Kategorie: Humans

New Law Includes Obligation to Address Abuses in Battery Supply Chains

The European Union’s proposed batteries regulation should require importers and manufacturers to source the bauxite, copper, and iron used in batteries responsibly, a coalition of 13 organizations said today. The coalition includes Amnesty International, Earthworks, Finnwatch, Germanwatch, Human Rights Watch, Inclusive Development International, INKOTA, PowerShift, RAID, SOMO, and Transport & Environment, as well as human rights and environmental activists from producer countries.

The batteries regulation would create mandatory requirements for all batteries — portable, automotive, electric vehicle, and industrial — placed on the EU market, including rules requiring battery importers and manufacturers to identify and address actual and potential human rights and environmental abuses in the supply of key raw materials. The European Parliament has proposed a list of raw materials that includes bauxite, copper, and iron, as well as cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel. National governments in the European Council want to exclude bauxite, copper, and iron from the list. The Council, Parliament, and Commission began negotiations on the final draft regulation on April 20, 2022.

“The European Union’s vital work to ensure that battery supply chains are free from human rights and environmental harms will fall short if it excludes bauxite, copper, and iron,” said Jim Wormington, Senior Corporate Accountability Researcher and Advocate at Human Rights Watch. “The three materials are important to battery production but too often the way they are extracted and processed has been a major contributor to human rights and environmental damage worldwide.”

Bauxite is the ore needed to make aluminum, a key material for electric car batteries. Four tons of bauxite are needed to make a single ton of aluminum. Volkswagen stated in 2021 that aluminum makes up 126 kg of a typical 400 kg electric car battery, more by far than any other metal. The International Aluminum Institute, an industry group, forecasts that aluminum’s usage in batteries and other electric vehicle components means that automobile manufacturers will double their aluminum consumption by 2050.

Copper is used in battery anodes and electric wiring. The International Copper Association, an industry group, projected in 2019 that energy storage applications will raise annual copper demand by 2.3 million tons, approximately 10 percent of global supply, by 2029. Iron, needed for the steel used for battery casings, is also used in several emerging battery technologies.

Although the aluminum, copper, and steel industries promote their sustainability and green credentials, all three materials have been linked to destructive human rights and environmental impacts. The mining of bauxite is the most significant contributor to deforestation within mining leases in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and has led to widespread loss and destruction of agricultural land and water resources in Guinea, a West African country with the world’s largest deposits. The large amounts of energy needed to refine and smelt aluminum – and the industry’s continued heavy reliance on coal for that energy – also means that aluminum production is responsible for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’ve witnessed first-hand the devastation that bauxite mining has caused to dozens of communities’ land, livelihoods, and local environment,” said Mariama Barry, a Guinean activist and Africa Program associate at Inclusive Development International, which is working with Guinean communities seeking redress for the harm caused by bauxite mining. “The increased demand for aluminum for electric vehicle batteries and other energy technologies should be a chance to recognize and respect the rights of workers and communities rather than exacerbate existing abuses.”

Copper mining and processing also comes with significant human rights and environmental risks. In Zambia, copper mining has reportedly resulted in large-scale land loss for farmers, including through forced evictions, as well as water and air pollution. Copper and cobalt are also often mined together, resulting in similar human rights impacts. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers in 2020 found evidence that exposure to toxic pollution is associated with birth defects in the children of cobalt and copper miners. Human rights groups in 2021 released a report documenting labor rights abuses in Congo at five of the world’s largest copper and cobalt mines, including unsafe working conditions, degrading treatment, discrimination, and racism.

“Cobalt may have grabbed the headlines, but for workers and local communities the mining of copper has the same devastating impact on human rights, labor rights, and the environment,” said Josué Kashal, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Centre d’Aide juridico-judiciaire, a Congolese legal services organization that cowrote the 2021 report. “Governments should be requiring companies to source both copper and cobalt responsibly.”

Iron ore mining and processing also carries significant environmental and social risks. In January 2019, the collapse of a dam in Brumadinho, Brazil that stored waste from iron ore mining caused a deluge of toxic mud and mining waste to sweep through a nearby town, burying more than 250 people alive. In 2015, the failure of another iron ore dam in Brazil had already killed 19 people and caused widespread environmental damage.

The steel industry’s burning of coke and other forms of coal to process iron ore also releases greenhouse gases and large quantities of contaminants that pollute the air. Following a 2019 visit to Brazil, the world’s second largest iron ore producer, the United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights stated that the pollution and resulting health problems communities had experienced in Piquiá de Baixo, a community in the heartlands of Brazil’s steel industry, “is a clear violation of rights to life, health, information, and many others.”

“Incidents like Brumadinho, one of the worst mining-related disasters of the past decade, demonstrate why battery manufactures and importers should be required to source raw materials responsibly,” said Alejandro González, Researcher at SOMO. “The European Union should include bauxite, copper, and iron in the scope of the battery regulation to protect workers and communities against human rights and environmental abuses.”

For more information, please contact:

In Berlin, Germany, for INKOTA-netzwerk, Lara Louisa Siever (German, English, French): +49-30-420-8202-58; or siever@inkota.de. Twitter: @LaraLouisa16

In Berlin, Germany, for PowerShift, Michael Reckordt (German, English): +49 163 633 63 72 (mobile) or michael.reckordt@power-shift.de. Twitter: @MichaelReckordt

In Conakry, Guinea, for Inclusive Development International, Mariama Barry (French): +224-622-62-25-78 (mobile); or mariama@inclusivedevelopment.net.

In London, for RAID, Anneke Van Woudenberg, Executive Director (English, French): +44-77-11-66-4960 (mobile); or avw@raid-uk.org. Twitter: @raidukorg

In Washington, DC, for Human Rights Watch, Jim Wormington (English, French): +1-917-592-8738 (mobile); or worminj@hrw.org. Twitter: @jwormington

List of signatory organizations:

Amnesty International

Centre d’Aide juridico-judiciaire (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Collectif des organisations de la Société Civile pour la défense des droits des communautés (Guinea)

Earthworks

Finnwatch

Germanwatch

Human Rights Watch

Inclusive Development International

INKOTA

PowerShift

Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID)

SOMO

Transport and Environment

The post European Union: Rules for Batteries Should Cover Bauxite, Copper, Iron appeared first on Amnesty International.

JOINT STATEMENT

Bangladesh’s government must urgently take steps to support the community-led learning facilities in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and strengthen their resources in line with the country’s international commitment to protect children’s right to education, 25 undersigned organizations said in a statement today.

About 30 community-led schools have been shut down or dismantled by the authorities since December 2021. The closure of community learning facilities in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh is detrimental to the community’s development and a gross violation of children’s right to education which puts them at the risk of becoming a lost generation.

Nearly half a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are children, who constitute 52% of the refugees registered in the camps. They have been deprived of access to education in an accredited curriculum since they sought refuge in Bangladesh in August 2017.

In January 2020, Bangladesh’s government made a promise to introduce the Myanmar curriculum for about 10,000 children from grades six to nine. The Rohingya community has been offering education to their children through the community schools due to a delay in the rollout of the program by more than two years since Bangladesh’s government announced its plan.

Rohingya refugees said that some schoolteachers were detained by the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) and released in exchange of signing a paper with the condition that they will stop teaching.

It is not a crime to teach students and show them the right path of life. It is a basic human right

Rohingya community teacher

Rights groups have documented allegations against authorities threatening refugees with confiscating their refugee identification cards and relocation to the remote Bhasan Char island if they violate the ban on operating or attending community-led schools.

Access to education and other human rights of the Rohingya refugees are as critical as the battle is for justice and accountability for the crimes committed against the Rohingya people. It is pivotal for their right to voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable return to their homes in Myanmar.

“All that the community want is the formal education that will be useful to continue studying in Myanmar,” said a Rohingya youth, whose identity is being withheld for his safety.

Education is one of the most important activities that can keep the Rohingya population away from being exploited by harmful groups including child traffickers, drug smugglers, armed groups, and others who sense opportunity in people’s misery.

It is pivotal to empower the Rohingya refugees to claim their rights and speak for themselves. Loss of critical academic years is not only depriving the community of their educational development but also increasing their dependency on uncertain humanitarian aid.

The existing learning centres authorized by the government and operated by UNICEF and other humanitarian partners offer education to children from four to 14 years of age. The program leaves out the older age groups, some of whom were about to take their matriculation examination at the time of the exodus in 2017.

The undersigned 25 organizations call on Bangladesh’s government to:

• Ensure access to education for all Rohingya children by building capacity for all learning facilities within the refugee camps including by granting legal status to community schools in line with their international commitments;
• Immediately re-open all community schools and put a stop to all harassment, threats and attacks against refugees, avoid any discriminatory policies that affect the right to education of Rohingya children in Bangladesh;
• Put an end to the crackdown on community-led schools and Rohingya refugees for operating them;
• Launch prompt, transparent, impartial and independent investigation into the allegations against members of law enforcement agencies for detaining Rohingya refugees and authorities threatening them with forced relocation to Bhasan Char island for operating schools;
• Establish and strengthen government infrastructure to provide complete access to education to Rohingya population. Ensure that any vacancies are filled by individuals with knowledge and commitment to integrating Rohingya culture and practices into the teaching modules.

The organizations also call on the United Nations and the international community to:

• Urgently engage with Bangladesh’s government to raise concerns about the closure of community-led schools in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and provide support to education for all children in the camps and elsewhere;
• Offer assistance to build capacity for all learning facilities within the refugee camps including community schools with regards to access to teaching materials, teachers and learning spaces;
• Allocate adequate and specific funds towards and implement education programmes and projects as part of a comprehensive and long-term commitment to support Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Signatories:

1. ActionAid
2. Amnesty International
3. Arakan Rohingya National Organisation
4. Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network
5. Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust
6. Burma Campaign UK
7. Burmese Rohingya Association in Japan
8. Burmese Rohingya Community in Denmark
9. Campaign for a New Myanmar
10. Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative
11. COAST Foundation
12. Drik Picture Library
13. European Rohingya Council
14. Fortify Rights
15. Human Rights Support Society
16. Human Rights Watch
17. International Campaign for the Rohingya
18. Justice4Rohingya UK
19. Manusher Jonno Foundation
20. Map Photo Agency
21. Nagorik
22. Naripokkho
23. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
24. Rohingya Action Ireland
25. The Arakan Project

The post BANGLADESH: Restore and strengthen capacity of community-led schools in Rohingya camps appeared first on Amnesty International.

Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

• The region has accounted for 28% of all COVID-19 deaths in the world, despite having only 8.4% of the global population.
• Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people living in poverty remains 14 million higher compared to 2019.
• Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people living in extreme poverty in LAC has risen by 16 million.
• LAC was the region that experienced the most drastic drop in employment in 2020. Women, young people and people working in the informal sector have been the most impacted.
• Almost 60% of the children who missed an entire school year in the world were in LAC.
• 44 million people became food insecure, of which 21 million became severely food insecure.

COVID-19 Exacerbated by Inequality

• LAC continues to be the world’s most unequal region. In 2019, the richest 20% of the population held almost half of total income, while the poorest 20% held less than 5% of total income.
• The richest 1% in the region holds almost one quarter of total income.
• There is a link between higher levels of income inequality and the impact of the pandemic in terms of lives lost. The most unequal countries in the region (such as Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Paraguay) had very high numbers of COVID-19 deaths per million people.
• In 2019, 30% of homes in the region were considered overcrowded. 50% of homes of people living in poverty were overcrowded.
• Less than a third of vulnerable households have access to a computer at home.

Social Protection Responses and Health during COVID-19

• In 2019, only 47.2% of employed persons were affiliated or contributed to pension systems. One in four people aged 65 or over did not receive a pension.
• In most LAC countries, emergency social protection measures adopted covered less than two thirds of the population.
• A total of 64 cash transfer programs were implemented in 24 of 33 countries. However, more than half of the interventions directly benefited less than 10% of the population, and consisted of additional amounts of less than a minimum monthly wage.
• In LAC, 30% of people do not have access to free public health care, due to the lack of health insurance coverage.
• Not one country in the LAC region expanded health insurance or enabled emergency insurance during the pandemic.
• Except from Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, no other country in the region spends 6% of their GDP in public health, the minimum amount to secure universal healthcare established by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
• Due to the lack of effective access to free and public health, millions of families cover their health expenditures from their savings. Out-of-pocket expenses represent 28% of the total health spending in the region

Taxation and Inequality in LAC

• LAC countries collect less taxes as a percentage of GDP compared to countries with a similar level of development. On average, the region only collects 22% of GDP in taxes, compared to 33% for OECD countries
• In LAC, collection depends heavily on indirect taxes, such as consumption taxes, which disproportionately affect women and other groups who are overrepresented among the poor.
• In 2019, countries in the region collected, on average, 46% of their total tax revenues from indirect taxes, compared to only one third from direct taxes.
• Tax evasion in LAC has led to hundreds of billions of dollars of lost public revenue each year. In 2018, LAC lost approximately US$350 billion, 6.1% of GDP the region’s GDP. This amount would be sufficient to cover the minimum resources to secure universal health in the region.
• LAC countries are estimated to lose annually US$40.1 billion to corporate tax abuse. It is estimated that with the income that has been lost over the last 10 years, the region could have guaranteed access to drinking water to 492,632 people or have prevented the death of 42,281 children.

The post Unequal and Lethal: Facts and Figures appeared first on Amnesty International.

Human rights-aligned economic policies are desperately needed to change course

Governments across Latin America and the Caribbean must urgently ramp up spending on the right to social protection and health in order to tackle the region’s obscene socio-economic inequality that has proven fatal during the Covid pandemic, said Amnesty International and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) in a new joint report released today.

Unequal and Lethal: Five key actions to recover from the human rights crisis unleashed by the pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean explains the factors behind the region’s disproportionate death toll from Covid compared to other parts of the world. With only 8.4% of the world’s population, the region has endured 28% of total global deaths due to COVID-19. The report finds that those countries with the highest inequality and lowest public spending on health and social protection suffered most during the pandemic, with the most devasting impacts on historically marginalized groups.

A human rights-based rethink of economic policies is key to avoiding future calamities in what is, by many measures, the world’s most unequal region. Despite the staggering inequality and poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean, over the last decades governments have failed to collect sufficient tax revenues and to do so in a way that combats inequality, even during times of economic boom. This has inevitably resulted in meagre spending on healthcare services and social protection – including unemployment, pensions and childcare support – which are vital for a life of dignity and to truly uphold human rights for all.  

“Governments have the obligation to proactively mobilize the resources needed to protect their populations from the worst impacts of discrimination, disease and economic disaster. If Latin American countries had done this in the decades before the pandemic, the region could have avoided so much pain and loss of life,” said Kate Donald, Acting Executive Director of CESR. “Now is their chance to prevent the next inequality-induced disaster and make the shift towards a rights-based economy.”

Countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Peru, where the richest 1% of the population hoards over 30% of national wealth, have recorded the highest numbers of Covid deaths in the region proportional to their populations. Chile, where the richest 20% of the population takes home 10 times more income than the poorest 20%, also has one of the region’s highest death rates per capita.

Governments have the obligation to proactively mobilize the resources needed to protect their populations from the worst impacts of discrimination, disease and economic disaster

Kate Donald, Acting Executive Director of CESR

While many Latin American countries provided cash transfers during the pandemic, none of them expanded health insurance nor took sufficient action to implement universal social security mechanisms and expand coverage to ensure the most disadvantaged people were covered.

The impact of these shortcomings across the region fell most severely on women, who lost jobs at a higher rate than men and whose disproportionate role in caring for children and family continues to affect their unequal enjoyment of rights – even more so if they are Indigenous or of African descent.

“Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a certain postcode should not determine your chances of dying of infectious diseases like Covid. Two years into the pandemic, governments in Latin America have still not caught on to the urgency of implementing a human rights-based approach to recovering from the pandemic and tackling inequality,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“Promoting equality does not mean treating everyone in the same way. Latin America’s present situation is the result of hundreds of years of colonial injustices that mean certain groups have been historically and systematically denied their rights. As countries recover from the pandemic governments need to address this head on by adopting a substantive equality approach and affirmative action measures.”

Although the Pan American Health Organization calls for a minimum of 6% of GDP to be spent on health in order to ensure universal coverage, nearly all the countries in the region spend far less on public health services, which means that they do not have enough hospital beds, doctors or nurses to effectively deal with Covid-19 or other health crises. In Peru, for example, in the decade prior to the pandemic, authorities failed to increase public spending on health despite years of sustained economic growth, only investing 3.3% of its GDP. Meanwhile in Mexico, over 15 million people lost access to health coverage in the two years before the pandemic, due to bureaucratic inefficiencies in government health policies.

In Chile, taxes and social security contributions only account for half of spending on healthcare, with the other half coming from patients through mandatory prepayment fees and voluntary and out-of-pocket expenses. Chile’s per capita public spending on health represents just a third of the OECD average, and it has half as many hospital beds per 1,000 inhabitants as the OECD average.

“Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a certain postcode should not determine your chances of dying of infectious diseases like Covid

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International

Even when they have adequate policies in theory, governments stumble on implementation, with a key barrier often being the failure to generate sufficient fiscal resources to make them effective. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean generally collect less revenue from taxes than others with similar levels of development in different parts of the world. In 2019, the region only collected on average 22% of its GDP in taxes, compared to 33% for OECD countries.

Moreover, many have regressive taxation systems with taxes that do not ask enough from those most able to pay, thus undermining their resources to overcome inequality and redistribute wealth. For example, Latin American countries depend heavily on indirect taxes – which are more regressive as they represent a larger burden for poorer sections of the population – and collect very little from wealth taxes which target economic elites.

“Without boldly facing the need to tax more and tax better – as is their human rights obligation – countries in Latin America will continue to be dragged down by a malaise of socio-economic inequality, favouring a rich elite while harming society as a whole,” said Kate Donald.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Duncan Tucker (Amnesty International): duncan.tucker@amnesty.org

Auska Ovando (CESR): aovando@cesr.org

The post Americas: Disproportionate deaths from Covid are the result of pre-existing inequalities appeared first on Amnesty International.

QUOTE

Responding to the proposed framework of the “Data Protection Act, 2022” by the Government of Bangladesh, Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner, said:

“The draft of the proposed Data Protection Act which has opened for public feedback is a dangerous bill that is aimed at usurping people’s right to privacy in Bangladesh. The Bill uses vague and overbroad provisions to enable and legitimize intrusive actions by authorities such as granting access to encrypted communication on personal devices physically or remotely. It violates an individual’s rights solely on the basis of pre-empting a law-and-order deterioration without adequate justification.

“The Bill exempts authorities from civil, criminal and any other legal proceedings for harms caused to people in the course of its actions. Keeping in mind how existing laws like the Digital Security Act have led to gross human rights violations in the past, the proposed bill is the newest addition to an insidious pattern in which the government wants to control the digital lives of people.

Instead of breaking away from ambiguity in laws that promotes repressive actions, the proposed bill violates Bangladesh’s constitutional and international obligations including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which it is a state party.

Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia Campaigner

“We call on Bangladesh’s government to ensure public ownership, participation, transparency and protection of people’s right to privacy and right to information in the law and that no one including the authorities are exempted from accountability for human rights violation.”

Background:

The proposed “Data Protection Act, 2022” aims to severely trample people’s privacy rights and relieves all liability of authorities in accessing people’s personal data both physically and remotely.

The proposed law states that it will have precedence over all existing laws thereby having an overriding effect on Bangladesh’s Right to Information Act, 2009, which is a key instrument that protects people’s right to information in the present time.

In the backdrop of vague and overbroad terminologies such as the protection of ‘spirit of liberation war’, ‘sovereignty of state’, ‘friendly relations with foreign states’, the government has reserved the right within the bill to issue any direction as it sees fit.

Amnesty International’s detailed submission with recommendations on the draft Data Protection Act, 2022 can be found here.

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