Country: Paraguay

German Development Bank obliged to provide information on agricultural investment in Paraguay

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The Administrative Court of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, upheld an action for information brought by the human rights organisation FIAN Germany against German Development Bank KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau) . For years, KfW had refused to provide access to the environmental and social plans of PAYCO, an agricultural investor active in Paraguay.

The KfW subsidiary DEG (Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft ) holds a 15.8 percent stake in PAYCO. The court ruled that KfW, as a public authority, is obliged to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act (IFG) and must obtain the information in the public interest from DEG.

FIAN Germany Executive Director Philipp Mimkes affirms: “The ruling is a great success. PAYCO is responsible for land conflicts with indigenous peoples, environmental damage and deforestation. Now the public and politicians can get a better picture of this investment in the near future. From our point of view, it is alarming that German development funds finance industrial agriculture and that information has to be fought for through costly legal proceedings.”

PAYCO Paraguay Agricultural Corporation is one of the largest landowners in Paraguay with 146,000 hectares. The company grows GM soy, owns tree plantations and raises livestock. PAYCO also sells genetically modified seeds to third parties.

The lawsuit was supported by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Sönke Hilbrans, Senior Legal Advisor in the ECCHR's Business and Human Rights Programme Area, emphasises: “It is not only landmark that the Administrative Court obliges KfW to provide information on the activities of its subsidiary DEG under the Freedom of Information Act. According to the court, DEG fulfils public tasks. The state bank's strategy of pretending that its subsidiary had nothing to do with its development mandate did not work. This also means that DEG, like any other public body, has human rights and environmental responsibilities. This will have consequences beyond the right to access information.”

In January 2013, DEG had invested 25 million euros in the Paraguay Agricultural Corporation PAYCO based in Luxembourg. As a result, DEG received 15.8 % of the shares in PAYCO.

FIAN is aware of two land conflicts on the land areas acquired by PAYCO. Two indigenous communities of the Mbya Guarani people live within the Estancia Golondrina. They lay claim to 2,015 hectares of land on the estancia, which is the community's core land. In 2013, they initiated formal steps to have the land transferred – to date unsuccessfully.

“The enforcement of the indigenous communities' unequivocal human rights claim has thus not been resolved in almost ten years of DEG co-ownership. From our point of view, DEG puts private economic interests above human rights,” Philipp Mimkes criticises.

Even within the largest PAYCO farm, Lomas (36,408 hectares), communities claim land that was granted to them on the basis of the agrarian reform. As early as 2011, the municipality of Segunda Reconstrucción submitted a corresponding application to the competent authority. According to the municipality, about 1,000 hectares of land lie within the farm. Despite the pending proceedings, according to the municipality, it is precisely on this land that part of the eucalyptus plantations have been established since 2013 – since DEG became involved.

Background paper on PAYCO: www.fian.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021_06_FIAN_Hintergrund_PAYCO-DEG.pdf

Contact:
FIAN: Philipp Mimkes; P.Mimkes@Fian.de
ECCHR: presse@ecchr.eu

FIAN asks Paraguayan Supreme Court to Intervene on Behalf of Indigenous Sawhoyamaxa

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To date the Paraguayan state has not implemented the decision and the Sawhoyamaxa continue to be the victims of hunger and malnutrition due to the to the non-restitution of their traditional lands.In 2012 the Paraguayan Supreme Court requested information regarding the implementation of the IAHRC decision from the Paraguayan government. In the attached letter, FIAN International is using the occasion of this request to ask the court to promote the continuation of the on-going negotiations, which would allow for the restitution of the land, and to adopt all necessary measures to ensure the implementation of the IAHRC’s decision.

Paraguay: Stop the wave of forced evictions and criminalization of peasant and indigenous communities

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On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, FIAN International joins FIAN Paraguay and FIAN Germany in calling for an end to violent forced evictions and harassment of peasants and indigenous communities across Paraguay.

According to Paraguayan research group BASE Investigaciones Sociales, at least 3,000 people from peasant and indigenous communities have been violently evicted in nine seperate cases across the country since September this year.

In most cases, the evictions were violent, with excessive numbers of security forces acting outside the law, without court orders. In many cases the belongings of the affected families were destroyed.

The communities facing these evictions mostly have decades-long roots in the areas they occupy, and to which they are legally entitled under Paraguay’s Agrarian Reform. Their claims are challenged by Paraguayan landowners who run large scale agribusinesses on the land, contributing to the country’s acute hunger and malnutrition problem. According to the FAO, 700,000 people in Paraguay were suffering from malnutrition in 2020.

“The underlying problem behind these evictions is the concentration of land in the hands of a few. Paraguay is Latin America’s most unequal country in terms of access to land. 90% of the land is in the hands of less than 5% of the population,” says Wilma Strothenke, FIAN International's Country Officer for Paraguay.

The disputed land was illegally acquired by large landowners and widely referred to as “tierras malhabidas” (ill-gotten lands). It was meant to be transferred to peasants and indigenous people as agrarian reform beneficiaries during the Stroessner dictatorship which ruled the country for three decades until 1989. Instead the land was illegally awarded to private actors close to the regime.

Today there are still eight million hectares of tierras malhabidas.

Increased criminalization against peasants and indigenous people

This latest wave of forced evictions coincides with the recent adoption of the so-called Zavala-Riera Law, which reforms Paraguay’s penal code to include harsher penalties for land occupation. This law is being used as another instrument to criminalize the struggle for land under the guise of protecting private property.

Abel Areco, from FIAN Paraguay, points out: “There is an imbalance in the management of the state, since without guaranteeing the basic rights of access to land, it is passing laws that can end up being misapplied to criminalize those who claim their land rights”.

The community of the María la Esperanza Settlement in Tava'i, Caazapá, is one of the first to be targeted by the criminalizing application of this law. This community returned to occupy land from which they had been expelled after verifying that there was in fact no eviction order against them. However, shortly after, 26 settlers and the community's own lawyer were detained and now face prosecution for trespassing, despite the fact that they have lived there for decades and that authorities recognise them as a de facto community.

The case of the Primero de Marzo community: evictions, criminalization and denial of expropriation

Another example of the increase in criminalization and evictions is the Primero de Marzo peasant community, whose members have been occupying the Pindó farm in the department of Canindeyú (near the Brazilian border) since 2012, as legitimate beneficiaries of the Agrarian Reform.

The Pindó farm is registered as the property of the Bendlin Beyersdoff family of businessmen, who acquired it from the Institute of Rural Assets (IBR) in 1969 in exchange for an airplane, an illegal operation according to the rules of the time, which makes this farm a “tierra malhabida”, as accredited by the Final Report of the Truth and Justice Commission.

Since their settlement on the Pindó Farm, the inhabitants of the Primero de Marzo community have been questioning the legal origin of the farm and requesting that Paraguayan authorities expropriate it for adjudication, in compliance with the agrarian reform. However, the inaction of the National Institute for Rural and Land Development (INDERT) and the refusal of the owners of the farm have prevented the community's right to land from being respected.

There are currently 430 families occupying the farm. They cultivate their gardens, raise animals and have built houses and other facilities including sewage, electricity systems, schools and so on. However, they face continuous threats of forced eviction by public and private authorities. This situation is not new as they were also subjected to numerous forced evictions between 2013 and 2016 when their houses, facilities and crops were razed and several members convicted.  

Open Letter

FIAN International in collaboration with FIAN Paraguay and FIAN Germany has launched an open letter to alert Paraguayan authorities about the constant threats of forced evictions to which the families of the Primero de Marzo Community are subjected.

“If these threats are carried out, not only would they be violating national and international norms that protect the right to land of indigenous and peasant communities,” says Almudena Abascal, Head of Latin America for FIAN Germany, “but also their basic human rights such as the right to food, education and decent housing. “

Contact us:

Almudena Abascal a.abascal@fian.de Tel: +49 (0)221 474491 13,  Wilma Strothenke: strothenke@fian.org Tel: +49 (0)6221-65300-30

More information about the evicted communities:

Public development banks must stop funding corporate agribusiness

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There is little to suggest that the Finance in Common summit with over 450 PDBs will be any different, not least because of the failure of last year’s summit to embrace a human rights or community-led approach, but also because of longstanding human rights issues with these publically owned banks.

On the eve of the summit which will take place in Rome, FIAN International, alongside 280 other civil-society organizations and social movements, calls on governments to put an end to state-backed financial support to agribusiness companies and projects that take land, natural resources and livelihoods from local communities.

Poor track record

Public development banks are state-mandated, largely state-funded and state-controlled financial institutions that finance activities that should contribute to the improvement of people's lives, particularly in the Global South. They account for over US$2 trillion a year in financing to public and private companies for things like roads, power plants and agribusiness plantations. An estimated US$1.4 trillion goes to the agriculture and food sector.

Many PDBs have a poor track record when it comes to transparency and investments that benefit agribusiness corporations at the expense of farmers, herders, fishers, food workers and Indigenous Peoples, undermining their food sovereignty, ecosystems and human rights. They have a heavy legacy of investing in companies involved in land grabbing, corruption, violence, environmental destruction and other severe human rights violations.

Their increasing use of offshore private equity funds and complex investment webs –including financial intermediaries – to channel investments makes it very difficult to scrutinise them, as highlighted by recent revelations surrounding German development finance institution Deutsche Investitions– und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG).

Linked to human rights violations

DEG, a subsidiary of Germany’s largest state-owned development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), provides billions of euros in development finance to Latin America, Asia and Africa.

FIAN Germany has monitored human violations related to investments of these banks for many years, despite major challenges with the banks’ lack of transparency. More than half of the DEG’s annual funding is channelled through financial intermediaries and other banks and funds.

Not even the German government has a clear picture of where this money hits the ground and its real impact. This makes it nearly impossible to force the banks to comply with Germany’s human rights obligations. In cases where FIAN could identify concrete investments in agribusinesses, there was also evidence of human rights violations.

In Zambia, for example, DEG continues to provide the country’s biggest agribusiness Zambeef with tens of millions of US Dollars although FIAN has documented cases of forced evictions involving Zambeef as far back as 2013. In Paraguay, DEG is co-owner of the country’s second largest landowner Paraguay Agricultural Corporation PAYCO, which buys up land on a large scale, including traditional indigenous settlements, for massive agro-industrial projects that make intensive use of pesticides.

“Those cases are emblematic of DEGs investment preferences for large-scale industrial agribusiness which foreclose instead of supporting or promoting equitable, people-centered and sustainable development rooted in the right to food,” said Roman Herre, FIAN Germany policy advisor for land and agriculture.

Unaccountable

A decision by the Belgium’s public development bank, Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO), together with other European and North American PDBs to support palm oil production by Feronia PHC in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – despite the violent repression of locally community activists – is a another example.

“Although the demands of the communities affected were relayed to the bank, there was no recourse to justice, no way to hold the bank accountable,” said Florence Kroff, coordinator of FIAN Belgium.

“Even before the decision to finance this project, we raised questions about the risks of human rights violations involved in supporting this agribusiness in the DRC, thanks to an ill-gotten concession on more than 100,000 ha of land, a legacy of the colonial era,” she added.

“In addition to environmental pollution and indecent working conditions on the plantations, Belgian – as well as German, French, Dutch and other – public money is contributing to a climate of violent criminalisation in the region, which has already led to dozens of arbitrary arrests and detentions and the deaths of several land activists.”

It is time to hold public development banks, and the governments controlling them, accountable for the human rights violations that they are fuelling and to stop all future investments that are not rooted in the right to food, a community-led approach and sustainable development.

FIAN International calls for:

  • An immediate end to the financing of corporate agribusiness operations and speculative investments by public development banks. 
  • The creation of fully public and accountable funding mechanisms that support peoples' efforts to build food sovereignty, realize the human right to food, protect and restore ecosystems, and address the climate emergency.
  • implementation of strong and effective mechanisms that provide communities with access to justice in case of adverse human rights impacts or social and environmental damages caused by PDB investments.

German bank denies access to information of investment in Paraguay

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The human rights organisation FIAN, with the support of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), has filed an action for information against the German state-owned “Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau” (Reconstruction Loan Corporation Bank) KfW at the Administrative Court in Frankfurt.

KfW refuses to provide access to the environmental and social action plans of the Luxembourg agricultural investor PAYCO, which is active in Paraguay.

The KfW subsidiary „Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft“ (German Investment and Development Company) (DEG) had acquired over 15 percent of PAYCO in 2013.

With 146,000 hectares, PAYCO is the second largest landowner in Paraguay. The agricultural company mainly cultivates soy and raises livestock, and also sells genetically modified seeds. Deforestation and land conflicts with indigenous peoples have been documented repeatedly on PAYCO farms. The western part of Paraguay has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.

“The projects of KfW and DEG are bound to the goals of German development policy. However, control by MPs, the media and the critical public is only possible if they receive the necessary information,” says Philipp Mimkes, Executive Director of FIAN Germany.

KfW and DEG had denied information on PAYCO for years, even to members of the German Bundestag. “In the present case, DEG puts private land ownership claims from the time of the dictatorship in Paraguay above basic human rights. This is an indictment of an actor charged with development policy. The Supervisory Board of DEG, which is chaired by the Development Ministry, must finally take action here,” Mimkes continued.

“Projects that are indirectly financed by KfW and DEG must be in line with human rights and environmental protection as well as publicly accessible,” adds Christian Schliemann from ECCHR. “The Administrative Court of Frankfurt has already stated in its ruling of November 2019 that KfW must release information in the sense of the Freedom of Information Act.”

“KfW and DEG refuse to allow access to PAYCO's environmental and social action plans on the basis of alleged business secrets. But KfW and DEG could use this argument to refuse to disclose any information, since almost every one of their projects is tangential to a so-called business,” says lawyer Anna Gilsbach, who formulated the complaint for FIAN and ECCHR.

According to UN figures, around ten percent of the population in Paraguay is undernourished. Large parts of the indigenous population live in extreme poverty. This is closely related to the high concentration of land: Paraguay is one of the countries with the highest land concentration worldwide. Around 2.6 percent of landowners hold more than 80 percent of the agricultural land.

Read also a Background paper on Payco

Warning cry about the impact of agrotoxics in Latin America and the Caribbean

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Brasilia, Brazil. 28 April 2021. Yesterday, the Latin American sections of FIAN International presented the report Toxic Pesticides in Latin America: Violations of the Right to Adequate and Nutrition at a well-attended online event.

This 108-page publication features data and reports on the impacts of these toxic substances in eight countries across Latin America and the Caribbean: Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Haiti.

The report documents how pesticides affect environmental health and that of humans' as well, as they hinder the full realization of the human right to adequate food and nutrition. It also identifies a widespread pattern in the business strategies of companies in the region which is based on corporate capture of public institutions and territories.

Over 700 participants attended the online release of this report. During the event, Juan Carlos Morales González, from FIAN Colombia, and researcher Leonardo Melgarejo presented the report’s main findings and conclusions. Affected communities in Brazil, Haiti and Paraguay shared their stories about the devastating and destructive effects pesticides have had on their livelihoods. Then, geographer Larissa Bombardi, author of Geography of the Use of Agrochemicals in Brazil and Connections with the European Union, and the UN Special Rapporteur for toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, analyzed the results of the report and presented their viewpoints. Rapporteur Orellana clarified:

 “The fact that certain types of pollution are legal does not justify violating human rights … dangerous substances must be eliminated”. He went on to underscore “[the] shared responsibilities of exporting and importing countries…nations’ obligations to prevent exposure to toxic substances are based on human rights”.

As follow-up on the work documented in this report, FIAN International will soon file a complaint with the relevant United Nations special rapporteurs regarding the Brazilian case presented during the online event, in which aerial fumigation was weaponized to evict rural workers from a disputed area in Pernambuco.

On May 5th, another online seminar will showcase this report before a global audience: during which FIAN International will explain the results of a study on the experiences of farmers transitioning towards pesticide-free communities and food systems.

Find out how the discussion unfolded and access the report in Portuguese, Spanish or English, and the executive summary in English

View another webinar  Poisoned Food, Poisoned ecosystems: how people are working towards pesticides free communities

For more information please contact: Ana María Suárez Franco Suarez-franco@fian.org

 

Paraguay: Freedom for the 11 peasants of Curuguaty

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The lack of impartiality of the Public Prosecutor’s Office when conducting the investigations served as an argument to the judges to determine the acquittal of the convicts. Human Rights Organizations celebrate the decision. 

On 11 July 2016, eleven peasants were sentenced to prison terms of between four and thirty years, accused of the murder of six police officers during the protests that took place in 2012 at the Marina Cué hacienda in the province of Curuguaty, north of Paraguay As a result of these confrontations eleven peasants and six policemen were killed, in what was called “the Curuguaty massacre”.

After some questionable diligences on the part of the Office of the Prosecutor, which limited itself to investigating the murder of the six policemen, eleven peasants were condemned for murder, disturbance of public order and constitution of a criminal organization.

The acquittal represents a historic decision for human rights defenders not only in Paraguay but throughout Latin America. However, it can not be forgotten that the death of eleven peasants during the massacre still remains unpunished and uninvestigated.

The criminalization and persecution of human rights defenders in Paraguay, especially those who defend the right to land and the rights of indigenous peoples, occurs in a context of discrimination and conflict over land ownership. Land conflicts in Paraguay have led to a spiral of violence against peasants that ranges from defamation by governmental and private actors, the presence of private militias and death threats, to judicial persecution.

FIAN International had advocated and reported on the Curuguaty case, and particularly welcomes the recommendation that the German Government made to the Government of Paraguay in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations in 2016, “to guarantee the conduct of impartial and independent criminal investigations and procedures in the Curuguaty case, in order to clarify complaints and bring the perpetrators to justice.” However, this recommendation will only be fulfilled once all the deaths of the Curuguaty massacre are duly investigated and judged.

Read more background on the criminalization of peasants in Paraguay

Seed corporatization threatens Paraguayan communities

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For centuries, peasant and indigenous communities have saved and exchanged seeds, adapting them to local ecosystems and transmitting knowledge to younger generations. However, such seed-sharing practices are currently threatened by land-grabbing, environmental destruction, and genetically modified seeds. Corporate interests, in particular, jeopardize free access to and sharing of native seeds.

This is the case in Paraguay where corporations’ growing influence on legislative and regulatory processes is leading to the commodification of this common good. At the same time, protecting human rights has becoming increasingly challenging amidst heightened tensions.

As UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Hilal Elver declared after her visit to Paraguay in November 2016: the Paraguayan government must re-examine its policies regarding access to and exploitation of land and seeds. Among other recommendations, Elver underscored the need to enact a law on native seeds, create seed banks as reserves, and call into question the current distribution of land.

It is within this context – exacerbated by the recent Bayer-Monsanto merger – that this documentary shows audiences the reality of affected communities through their testimonies, especially of indigenous women from different ethnic groups, given their traditional role, together with peasant women, as seed keepers. The documentary focuses on the Pai Tavytera indigenous group and specifically on one women from Ybycui, during the Feria Heñoi Jey, which is one of the various actions carried out by these communities to recover their native seeds and draw attention tointernational corporations’ interests and influence, and to the State’s lack of action as well.

FIAN International urges Paraguay to fulfill its obligations to protect the rights of its citizen, instead of prioritizing profits. FIAN wishes to remind Paraguay that seeds are a form of collective heritage and represent a vital and historical part of people’s livelihoods. Without free access to and exchange of seeds, or access to land and freedom to produce, the right to food and nutrition cannot be fulfilled in Paraguay.

You can access the documentary here


NOTES TO EDITORS:

  • This documentary was produced by Añandu Cine Praguay. Thanks to FIAN Germany and FIAN Paraguay for their cooperation with the peasant and indigenous groups Vía Campesina and Heñoi Paraguay. Take part in FIAN Germany’s national campaign: “FIAN demands a world where seeds are free, in order to guarantee everyone’s quality of life, instead of a allowing a small minority to accumulate more wealth”.