Human Rights

Potássio do Brasil is planning to mine for potash, a key fertilizer ingredient, on the land of Mura Indigenous people in Amazonas state, Brazil. Courts have imposed a US$20,000 fine on the company for attempting to claim land for the mine in Soares village despite the fact that the local Mura have yet to give permission for mining to go ahead.  Read More

Mobil Corporation (now ExxonMobil) began drilling in the Arun gas field in northern Sumatra in the 1970s. Indonesian soldiers, who were paid to provide security for the gas field, attacked local villages during a civil war against the Free Aceh Movement in the 1990s. Read More

Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin) operates a 58,000-hectare palm oil plantation around the town of Mbonjo in west Cameroon that it acquired from the government of Cameroon in the year 2000. After two years of negotiations, villagers were given back three hectares of sacred land that contain ancestral graves as well as where they grow traditional medicinal plants. Read More

“The company wants to weaken us, undermine our strength and impoverish our fight, it wants to kill us slowly, leave us starving like it does with the Xingu River and the fish that inhabit the waters of the rivers.”    - November 2022 letter from the council of the traditional peoples of the middle and lower Xingu River. Read More

On a secure military base in Tecamachalco, a Mexico City suburb, lies the country’s only gun shop. Prospective customers must fill out multiple forms before being allowed to enter and view weapons locked in glass cases. Advertising the store is illegal – so most Mexicans remain ignorant of its existence. Read More

Twitter, the social media company, quietly assisted Pentagon officials involved in putting a positive spin on the U.S. wars in the Middle East, according to new research into the Twitter Files, a tranche of internal company data provided to selected members of the media by CEO Elon Musk. Read More

Feonirici LLC, a Dubai based investment company, hired Stelix Civils, a construction company in Zimbabwe, to build a 5.4 kilometre long motor racing circuit in Hwange, close to the border of Botswana and Zambia, that they hoped would become the first ever Formula One track in Africa. The company evicted over 100 villagers from the proposed site who then sued to stop the project. The Bulawayo High Court ruled in favor of the villagers in September 2022. Read More

Photographs and interviews with dozens of Indonesian fishermen by the Environmental Justice Foundation, a UK based investigative NGO, and Mongabay have revealed that Dalian Ocean Fishing is using banned equipment to harvest shark fins, in violation of international law. Read More

On April 14, 2022, the UK government signed a £20 million deal with the Rwandan government to accept asylum seekers deported from the UK. Such deportations are typically conducted under contract with charter airlines. Under pressure from human rights groups, many airlines refused to take the contract. Read More

In 2008, Radiant Lagoon Sdn Bhd was granted two palm oil concessions covering an area of 4,400 hectares (10,900 acres) adjacent to Gunung Mulu National Park, the only UNESCO World Heritage site in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. In 2018, the company began logging the area without obtaining required permits. Read More