaniment of frontline defenders through articles, social media, webinars, advocacy tours, delegations and research. To enable this work to continue, please donate here.