By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
The first session of the African Peoples Tribunal on Wednesday November 25, 2020, kicked off in Lagos, Nigeria.
The three-day event, organized by Friends of the Earth Africa through its Forest & Biodiversity Programme, began by examining human rights violations and environmental degradation connected with monoculture tree plantation expansion from Cameroon.
The tribunal’s legitimacy is based on the principle of recognising human rights under natural, national, and international law, and reclaiming and restoring the rights of impacted people, whose rights have been violated with impunity.
In all of the 10 cases for examination, international financiers, including development banks, private banks, investment funds and pension funds from all corners of the world are found to be controlling and financing the controversial rubber, palm oil and timber plantation companies.
Among the accused companies are Socfin, Green Resources AS, Golden Veroleum Liberia (controlled by Golden Agri-Resources), SIAT SA, OLAM and PZ Wilmar.
Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, the director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) from Nigeria, who spoke at the event, condemned the
aggressive land grabbing and deforestation for expansion of industrial agro-commodity plantations.
He said that it was causing a new wave of oppression in Africa, with devastating impacts on people, including differentiated and aggravated consequences for women.
He said that in the face of ongoing social and environmental injustice in Africa, defending people’s rights was crucial to dismantling corporate power and challenging the capitalist model of industrial plantation expansion.
At the tribunal, cases were entertained from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Gabon, Liberia, Cameroon and Mozambique.
The jurors include
1- Ms. Ikal Angelei (F)–Kenya
Ikal Angelei holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of New York at Stony Brook. She is the Executive director of Friends of Lake Turkana. She won the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa and is the first person from East Africa to ever be honored for dam fighting. She is at the fore of the campaign against injustices meted out on the inhabitants of Lake Turkana whose livelihoods and environment have been destroyed. The campaign did not seek to totally disregard the idea of dams producing hydroelectric power, but to encourage pursuit of alternative forms of energy development that avoided unacceptable tradeoffs which would jeopardize indigenous economies and destroy the eco-system.
2- Dr. Nnimmo Bassey (M) – Nigeria
Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian architect, environmentalist, activist, author, and poet, who chaired Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012. Bassey was the pioneer Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria where he currently serves as the Board Chair. He was one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2009. In 2010, he was named co-winner of the Right Livelihood Award and in 2012 received the Rafto Prize. He currently serves on the Advisory Board and is Director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, an environmental think tank and advocacy organization based in Nigeria.
Bassey’s advocacy activities dates to the 1980s when he served on the Board of Directors of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization. In 1993, he co-founded Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria) to advocate, educate and organize around environmental human rights issues. Since 1996, Bassey and Environmental Rights Action led Oilwatch Africa and, beginning in 2006, he led Oilwatch International, striving to mobilize communities against the expansion of fossil fuels extraction.
3- Prof. Alfred Apau Oteng-Yeboah – Ghana (M)
Alfred Apau Oteng-Yeboah is a Professor of Botany at the University of Ghana. He holds a BSc. (Ghana) and a PhD. He has published extensively in reputable scientific journals in plant systematics, ecology, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge. He was the Deputy Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-Ghana) and has served as board/council member of a number of Ghanaian public institutions, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Government of Ghana Scholarship Review Committee, the University of Ghana College of Health Sciences and the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine, the Ghana National Commission for UNESCO.
4- Ms. Makoma Lekalakala (F) – South Africa Makalakala is a South African activist and Executive Director of Earthlife Africa based in South Africa. Makoma has long been active in social movements tackling issues from gender and women’s rights, social, economic, and environmental justice issues. In recent years, Makoma has focused on targeting environmental corruption. Makoma was awarded the 2018 Goldman environmental prize for the African region for her work in using the courts to stop a Russian-South African nuclear deal in 2017.