All the way from Sweden, packed in a van, nine activists travelled to Brussels to raise awareness on the negative impact of European Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between EU and ACP countries for local communities in Africa. According to NGO Afrikagrupperna, based in Stockholm, this was a good conclusion of the campaign they conducted in Sweden these last months.
International investment treaties grant transnational investors too many privileges and thus compromise the rights of citizens and states, critics say. The video No more corporate privileges gives an impression of the concerns of experts and activists. Not only the EU, but developing countries as well, should reconsider their positions. For example by leaving the main arbitration panel for investment disputes ICSID, like Venezuela announced recently.
The Netherlands does not reach target for responsible soy
The Dutch Soy Coalition (consisting of eight development and environmental organisations*) finds that in 2013 only a quarter of the 2.4 million tons of soy used in the Netherlands is responsibly produced. The social or environmental impacts of the production of the other three quarters of Dutch soy imports are not at all clear or accounted for. The target set by the Netherlands is to purchase 100 percent responsible soy by 2015. This will be almost impossible to achieve at this point.
After the second shocking murder of an indigenous rights activist in Honduras in less than two weeks the Dutch development bank, FMO, and the Finish development bank, FinnFund, announced a suspension of all their operations in Honduras. They declare that they will no longer engage in new projects or disbursements in the country, including in new disbursements in the Agua Zarca Project.
Sharif Jamil is the riverkeeper. In 2009 he started protecting the severely polluted Buriganga River, becoming Bangladesh' first riverkeeper. "We have to make people responsible for their own environment."