Country: Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso and Sweden singled out by CESCR Committee

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The Committee expressed its concern about the lack of control by the Swedish State regarding the investments made abroad by enterprises domiciled under its jurisdiction, especially the Swedish National Pension Funds. Whilst additionally expressing concern over the level of effectiveness of existing monitoring and remedial mechanisms, the Committee recommends Sweden to fully exercise its regulatory powers in overseeing investment decisions made by the Swedish National Pension Funds and other investors abroad, in order to ensure that these respect and protect human rights. 

The State should ensure that these investors undertake systematic and independent human rights impact assessments prior to investments, establish effective monitoring mechanisms and guarantee accessible complaint mechanisms for violations of ESCR linked to investment projects. 

As for Burkina Faso, the Committee points to the absence of recognition of the right to food in the constitution and national legislation and recommends that the State of Burkina Faso guarantees this right and its justiciability. Along these lines, the Committee also requests the State of Burkina Faso to train public servants, including judges, lawyers and police, about ESCR and put in place accessible and affordable judicial recourse mechanisms for these rights. 

In addition to underlining issues related to women and girl’s rights as well as education,  the Committee has voiced concerns over the cases of Essakane (displacement due to mining activities) and Kounkoufouanou (forced eviction) and urges the State of Burkina Faso to guarantee all violated rights. In the view of the Committee, the State should adopt measures and ensure the no-reoccurrence of forced eviction and recourse mechanisms for the victims.  In parallel, the State needs to protect small producers and regulate agro-investors in a way that does not affect the access to resources by local communities. 

FIAN International and its sections in Sweden and Burkina Faso welcome the concluding observations and will monitor the implementation of the recommendations.

You can read the concluding observations on Sweden here.
You can read the concluding observations on Burkina Faso here.
You can read the parallel report on Sweden´s Extraterritorial State Obligations on ESCR     here.
You can read the parallel report on Burkina Faso’s on the right to food and nutrition here.
For more information, please contact Suarez-Franco[at]fian.org  

Burkina Faso and Sweden under review at UN CESCR Committee

Posted on by fredsaxo
FIAN International and its sections drew attention to the human rights violations and abuses in the two countries at the 58th session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). While Sweden was singled out for its human rights’ breaches in the field of extraterritorial obligations, Burkina Faso’s non-stipulation of the right to food and nutrition in national law and the harm caused to communities affected by land acquisition were severely criticized.

Civil society stressed that the Swedish National Pension Funds had some investments in projects related to mining, agricultural land and the fossil fuel industry involved in human rights abuses of local communities. This has been further illustrated with three specific cases in the recent parallel report by FIAN Sweden, FIAN International, Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation (SweFOR) and Solidarity Sweden-Latin America (SAL), submitted for the Committee´s analysis. 

“The Swedish government should be held accountable for breaches of the right to food and nutrition and related rights taking place in the mining project in Guatemala. It should also make available the necessary information in order for independent parties to carry out a human rights-based analysis in the case of agricultural land investments in Brazil. Finally, the Swedish State should initiate divestment from the fossil fuel industry and mandate the pension funds to actively make investments that promote sustainable development and human rights,” reads the report.

And more than 7000 km south of the Scandinavian country, Burkina’s national law does not specify the right to food and nutrition itself. Such a legal gap is accentuated by the non-ratification of the optional protocol on Economic Social and Cultural rights (OP-ICESCR) and land policies that accelerate the phenomenon of land-grabbing. This leaves the population’s right to food and nutrition unprotected and widely unfulfilled, especially when it comes to peasants. 

As pointed out in a report to the Committee by FIAN Burkina Faso and FIAN International, the cases of Essakane and Kounkoufouanou communities, which have  been respectively displaced and forcibly evicted from their lands and have not yet obtained full compensation for their violated rights, are clear examples of the State’s breaches of human rights.

In addition to expressly recognizing the right to food and nutrition within its future Constitution and other laws and regulations, Burkina Faso should ratify the OP-ECESCR. Particularly on the identified cases, the government should adopt urgent measures to address human rights violations and abuses due to the mining activities in Essakane and ensure full compensation for all those affected. By the same token, all rights of the community Kounkoufouanou must be restored and those responsible for human rights abuses be held accountable.

In several weeks, the Committee will release its conclusions. It is expected that the different legal and policy issues that lead these countries to neglect the economic, social and cultural Rights, are addressed. FIAN and its partners will follow up closely the implementations of Committee’s concluding observations. 

You can read the parallel report on Sweden´s Extraterritorial State Obligations on ESCR here.
You can read the parallel report on Burkina Faso’s on the right to food and nutrition here.
For more information, please contact Suarez-Franco[at]fian.org  

My land – my life! West African Caravan reaches Dakar

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In the name of the Caravan, Samba Gueye, President of the Senegalese organization CNCR, handed over the Convergence book to the Secretary General of Senegal’s Ministry of Integration. “Every day communities are denied access to their lands and water as these resources are privatized. To protect the rights of family farmers, to guarantee their access to land, water and peasant seeds, is a requirement for peace”, Ibrahima Coulibaly, President of the National coordination of peasants organizations (CNOP) in Mali, states.

As echoed in the Convergence book, the Caravan calls on West African governments to protect natural resources from the exploitation of transnational corporations and other actors.  Under the heading of  “Ma terre – c’est ma vie!” (“my land- that’s my life!”), participants and supporters of the Caravan urge governments to back small-scale farmers, fishers, women and young people in their struggle towards the access to and control over natural resources.

Departing from Burkina Faso on 3 March, the Caravan has counted with more than 200 participants from across 15 countries in the region, as well as reached out to thousands of people during local events and through regional and international media. “We are the Caravan of peace, of people’s integration in ECOWAS, of participative, inclusive and sustainable development”, Massa Koné, spokesperson from the Malian convergence against land grabbing (CMAT), says.

Organized by the Global Convergence of Struggles for Land and Water, this event follows the declaration “Land and Water Rights, a common struggle” an outcome of the subregional platform in West Africa, created in 2015 in Nyeleni, Mali, and key discussions at the  World Social Forum in Tunis in 2015 and the African Social Forum in Dakar in 2014.

FIAN International, together with other civil society organizations, has proactively supported the Caravan, as policies on land, water and seeds must primarily benefit the people and small-scale farmers.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

-The Convergence Book is a tool developed by the Caravan, which lists both demands to authorities and alternative solutions regarding policies on land, water and seeds  in West Africa. (available in French).

– The Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles – West Africa is composed of more than 300 organizations and networks representing affected people of land and water grabbing in rural, peri-urban and urban areas; evictees of popular districts; youth; women and; NGOs from the 15 countries of the ECOWAS and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA ) spaces.

-You can find the latest updates on the Caravan social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, as well as on Youtube

For more information about the Caravan, please contact Seufert@fian.org 

Mali to host next Global Dialogue on the Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition

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Weeks after the last session in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the next Global Dialogue lands in Bamako, engaging with national governments’ representatives and grassroots organizations from across West Africa. Organized by the National Coordination of Peasants’ Organizations (CNOP), together with the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) and FIAN International, the event will serve as a platform to share and build knowledge in fighting hunger and human rights. 

For two consecutive days starting on 28th June, policy endeavors and developments around the right to adequate food and nutrition in Brazil, India, Mali and other West African countries will be showcased and discussed. After being kicked off by the Malian Ministry of Rural Development, the first day will include the presentation of the strategies for tackling food and nutrition insecurity in Mali, as well as of the laws and programs that brought about success in Brazil and India.  

Brazil and India represent two distinct experiences of significant state efforts to advance the progressive realization of the human right to food and nutrition, and their examples may therefore be insightful for others. Brazil and India will not be presented as models for emulation, but rather as a source of indicating viable choices when countries work on policies and program towards ensuring food security.

Participants will be playing a major role on the second day, which will be devoted to the exchange of views around strategic issues such as “major challenges concerning food and nutrition security in your country” and “extent to which the Brazil and Indian experiences provide guidance to tackle hunger and malnutrition.”

The participation of the Malian government, as well as of the Malian Convergence against Land Grabbing (CMAT), will provide a unique opportunity to debate and build knowledge on the country’s policy endeavors to ensure food security as well as make this next Global Dialogue distinctive. 

For media enquiries, please contact delrey[at]fian.org

Women‘s Perspectives on the Impact of Mining on the Right to Food

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A new report by FIAN International Women‘s Perspectives on the Impact of Mining on the Right to Food highlights the precarious situation of women and children of communities affected by mining and displacement in Essakane, Burkina Faso, in relation to their human right to adequate food and nutrition.

In 2009, as a result of the expanding mining activities of the Canadian mining company IAMGOLD, 13 communities located in Essakane in the North of Burkina Faso were displaced and resettled in other areas outside the perimeters of the mining grounds. Since then, FIAN International and FIAN Burkina Faso have accompanied the displaced communities in their efforts to demand their human right to adequate food and nutrition. With the aim of continuing to support the Essakane communities’ efforts to demand their human rights and hold the government of Burkina Faso accountable for its human rights obligations, FIAN sought to document the perspectives of women regarding the impact of mining and displacement on their communities’ right to adequate food and nutrition, in particular on potential human rights threats and violations related to the malnutrition of children. Throughout 2014, focus group discussions and individual surveys were carried out with women in Essakane to explore (1) women’s sexual and reproductive rights; (2) women’s right to natural and productive resources; (3) children’s right to education; (4) children’s right to health; (5) women’s right to be free from gender-based violence; and (6) women’s right to recourse and accountability mechanisms.

 

The findings of this work demonstrate the precarious situation of women’s rights in Essakane, which can have a significant impact on the right to adequate food and nutrition of children in these communities. The impact of these human rights threats and violations is further exacerbated by the abandonment of the men of the household who leave in search of work in other mining sites and often do not come back as well as by the patriarchal society in which these women find themselves. Based on this work, a number of recommendations to both the State of Burkina Faso and broader civil society are made at the end of the report. Furthermore, the report’s findings build upon over five years of work with the affected communities in Essakane during which FIAN gathered information about human rights violations from a broad range of sources, including through field investigations, meetings and correspondence with community leaders, government officials, and company representatives.

The findings are now available in a report published by FIAN International and FIAN Burkina Faso, with the financial support of terre des hommes Germany.