Country: Sweden

No profit without accountability: recognising the right to a healthy environment

Posted on by Tom

Communities around the world are affected by unchecked and unregulated transnational corporate power, leading to poisoned water supplies, lost farmland, destroyed food systems and lost livelihoods. Yet, too often, corporations escape accountability while communities are left without remedy or justice, as outlined in a new study focusing on environmental issues, No Profit Without Accountability – For People and the Planet, aimed at shaping UN discussions.

The upcoming session of the Human Rights Council’s open-ended intergovernmental working group in October 2025 – the eleventh annual round of discussions – has enormous potential for curbing excessive corporate power and protecting communities and the environment. States will be negotiating the final articles of the updated draft of the legally binding instrument(LBI) to regulate transnational corporations in international human rights law. FIAN and other international civil society groups insist that the LBI must include an explicit recognition of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and integrate this right – along with broader environmental and climate change considerations – throughout its substantive provisions.

“It’s very simple. If the LBI does not include strong environmental protections, it will fail the very communities it is meant to protect,” says Ayushi Kalyan, corporate accountability coordinator at FIAN International.

Enforceable international standards

Communities and human rights and environmental defenders have long campaigned for this addition to international human rights law.

In Latin America, families are still fighting for justice decades after Sweden’s Boliden Mineral dumped toxic waste in Arica, Chile, causing widespread health problems for people living near the dump site. In Palestine, corporations like Heidelberg Materials are alleged to have contributed to the pillaging of natural resources from occupied land. Across Africa and Asia, extractive projects are dispossessing Indigenous Peoples and rural communities of their territories and food systems. Each case highlights the urgent need for clear, enforceable international standards that prioritize human rights and environmental protection over corporate profit.

The International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have both affirmed states’ obligations to regulate private actors and prevent transboundary environmental harm. More than 80 percent of UN member states already legally recognize the right to a healthy environment.

“The LBI must explicitly recognize the right to a healthy environment, protect defenders from reprisals, and ensure that victims have real access to justice,” says Stephan Backes, extraterritorial obligations coordinator at FIAN International. 

Close the gap

Negotiators now have the responsibility to close the gap at the global level by embedding this right in the heart of the LBI.

The study released today proposes concrete legal texts to states to strengthen the provisions in the LBI, ensuring, among other things, that it includes environmental due diligence, precautionary measures, and the primacy of human rights and environmental obligations over trade and investment agreements. States should carefully consider and integrate these recommendations in their submissions during the next round of negotiations in October and continue leveraging these proposals in their ongoing advocacy in relevant national, regional and international spaces and processes.

As the world edges closer to climate collapse, this LBI process is a critical opportunity to hold corporations accountable. States must not squander it.

For more information, please contact Ayushi Kalyan Kalyan@fian.org or Stephan Backes Backes@fian.org,

Transforming food systems from the bottom-up: local food policies and public participation in Europe

Posted on by fredsaxo

The CRESS project is a collective effort by FIAN International, FIAN Austria, FIAN Belgium, FIAN Portugal, Observatori DESCA (Spain), and (the former) FIAN Sweden, funded by the EU. 

In recent years there has been an increase across Europe in local government policies and initiatives around food (systems) and nutrition. This has been accompanied and driven by the emergence of participatory spaces, including food policy councils, that engage communities in food policy making at the local level.

The project examines concrete policies and initiatives by local and regional governments and spaces of community participation in six European countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The project examined areas of engagement and constraints faced by local governments, as well as the transformative character (from a human rights perspective) of the policies and initiatives put forward.

Moreover, a central emphasis of the project was to understand how participation is organised across the different countries and localities: which structures are in place and what influence do they hold, who participates and who remains at the margins, how are power relations and conflicts of interest addressed?

Project outcomes are presented in three outcomes: (1) a mapping that summarizes the situation for each of the six countries and draws some general reflections, (2) an interactive map that provides more detail on the cases reviewed and (3) a toolkit that seeks to create greater understanding of how to operationalise human rights based local policy making, including impacts at the level of the EU.

Findings from the mapping point to important steps being taken at the local level to re-localize food systems and make them more healthy, sustainable, and just. There is an increased recognition by local governments of the role they can play and multiple strategies and initiatives covering critical areas of intervention from communal catering and public procurement, to support for ecological production and local markets, to changes in land use criteria. At the same time, local government is constrained by a number of internal and external factors including a lack of human and financial resources, and EU policies which hinder regionalisation.  

The project’s findings also reflect the immense diversity that exists across Europe – and within countries – with regard to structures of community participation. They highlight the critical relevance of such spaces, and community mobilization, for putting food on the agenda of local governments and pushing for transformative, bottom-up food systems changes. At the same time, and despite many efforts, important challenges and limitations remain, especially with regard to including marginalised groups within these spaces and enabling their voices to be heard. 

The toolkit aims to foster a more comprehensive human rights approach to addressing food system challenges from the bottom-up and promoting inclusive governance structures. It aims to contribute to our collective understanding of strategically engaging with food systems at the local level in Europe and fostering strategies to ensure stronger bottom-up governance at the European Union (EU) level. It explores the potential for multi-level architecture of food systems policies and governance structures and examines how regional policies impact local policymaking.

The mapping, interactive map and toolkit are also available in other languages:

Mapping: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Interactive map: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Toolkit: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

For more information please contact Emily Mattheisen: mattheisen@fian.org or Laura Michéle: michele@fian.org

Burkina Faso and Sweden singled out by CESCR Committee

Posted on by fredsaxo

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  

Ecuadorian human rights defender visits Sweden

Posted on by fredsaxo

Kimsakocha means three lagoons in the indigenous peoples’ language, Quechua, and metal deposits are located in the middle of a water source that supplies more than 30,000 peasants.

For several years, the mining company (IAMGOLD first – in which the Swedish National Pension Funds had millions of dollars invested in the company by the end of 2013 -, and later the subsidiary INV Metals) explored the area where Miriam Chuchuca lives.

Though the exploration has been favourable and it expects to extract large amounts of gold in the coming years, it threatens peasants’ access to both water and food, and thousands of people will have to move from their land if the company poisons or dries out the lagoons in Kimsakocha.

The victims are human rights defenders who are currently being oppressed by regressive laws allowing the authorities to detain people involved in the protests. From the time the struggle began it has not been easy for the women, since they have been subjected to oppression. Miriam Chuchuca, as many other women in Kimsacocha who are the foundation for the struggle, is one of the brave women who brought this struggle forward.

“We have protested and struggled. The police has beaten and shot tear gas at us. When we protested against the mining law, it was almost like a war. It was war”, says Miriam.

The criminalization of social protests have fragmented peasants’ struggles and weakened the economic and solidarity initiatives for women’s struggle. Now the women do not dare to risk days in jail because that means they would have to be away from home, children and animals.

Moreover, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has directed strong criticism against Ecuador and urged the government to respect local people’s will and rights.

The tour includes the following key events: 

  • In Stockholm, November 12th at Solidaritetshuset – After-Work with FIAN Sweden – Mines and resistance, from 17:00
  • In Umeå, November 14th at Folkets hus, during “MR dagarna” from 9:00 -11:00 at the information square.
  • In Umeå, November 15th at Folkets hus during “MR dagarna”, seminar “Mining and resistance” 10:00-11:30 in Balder & Brage.

For more information or if you want an interview, please contact Rebecka Jalvemyr. 

FIAN has worked in various ways with the Kimsakocha case, both in Sweden with “AP-fonderna”, the Swedish National Pension Funds campaign, but also in Ecuador, with the support of the human rights defenders who lifted the case at international level before the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in Geneva.