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UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Michel Forst on trade agreements

By
Brent Patterson
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Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, wrote in The Guardian several years ago that, “Trade agreements with countries where environmental defenders are under threat should contemplate measures to prevent, investigate and remedy violations against activists.”

Additionally, Katharina Rall from Human Rights Watch has noted, “The frequent attacks and threats against environmental rights defenders throughout the world are an example of why governments need to include protecting rights in their climate policies.”

These comments might suggest that language on protection measures for human rights defenders should be written into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is also referred to as NAFTA 2.0.

Unfortunately, there is no such language in the text of the agreement.

The Global Witness Enemies of the State? report (July 2019) provides examples of why we should be concerned about this.

It highlights the criminalization of Indigenous land defender Red Fawn Fallis (opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States), Unist’ot’en land defenders (opposed to the construction of the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on their territory in Canada), and the murder of 14 land and environmental rights defenders in Mexico.

Martha Pskowski, an independent journalist and M.A. candidate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, has written, “Foreign investments have repeatedly been linked to deadly attacks on environmentalists [in Latin America].”

She adds that the killings of environmental defenders has a “chilling effect” on activism and comments that the murders of Rarámuri land advocates in the Sierra Tarahumara region in Chihuahua, Mexico “discouraged some Rarámuri people from speaking out when the energy company TransCanada began building a natural gas pipeline through the area.”

Pskowski highlights, “Investors and companies in the U.S. and Canada have done little to ensure that their money isn’t driving criminalization and attacks on local advocates.”

In his critique of NAFTA 2.0, Manuel Pérez-Rocha of the Institute for Policy Studies has stated, “Human rights in the broadest sense — including economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights — must have primacy over corporate and investor rights, and there needs to be legally binding obligations on transnational corporations.”

He argues that investor-state dispute settlement provisions that undermine environmental rights should be eliminated from trade deals, that indigenous title to land and resources and the right to free, prior and informed consent should be recognized, and that enforceable obligations to reduce and mitigate the effects of climate change should be enshrined.

The Mexican Senate ratified the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in June 2019. In the United States, it faces a ratification vote in the Senate at some point this year. The Canadian Parliament has yet to ratify the deal.

For additional background on the significance of this issue, you can also read the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution Recognizing the contribution of environmental human rights defenders to the enjoyment of human rights, environmental protection and sustainable development.

Extractivism as a significant driver of violence against human right defenders

By
Brent Patterson
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What are the causes of violence against human rights defenders? It may be a basic question to ask, but it’s important to examine the context and the roots of violence as a way to perhaps mitigate or even prevent it.

While there are multiple causes for violence against human rights defenders, the statistics indicate that resource extraction is a key driver.

Canadian author Naomi Klein has defined extractivism as “a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth, one purely of taking. It is the opposite of stewardship, which involves taking but also taking care that regeneration and future life continues.”

She continues, “Extractivism is also directly connected to the notion of sacrifice zones – places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and therefore can be poisoned, drained, or otherwise destroyed, for the supposed greater good of economic progress.”

Front Line Defenders, which releases an annual global analysis each January, found that 321 defenders in 27 countries were targeted and killed for their work in 2018.

Their report states, “More than three-quarters of these, 77% of the total number of activists killed, were defending land, environmental or indigenous peoples’ rights, often in the context of extractive industries and state-aligned mega-projects.”

Front Line Defenders describes these human rights defenders as “those who attempt to defend equitable and sustainable ways of living and rural communities who want to manage their own ecosystems, oppose the devastation and pollution of forests, lands and water on a macro scale.”

Furthermore, Global Witness, which releases an annual report on the deaths of land and environmental defenders each July, “documented 164 killings of land and environmental defenders – ordinary people murdered for defending their homes, forests and rivers against destructive industries” in 2018.

Their report details the number of killings by sector: mining and extractives (43), agribusiness (21), water and dams (17), logging (13), poaching (9), fishing (2), wind power (1), other (7), and no clear link to a sector (55).

Their report finds, “Governments and business are failing to tackle the root cause of the attacks – overwhelmingly, the imposition of damaging projects on communities without their free, prior and informed consent.”

In his November 2019 address to the United Nations session titled Prevention is better than cure: exploring best strategies by States to prevent attacks on human rights defenders (co-organized by Peace Brigades International), the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst made some notable observations.

Forst stated, “As you know for the last few years news of killings of defenders and a lot of those who condemn the bad practices of businesses have increased and are now happening daily. It’s an epidemic which is spreading as business tries to conquer new markets, as natural resources are found in areas that had been until then untouched.”

Forst highlighted, “Many positive measures have been taken [but] this is not enough to turn around the trend. States must go to the root of environmental conflicts, such as imbalance of power, making nature into a commodity, impunity and the current development model in order to ensure long-term solutions.”

It’s also important to note that Global Witness has observed, “More than half of 2018 murders took place in Latin America, which has consistently ranked as the worst-affected continent since Global Witness began publishing data on killings in 2012.” Front Line Defenders adds, “Colombia and Mexico alone accounted for 54% of the total killings” in 2018.

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has commented, “Mexico, as in many countries in the region, has an impressive richness of natural resources, and the neoliberal policies that privilege the exploitation of these resources over the rights of indigenous people to their lands, has provoked conflicts and violence in many parts of the continent.”

Peace Brigades International has concluded, “In a system that favours profit over rights, economic models that encourage the forced displacement of those defending their resource-rich territories will continue and those at the forefront will remain at risk of violence.”

For more, please see the Peace Brigades International publication I Think, Therefore I Resist: Grassroots experiences of alternative protection and promotion of human rights in the context of large-scale economic investment.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies BDH at trial for three peasants from La Cumbre accused of land usurpation

By
Brent Patterson
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On January 7, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted on its Facebook page, “Yesterday we accompanied the Law Office of Human Rights (BDH) to the trial court of first instance in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, for the start of debate against three peasants of the Tactic Summit (la Cumbre Tactic).”

PBI-Guatemala adds, “The lawyers represent the three defenders of the land who are accused of aggravated usurpation, a crime repeatedly used to criminalize social protest. The debate will continue on January 14.”

The Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence (BTS) Network has previously reported on the eviction at La Cumbre, Tactic, Alta Verapaz that took place on November 1, 2017 that displaced 25 families from their homes.

BTS notes, “Women reported sexual violence during the eviction. The community was associated with the Peasant Unity Committee (CUC) and had previously labored on a plantation owned by the Morales Cahuec family. During the eviction, current workers of the plantation were involved in destroying homes.”

“The community had been participating in a dialogue table with the Secretary of Agrarian Affairs to recognize their right as legitimate owners of the land. Currently, there is one political prisoner from the community, and 16 others with arrest warrants.”

“Outcry from peasant farmer organizations and human rights organizations state that the community members’ human rights were not secured before the evictions took place, and no adequate support has been provided after the evictions.”

The Guatemala Solidarity Project further explains, “The eviction was blatantly illegal for a number of reasons, including that there was no advance notice through the Human Rights office and that it was carried out on a holiday which is against the law.  After 45 minutes the Army commenced burning down houses, all the while forcefully questioning people as to the whereabouts of community leaders with fraudulent arrest warrants who had fled into the mountains to avoid arrest.”

“La Cumbre, like many other communities facing violence that we work with, is a village of former ‘mozos colonos’.  These are families who were forced to live and work on plantations for generations without receiving any pay. Because of changes in the international economy, ‘land owners’ often no longer need the indigenous labor and are using extreme violence to evict these communities and then extract natural resources from the land.”

That article also notes that the eviction has “been condemned internationally as illegal by the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.”

In July 2018, the Organization of American States noted, “The IACHR [Inter-American Commission on Human Rights] and the United Nation’s Special Rapporteurs on Adequate Housing and on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons observe with concern the practice of forced evictions that the Guatemalan State has been implementing in recent years, as well as the forced displacement that has occurred as a result of that practice.”

That statement adds, “The IACHR and both UN experts urge the Guatemalan State to comply with international and Inter-American standards and regulations in order to prevent forced evictions and internal displacement, and to ensure protection and humanitarian assistance and find durable solutions when they cannot be prevented.”

Furthermore, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, has stated in a report to the UN Human Rights Council that the “crime of aggravated usurpation is commonly brought against indigenous land rights defenders.”

She highlights, “Disregard of indigenous rights of traditional lands ownership breeds tensions, subsequent violence and criminalization, as indigenous peoples become trespassers or illegal occupants of their own lands, subject to criminal charges such as ‘usurpation’ or illegal occupation, and liable to forced evictions and removal from the lands they rely upon for their livelihoods, social and cultural cohesion and spiritual traditions.”

Peace Brigades International often attends court hearings involving criminalized human rights defenders. Sue Willman, a partner at UK-based Deighton Pierce Glynn, has commented in this article that, “International trial observation is a vital tool in Colombia and other states where the rule of law is fragile and our presence might just make a difference.”

BDH (the Human Rights Law Firm) is a group of lawyers who represent those who human rights have been violated. It has been accompanied by PBI-Guatemala since 2013.

United Nations committee calls for suspension of three mega-projects on Indigenous territories in Canada

By
Brent Patterson
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The Canadian Press reports, “The [United Nations] Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which monitors a convention to end racial discrimination signed by countries including Canada, is calling for a suspension of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Site C dam and Coastal GasLink pipeline.”

“The committee, made up of 18 experts, says in a written directive last month that it is concerned by the approval and construction of the three projects without the free, prior and informed consent of impacted Indigenous groups.”

1- The federally owned Trans Mountain Corp. pipeline expansion refers to the construction of an 890,000 barrel per day pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Indigenous territories in northern Alberta to Burnaby (situated on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, Tsleil-Waututh, Kwikwetlem nations) on the coast of British Columbia. The 1,150-kilometre pipeline would cross 518 kilometres of the Secwepemc Nation, which has not given its free, prior and informed consent to the project.

2- The BC Hydro Site C dam is a 60-metre high, 1,050-metre-long earth-filled dam and hydroelectric generation station being built on the Peace River on Treaty 8 territory in northeastern British Columbia. The reservoir for the dam would submerge 78 First Nations heritage sites, including burial grounds and places of cultural and spiritual significance. The West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation are challenging the dam in court as construction on the mega-project proceeds without their consent.

3- The TC Energy Corporation Coastal GasLink pipeline would carry fracked gas extracted in the Dawson Creek area (Treaty 8 territory) of northeastern British Columbia (near the Alberta border) to a liquefied natural gas terminal in Kitimat (on the territory of the Haisla Nation) on the coast of British Columbia. The 670-kilometre pipeline would cross the Wet’suwet’en Nation. The Unis’tot’en (Big Frog Clan) are the original clan. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have not given their free, prior and informed consent to the project.

The Canadian Press article also notes, “The UN committee recommends Canada establish a legal and institutional framework to ensure adequate consultation to obtain free, prior and informed consent, and freeze present and future approval of large-scale development projects that don’t meet that level of consent.”

“[The UN committee] also says it’s disturbed by law enforcement’s ‘forced removal, disproportionate use of force, harassment and intimidation’ and ‘escalating threat of violence’ against Indigenous Peoples. …The committee calls on Canada to immediately cease the ‘forced eviction’ of Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en people and guarantee that no force will be used against the two groups.”

That article adds, “It also calls for the RCMP and other security and police to withdraw from their traditional lands.”

In December 2018, Noureddine Amir, the Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, called on Canada in this letter about Site C and this letter about the Trans Mountain pipeline “to consider engaging with the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) that is mandated by the Human Rights Council (resolution 33/25, paragraph 2), to provide States with technical advice on the rights of indigenous peoples and facilitate dialogue between States, indigenous peoples and/or the private sector.”

Peace Brigades International

Peace Brigades International has observed, “International declarations and mechanisms on indigenous rights enshrine the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples and recognise the importance of land rights for the original inhabitants of many countries now governed by the descendants of colonisers.”

“These rights are often the focus of conflict as powerful interests wish to exploit the natural resources found within and beneath traditional territories. Defenders of land rights, culture and natural resources can find themselves facing powerful interests and brutal opposition.”

“Some have approached Peace Brigades International for protection after they have been attacked or their colleagues assassinated. Many others have been subjected to criminal prosecutions based on spurious charges.”

Furthermore, the PBI-Mexico Project has commented, “Mexico, as in many countries in the region, has an impressive richness of natural resources, and the neoliberal policies that privilege the exploitation of these resources over the rights of indigenous people to their lands, has provoked conflicts and violence in many parts of the continent.”

“Although there are differences between countries and their governments, the tendency of the increase of territorial conflicts is reflected throughout the continent.”

Peace Brigades International field projects in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico provide protective accompaniment to threatened human rights defenders. PBI-Canada supports that accompaniment through advocacy work in Canada. We also highlight the related struggles of land and environmental rights defenders in Canada, United Nations human rights declarations, and the need to observe international human rights norms.

Photo: Noureddine Amir is the Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Photo by the United Nations.

Saltillo Migrant Shelter in Mexico still without water following disconnection of service by P3

By
Brent Patterson
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Peace Brigades International-Mexico has expressed its concern about water being disconnected to the Saltillo Migrant Shelter as well as slanderous comments that have been made against the organization.

PBI-Mexico has stated this is a violation of the rights to water and sanitation, expressed its trust in the shelter, and has shared a post by Onudh Mexico recalling UN Special Rapporteur Leo Heller’s comment that, “The disconnection of the service for economic disability is a regressive measure and a violation of the human right to water and sanitation.”

Water to the Saltillo Migrant Shelter was shutoff on December 28 by the public-private partnership (P3) water utility Aguas de Saltillo (Agsal).

On January 4, Zocalo reported, “In the absence of the potable water service in the Casa del Migrante, due to the debt with the Agsal company, Father Pedro Pantoja Arreola said that they received the donation of bottled water to cover some health-related needs…”

Father Pantoja has stated that the United Nations-recognized human right to water says a vulnerable and marginalized group – like migrants – and an organization that serves those migrants should not have its water disconnected over its inability to pay.

He has also commented, “The lack of payment capacity should not limit a human right, we demand that this situation ceases to be personalized and a social and governmental debate is opened so that the right to access water is guaranteed, regardless of the economic capabilities of people who need it.”

Vanguardia has reported, “Among the [slanderous] comments that have been disseminated is that there has been a lack of transparency in the resources of the shelter.”

And as noted in this tweet, “Members of the network of houses and human rights centers for migrants reject acts of defamation against the Casa del Migrante de Saltillo and its director Alberto Xicotencatl.”

El Diario reports, “Lawyer Alberto Valdés Cepeda has explained that [Agsal] has the obligation to seek the collection of the service to its clients by legal means, but without having the service suspended, since Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution warns that no person can be left without this right, which must be sought by the State, and where appropriate, by the service concession companies, which applies in this case to Aguas de Saltillo.”

In 2001, 49 per cent of the Saltillo water system was sold to the Spanish transnational Aguas de Barcelona (Agbar). As noted here, “Since the creation of Aguas de Saltillo, local citizen groups have mobilized against what rapidly became another example of political condescension and international impunity.”

The Saltillo Migrant Shelter offers daily humanitarian assistance – including clothes, medicines, food, rest, and medical and psychological care – to thousands of migrants crossing Mexico to reach the United States. In 2019, it provided assistance to 9,000 migrants.

PBI-Canada will be hosting a representative of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter on speaking tour in Ontario and Quebec this coming March. More on that soon.

PBI-Honduras concerned by the risks faced by the migrant caravan expected to depart this month

By
Brent Patterson
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On January 3, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted, “We are following with concern the call for a new migrant caravan for January 2020.”

PBI-Honduras adds, “In 2019 Honduras exceeded the figures of the previous year with more 81 thousand returned and around 105 thousand deported.”

Their post included this Plaza Publica news article.

That article notes, “It all started on Friday, October 12, 2018, when hundreds of Hondurans, alerted by the notice of former deputy Bartolo Fuentes, who said on national television that he would accompany a small group of migrants to the United States to request asylum, began to gather in San Pedro Sula.”

Le Monde reports that the caravan grew to 7,000 people.

In this CounterPunch article, Fuentes says, “The people leave because in Honduras they can’t resolve the basic problem of survival. Other countries need to understand that it’s not outside agitators or instigators that are prodding the people to leave, it’s hunger, it’s despair, it’s the lack of opportunities. The way things are, Hondurans aren’t going to stop leaving any time soon.”

By November, some of those migrants faced tear gas cannisters fired by Customs and Border Protection officers at the US border. The BBC reports, “The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of tear gas in war, but allows it for domestic law enforcement purposes.”

Overall, travel for migrants transiting through Mexico is perilous.

Doctors Without Borders has previously reported, “Through violence assessment surveys and medical and psychosocial consultations, MSF teams have witnessed and documented a pattern of violent displacement, persecution, sexual violence, and forced repatriation akin to the conditions found in the deadliest armed conflicts in the world today.”

This is part of the reason for the mass caravans.

The Guardian explains, “The groups have overturned migrants’ normal behaviour: instead of seeking to move without being seen – by authorities or criminals – they are are hoping that travelling in the open will keep them safe.”

The Associated Press adds, “Collective migration has become an attractive resource for Hondurans because it offers greater protection against the stalking of criminals who could await them along the way.”

The Los Angeles Times now reports, “Since the Guatemala agreement took effect on Nov. 22, U.S. officials have forcibly sent a number of Honduran adults to Guatemala, and last week, they began sending some Honduran families, according to communications obtained by The Times and several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.”

Non-Hondurans are also being deported by the United States to Honduras. Immigration attorney Raul A. Reyes comments in The Hill, “Honduras is not safe for its own citizens, let alone for outsiders with no familial ties or social networks.”

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has stated, “Human rights violations against migrants can include a denial of civil and political rights such as arbitrary detention, torture, or a lack of due process, as well as economic, social and cultural rights such as the rights to health, housing or education. The denial of migrants’ rights is often closely linked to discriminatory laws and to deep-seated attitudes of prejudice or xenophobia.”

Peace Brigades International-Canada shares the concern about the vulnerability of migrants to violence and human rights violations and supports the call to promote, protect and fulfill the human rights of all migrants.

Photo credit wotancito.

Our plans for 2020

By
Brent Patterson
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A key outcome of our speaking tour with Colombian human rights defenders in 2019 was their proposal to send a high-level Canadian delegation in 2020 to visit areas of Canadian corporate extractivist (notably fracking) activity in Colombia.

We are also planning two speaking tours in this country. This will include a tour early in the year with a migrant rights group that is accompanied by PBI-Mexico, and later in the year with an at-risk Indigenous land defender who is accompanied by PBI-Guatemala.

We will be participating in the World Beyond War: Divest, Disarm and Demilitarize conference that will take place from May 26-31 in Ottawa. The gathering will focus on the impacts of war and militarism on human rights, the environmental impact of war, and the need to reallocate what is spent on weapons to fund human and environmental needs.

We are also looking at producing a report and organizing public forums in southern Ontario following a visit to a PBI field project and accompanied communities.

We will also continue to draw links between climate breakdown and human rights. This year will be pivotal in terms of mobilizing to ensure that governments take the appropriate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and respect the role of environmental and land rights defenders on the frontlines of the struggle against climate change. PBI will be at the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Scotland to amplify this message.

And we plan to add a petition function on our website, continue to post daily updates and share our weekly e-newsletter, as well as increase our social media presence and build the subscription list for our Emergency Response Network.

We wish you a peaceful and safe New Year! With your support, Peace Brigades International will continue to endeavour to advance peace, justice and solidarity in 2020!

To make a donation to support this work, please click here.

#PBIaccompanies

PBI-Mexico says shutoff at the Saltillo Migrant Shelter a violation of the right to water

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has tweeted, “Our concern about water suspension at @CDMSaltillo on December 28 and the defamation series against its director @BETTOXICO through press releases from different media.”

On Facebook, PBI-Mexico adds, “As an international organization that accompanies Casa Del Migrante de Saltillo since 2014, we reject the slander against Alberto Xiconténcatl Carrasco as a human rights defender, we support the work of the organization as well as its different members and we reiterate all our trust.”

PBI-Mexico also notes, “The suspension in the supply of water to the hostel on December 28, 2019, violates the human rights to water and sanitation for the migrant population that is currently in the house in conditions of extreme vulnerability.”

Xicotencátl first raised the alert by stating, “This morning [Saturday December 28], the company Aguas de Saltillo arrived with a water cut order and from this morning, around 9, we already have a shelter without water. In 2019 we attended to more than 9 thousand people, imagine the public health problem that we have in front of us.”

Xicotencátl says that it costs the Shelter 13,000 pesos (about CAD $895) a month for water. He adds, “We have no way to pay because we owe almost half a million pesos (about CAD $34,000) in the last three years and months.”

El Universal reports, “[Xicotencátl] considered that they may file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of the State of Coahuila (CDHEC) because AGSAL violates a human and constitutional right of people to access water.”

In 2010, Radio Mundo Real reported, “In 2001, the government of Saltillo authorized to sell 49 per cent of the water system of the municipality to [the Spanish] transnational company Aguas de Barcelona [AGBAR].”

That article adds, “Aguas de Saltillo is accused of violating the Mexican Constitution, several federal and state laws and regulations related to water, health, information access and consumer rights.”

In 2012, Claudia Campero-Arena noted, “Aguas de Saltillo (which is a public-private partnership with AGBAR) has increased its commercial efficiency through water cutoffs to those homes that have been unable to pay their bills.”

The Saltillo Migrant Shelter offers daily humanitarian assistance – including clothes, medicines, food, rest, and medical and psychological care – to thousands of migrants crossing Mexico to reach the United States. As noted in PBI-Mexico expresses concern about continued harassment of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter, these services are offered in the context of the further militarization of the US-Mexico border.

PBI-Canada will be hosting a representative of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter on speaking tour in Ontario and Quebec this coming March. More on that soon.

NAFTA 2.0, human rights defenders, and the struggle against climate breakdown

By
Brent Patterson
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Numerous environmental organizations have criticized the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, also known as NAFTA 2.0) because they argue it serves to accelerate the existential crisis of our time, namely climate change.

As noted in this letter, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oil Change International, the Sierra Club, and Food and Water Action reject the deal.

The Sierra Club has highlighted that the investor-state dispute settlement provision in NAFTA 2.0 “would allow corporate polluters to sue Mexico in private tribunals if new environmental policies undercut their government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities.”

Furthermore, critics have pointed out that the words “climate change” are not even mentioned in the text of NAFTA 2.0.

Ben Beachy, a trade expert with the Sierra Club, says, “By failing to even mention climate change, it’ll help more corporations move to Mexico, and this is not a hypothetical concern. We cannot simultaneously claim to fight climate change on one hand and enact climate-denying trade deals on the other.”

Climate change and human rights defenders

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has stated, “We call on leaders and governments to recognise that climate change and environmental degradation severely undermine the human rights of their people.”

Those who challenge those impacts face violence. Over the five-year period between 2014 to 2018, 39 land and environmental rights defenders were killed in Mexico.

The UN Human Rights Council has passed a resolution that “stresses that human rights defenders … must be ensured a safe and enabling environment … in recognition of their important role in supporting States to fulfil their obligations under the Paris Agreement [reached at COP21 in December 2015].”

The Women and Gender Constituency has stated, “We want to highlight that women environmental rights defenders continue to be on the front lines to save the planet, especially indigenous, black and those from the global south, and yet are harassed, threatened and persecuted by those in authority in their own countries and elsewhere.”

And Katharina Rall from Human Rights Watch has noted, “The frequent attacks and threats against environmental rights defenders throughout the world are an example of why governments need to include protecting rights in their climate policies.”

Arguably, language on protection measures for human rights defenders should also be written into trade agreements, including NAFTA 2.0.

Foreign investment and environmental defenders

Martha Pskowski, an independent journalist and M.A. candidate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, has written, “Foreign investments have repeatedly been linked to deadly attacks on environmentalists [in Latin America].”

She adds that the killings of environmental defenders has a “chilling effect” on activism and comments that the murders of Rarámuri land advocates in the Sierra Tarahumara region in Chihuahua, Mexico “discouraged some Rarámuri people from speaking out when the energy company TransCanada began building a natural gas pipeline through the area.”

Pskowski highlights, “Investors and companies in the U.S. and Canada have done little to ensure that their money isn’t driving criminalization and attacks on local advocates. Until the companies take clear steps to prevent the violence, they are complicit in — and benefit from — the weak rule of law in their partner countries.”

Indigenous rights

Article 32.5 in the “Exceptions and General Provisions” chapter of the USMCA states, “Provided that such measures are not used as a means of arbitrary or unjustified discrimination against persons of the other Parties or as a disguised restriction on trade in goods, services, and investment, this Agreement does not preclude a Party from adopting or maintaining a measure it deems necessary to fulfill its legal obligations to indigenous peoples.”

In an article posted on the Yellowhead Institute website, Tina Ngata has commented, “In general, exception clauses are intended to allay concerns around what these agreements might mean for Indigenous Peoples.”

She adds, “Exception clauses amount to little more than tokenism, and short-change our full rights to determine trade relationships on our land and oceanic territories.”

Furthermore, Global Witness has noted that Indigenous peoples make up a disproportionately large number of the land and environmental rights defenders who are killed.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz has explained, “Disregard of indigenous rights of traditional lands ownership breeds tensions, subsequent violence and criminalization, as indigenous peoples become trespassers or illegal occupants of their own lands.”

A human rights approach to trade deals

In his critique of NAFTA 2.0, Manuel Pérez-Rocha of the Institute for Policy Studies has stated, “Human rights in the broadest sense — including economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights — must have primacy over corporate and investor rights, and there needs to be legally binding obligations on transnational corporations.”

He argues that investor-state dispute settlement provisions that undermine environmental rights should be eliminated from trade deals, that indigenous title to land and resources and the right to free, prior and informed consent should be recognized, and that enforceable obligations to reduce and mitigate the effects of climate change should be enshrined.

Next steps for NAFTA 2.0

The Mexican Senate ratified the USMCA in June 2019. In the United States, it faces a ratification vote in the Senate at some point this year.

The Canadian Parliament has yet to ratify the deal.

The full text of the agreement can be read here.

Criminalization of Mi’kmaq and Inuk land defenders asserting Indigenous sovereignty

By
Brent Patterson
-

On January 7 of this year, heavily armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers raided a checkpoint that had been established on Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia in opposition to the construction of a fracked gas pipeline.

Now, almost a year later, The Guardian reports, “Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia… The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to ‘use as much violence toward the gate as you want’…”

Following this news, Elizabeth Goodridge writes in The Nova Scotia Advocate, “Mere years ago we witnessed RCMP violence against Mi’kmaq land defenders in Kent County on behalf of a Texas fracking company. Before that federal fisheries officers waged war on the Mi’kmaq fishermen of Burnt Church, and in 1981 Quebec Provincial Police raided the Mi’kmaq community of Restigouche to stop it from exercising its treaty rights to fish.”

She adds, “Earlier this year RCMP blocked journalists as they arrested Alton Gas water protectors. Meanwhile, in Labrador Inuk elders and other land protectors who were arrested, continue to raise awareness of the risk of methylmercury poisoning of the water and food chain around Muskrat Falls and deadly flooding if the dam built on quick clay gives way.”

Overall, Goodridge comments, “Violence and incarceration of Indigenous land and water protectors in defense of corporate interest is the de facto response to land defenders asserting indigenous sovereignty.”

Peace Brigades International

The Peace Brigades International-North America Project visited the frontlines of numerous Indigenous struggles including Esgenoopetitj in 1999, where the Mi’kmaq challenged federal rules on their right to fish in Burnt Church, New Brunswick.

The PBI-North America Project also visited Nitassinan in December 1992 to report on the destructive impact of Hydro Quebec’s dams on the Innu people. You can read more about that at PBI and the Innu’s historic opposition to the SM-3 hydroelectric dam in Nitassinan.

Presently, Peace Brigades International field projects accompany Indigenous land defence struggles against mining, hydroelectric dams, logging, wind power and various other extractive megaprojects in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia.

United Nations and Indigenous rights

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz has stated, “Disregard of indigenous rights of traditional lands ownership breeds tensions, subsequent violence and criminalization, as indigenous peoples become trespassers or illegal occupants of their own lands.”

Tauli-Corpuz highlights, “Protecting indigenous land rights defenders is not only a human rights imperative – but also urgent to mitigating the climate crisis.”

UN Special Rapporteurs Leo Heller and Michel Forst have also expressed concern about the risks faced by land and environmental rights defenders opposed to mega-projects on their territory.

To read Elizabeth Goodridge’s article, please go to Lethal force revelations nothing new for Indigenous activists in Mi’kma’ki and Labrador.

Photo of Amanda Polchies of the Elsipogtog First Nation by Ossie Michelin.

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