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Burma’s President, Thein Sein, today sent a letter to Burma's parliament suspending construction of the Chinese-backed US$ 3.6 billion Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy River. This surprising announcement, if enforced, marks a major achievement for Burma’s civil society and local communities in Kachin State that have consistently opposed the construction of the Myitsone Dam because of its expected negative environmental and social impacts.

In May 2007, China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) signed an agreement with Burma’s government for the construction of seven dams on the Irrawaddy, N’Mai Hka, and Mali Hka Rivers in Kachin State, at a total cost of approximately US$ 20 billion.  At 152 meters high, the 6,000 MW Myitsone dam is the largest of these seven planned dams and, according to Burma Rivers Network, the construction of the Myitsone Dam will “impact millions of people downstream who depend on the Irrawaddy for agriculture, fishing, and transportation.  The dam will also destroy…one of the most significant cultural heritage sites for the Kachin people and an important landmark for all of Burma.”

Earlier this year, a controversial environmental impact assessment (EIA) conducted by CPI concluded “there is no need for such a big dam to be constructed at the confluence of the Irrawaddy River.” Civil society and local community opposition to the Myitsone Dam has crystallized over recent months, and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been vocal in her criticism of the dam project and the importance of protecting the Irrawaddy River. 

News broke this week of a federal anti-bribery investigation against News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media giant, for paying U.K. police officials for confidential personal information on tabloid targets. This development, together with a report released at a briefing at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, gives me hope that the tide has begun to turn on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its concerted attack on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the landmark U.S. law that makes it illegal for companies to bribe foreign officials.

In the last few years, businesses have been forced to pay enormous fines to the Department of Justice for engaging in widespread, intensive foreign bribery. Siemens AG, the German electronics giant, paid a whopping $800 million for corruption that spread across dozens of countries worldwide. In July, two Miami businessmen were convicted of bribing Haitian officials for a telecommunications contract, undermining the devastated country's recovery from earthquake and civil war. They face the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Meanwhile, U.S. diplomatic efforts have fostered the enactment of anti-bribery laws worldwide and the development of new international norms addressing corruption through treaty law and intergovernmental cooperation. While the FCPA may have been the first law of its kind, the UN Convention Against Corruption, to which 140 nations (including the U.S.) now belong, requires laws criminalizing foreign bribery.

It's a good day for justice against oil company abuses.

We have written several times about Chevron's effort to avoid paying a multi-billion dollar judgment from an Ecuadorian court for polluting the Amazon.  Today, a U.S. federal appeals court handed a significant victory to the Ecuadorians, and lifted an order from a lower court that prohibited any efforts to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment.

Back in March, Chevron convinced a New York federal judge to issue an injunction to stop the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their lawyers from collecting the judgment, arguing, despite the fact that it was Chevron itself that originally wanted to litigate the case in Ecuador (over the plaintiffs' objection), that they had not gotten a fair trial in Ecuador and that the plaintiffs were conspiring against them.

The Ecuadorians appealed that injunction to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and we filed an amicus brief to support their efforts.  (We said that since Chevron had previously argued that the case should be dismissed to Ecuador, and had defended the adequacy of the Ecuadorian judicial system, it should not now be able to attack that judicial system in order to avoid enforcement of a judgment.)

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit heard the appeal last Friday, and today they issued a brief order lifting the injunction and ordering the district court to stop proceedings on Chevron's lawsuit.  We don't know exactly why yet, but clearly the judges thought that the injunction was so wrong that immediate action was warranted.  (A full opinion will be issued later.)

I was thrilled to hear earlier this week that the European Parliament has proposed strong rules that would require extractive companies to publish what they pay to governments around the world – a measure that will increase revenue transparency and help affected community members to hold their governments responsible for the management of national resource wealth.

In Burma, a handful of companies remove billions of dollars in oil, gas, and minerals from the earth each year, providing a sustaining lifeline to a brutal military regime. In Angola, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea, multinationals provide an oil revenue windfall to notoriously corrupt governments, allowing officials to live lavish lifestyles that bear little resemblance to their modest public servant salaries and contrast tragically with the living standards of most of their citizens. Every day, extractive companies pour millions of dollars into the coffers of dictators and generals, exposing themselves and their investors to serious political risks while devastating the lives of the members of the communities where the extraction takes place. Until now, apart from a scattering of voluntary and domestic disclosure measures, there’s been no way even to inquire into how much this revenue stream costs the affected populations or benefits the public purse.

This all began to change last year, when the U.S. enacted a law requiring oil, gas, and mining companies to publish a wide range of the payments they make to governments for all their extractive projects. That measure is currently caught up in a complicated rulemaking process, in which the oil companies are trying their best to roll back the law and weaken it by introducing loopholes and pushing the government to allow them to report at a high level of generality.

On Tuesday, the Shwe Gas Movement released a new report linking the Shwe natural gas and Burma-China crude oil projects to serious abuses across a huge area of Burma: Sold Out, Launch of China pipeline project unleashes abuse across Burma.  The report highlights human rights and environmental abuses related to the natural gas and crude oil projects, as well as the increased tensions and fighting that have recently erupted around project construction areas in Shan State and close to the border of Kachin State.

Map of the pipeline projects, courtesy of SGM

The projects involve widespread land confiscation in processes totally lacking in the free, prior and informed consent of the local people.  When I travelled to Arakan State to interview local people affected by land confiscation, they expressed a lot of anger towards the companies and the Burmese government officials conducting the land confiscation.  They are angry about not being provided with information about the land confiscation process, no opportunity to refuse to sell their land, and insufficient compensation that cannot compare to or replace a lifestyle of supporting themselves by farming the land.  They do not know how they will survive after the compensation money runs out – they have no business experience, and few opportunities to find work close to their native land.  

One villager on Maday Island (in Arakan State) refused to sell his land, and as a result was beaten and seriously injured, and in the end still had to sell his land.  To improve the land confiscation process the companies and the Burmese government should: ask for the free, prior and informed consent of the local people; pay compensation money directly to the local people to decrease corruption; create skills training and job opportunities (in the same area as the confiscated native land) for the local people who can longer support themselves from farming; and provide advice about how to manage the compensation money.

On Tuesday August 23rd, Peru's congress unanimously approved a new law that would grant indigenous communities the right to prior consultation on projects that will affect them and their lands. The approval of the Law on Prior Consultation with Indigenous Communities (Ley de Derecho a la Consulta Previa a los Pueblos Indígenas) marks a historic step in Peru's recognition of indigenous rights and the integration of indigenous communities into the decision-making process for large-scale natural resource development projects.

In recent years, Peru's government has faced serious conflict with indigenous communities, particularly from the country's vast Amazonian region, over extractive projects in the oil, gas, mining, and logging sectors. Two years ago, in June 2009, more than 30 people were killed in the northern Amazon province of Bagua when Peruvian security forces violently clashed with indigenous communities protesting new legislative decrees that aimed to open up their lands to increased oil, gas, mining and hydropower development, without requiring prior consultations with indigenous communities. Ultimately these legislative decrees were overturned, but with nearly 75 percent of the Peruvian Amazon already carved into oil and natural gas blocks, the conflict and debate over the use of the country's natural resources has continued.

Commenting on the Law on Prior Consultation with Indigenous Communities, Alberto Pizango Chota, President of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana) (AIDESEP), stated that Peru's "indigenous peoples only demand respect for the right to a dignified life and this approval signifies a demonstrated willingness of the government to follow through with the great changes the country needs…and continue promoting the harmonious development of the country" (translation mine).

This summer, ESCR-Net and NYU Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice launched the Business and Human Rights Documentation Project, or B-HRD ("Be Heard").  ERI has long been a member of ESCR-Net, and I'm serving on the advisory board for B-HRD, so this is a pretty exciting development.

The new site includes a database of human rights reports related to business and human rights (including ERI's reports), as well as more detailed information on a few specific campaigns, including a campaign  accountability for private security contractors, which is also a focal point of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.

B-HRD also includes a valuable collection of resources for using a variety of tools to combat business-related human rights abuses, including accountability mechanisms ranging from U.S. courts to the OECD Guidelines to the U.N. system.  In recognition of the global impact of business, the site features content in English, Spanish, and French.

Unlike the massive Business & Human Rights Resource Centre site, which is an all-purpose clearinghouse for information relating to business and human rights, the B-HRD site is focused on human rights advocacy.  A growing number of advocates and human rights organizations are working on corporate or business-related human rights issues, and this site begins to bring this community and its resources together.  As corporate accountability is a major part of ERI's work, we look forward to following, supporting, and contributing to this site in the future.

Last week, Accountability Counsel – a long-time ERI partner organization – announced the failure of talks between two Peruvian indigenous communities and Maple Gas, an oil company that used to be headquartered in the U.S., over the severe health impacts of repeated oil spills in the creeks the communities use for drinking and bathing water.  The communities had hoped that this mediation – sponsored by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is invested in the extraction project – would help convince Maple to clean up its act and pay compensation.  Unfortunately, the process has run aground over – of all things – the communities’ request that Maple pay for an assessment simply to study the health impacts of its operations.

This development strikes me as being both frustrating and hopeful, at the same time.  On the positive side, the fact that the communities were willing to break off talks suggest a determination not to be bought off, and a display of willpower that will sustain them in the battles that are doubtless to come.  Many other communities, if put in a similar situation, might be overawed by the presence of international financial institution representatives and company officials, and conclude that whatever came out of the negotiation process would simply be the best that they could get.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, though; the last time the communities of Canaán de Cachiyacu and Nuevo Sucre felt that the company wasn’t living up to its promises, they dressed in full traditional war garb and occupied Maple’s production facilities, shutting them down for days.  And with the capable accompaniment of Accountability Counsel, the communities clearly knew when to walk away.

Deep in northeastern Thailand, bordering both Cambodia and Laos, Ubon Ratchathani is about as far from the smoggy chaos of Bangkok and sun-baked throngs of tourists as one could get. For Thai activists, however, this remote province was center stage for several of Thailands most dramatic grassroots campaigns for environmental justice. In August, students from the EarthRights School Mekong traveled to Ubon to meet the community members who dedicated their lives to these struggles.

The Pak Mun dam case has been in the Thai headlines since its completion in 1994. The reservoir it created displaced thousands of people and the fish catch decreased by as much as 80%, with 50 of the 265 species disappearing completely. For 25,000 people living along the Mun River whose income depended almost entirely on fishing, the dam was a disaster. To add insult to injury, it failed to produce anywhere near its projected electricity output.

ERSM students at the Pak Mun dam

Our students met with community activists who fought the dam with sustained protests, petitioning the government to pay compensation and decommission the dam. Their efforts were stalled with each change of government, but in 2001 it was agreed that the gates would be opened for at least part of each year. Fish stocks are slowly returning but the fight to destroy the dam entirely continues.

Two hours north of Pak Mun is the small village of Huay Ra Ha, home of Grandma Hai Khanjantha. For three decades she protested the reservoir that flooded her land, impoverishing her family and several others in the village. Her story became international news when she, along with her family and neighbors, broke a hole in the dam with farm tools and began to drain the reservoir while the police looked on. Instead of arresting her, the government agreed to demolish the dam, return her land and, ultimately, compensate her for years of damages.

ERSM students and staff met Grandma Hai in her home and listened to her tell her story, before participating in a traditional Thai ceremony and enjoying a home-cooked local feast.

While Daewoo International, the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and their sub-contractors are busy constructing the Burma-China oil and gas pipelines facilities across Arakan State, Magway Division and Mandalay Division to Shan State, fighting between the Burma army and several ethnic nationalities including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), SSPP (formally SSA-S and SSA-N) continue throughout Kachin State and Northern Shan State.

Many civilians have fled the area since the Burma Army began its offensive back in March 2011. Some have fled to neighboring towns, others to the Burma-China border, and some others to Burma-Thailand border. Many villagers remain in hiding in the jungle in the area.

On August 11, 2011, a press release issued by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) claimed that villagers fleeing Burma Army atrocities have soared to over 30,000 during recent intensified attacks against the Shan State Army North (SSA-N), causing a dire humanitarian crisis in northern Shan State. The report indicates that over 4,000 Burmese troops from 42 battalions were deployed during July to seize the SSA-N headquarters of Wan Hai in Ke See Township, backed up by jet fighter planes. Advancing through surrounding villages, troops have been scaling up atrocities against civilians, including killings, rapes and mutilations. One dead villager was found with his leg and hand cut off.

Northern Shan State, where the proposed oil and gas pipelines will pass through, is partly under control of both the KIA 4th Brigade and SSA-N. Both the KIA and SSA-N had a ceasefire with Burmese regime, but this agreement disappeared after the Burmese regime attempted to force ceasefire groups to join so-called Border Guard Forces (BGF). After the KIA and SSA-N brigades 3 and 5 refused to become BGFs, tension began to increase, leading to this recent open conflict.