Operations in nine Latin American countries continue with explicit Canadian state support, says report
The growing role of Canadian mining companies across Latin America has been put under the spotlight at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington following the presentation of a damning report.
Mining operations by Canadian firms across nine Latin American countries are causing “serious environmental impacts” by destroying glaciers, contaminating water and rivers, and cutting down forest, according to the report, as well as forcibly displacing people, dividing and impoverishing communities, making false promises about economic benefits, endangering people’s health, and fraudulently acquiring property. Some who protest such projects have been killed or seriously wounded, it states, and others persecuted, threatened or accused of being terrorists.
“Criminal charges such as “sabotage”, “terrorism”, “rebellion”, “conspiracy” and “incitement to commit crime” have been made against social leaders and human rights defenders who oppose and resist the development of industry,” it states.
The report, titled The Impact of Canadian Mining in Latin America and Canada’s responsibility, states that Canadian firms are exploiting weak legal systems in Latin American countries and Canada itself, as well as failing to respect indigenous peoples’ rights, international human rights and social responsibility principles, and supposedly “protected” areas.
A summary of the report describes the growth of Canada’s mining in Latin America as an integral part of its current foreign policy, and refers to a “new policy of using international cooperation mechanisms as a method of promoting Canadian mining companies in developing countries.” It states:
The organizations [co-authoring the report] have been emphatic that the Canadian authorities are aware of the difficulties regarding each one of the [22] case-studies [cited in the report] and that, despite that, Canada continues to provide political, legal and financial support to companies which commit or tolerate human rights abuses. Canada’s government has advised various governments in countries where its companies operate about changing the law, citizen participation, and areas to be mined. . . Canadian ambassadors have played a commercial relations management role between the companies, the respective state, and Canada itself.
In total, 22 large-scale projects operated by 20 companies across Argentina, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Peru are considered in the report, which was written by the “Work Group on Mining and Human Rights in Latin America” formed four years ago by six civil society organizations from Latin America and one in the USA, and with whom 28 more Latin American organizations collaborated. It concludes with a series of recommendations to the IACHR, Latin American host countries, and Canada itself – including one that Canada abandons providing any kind of support aimed at making legal systems more flexible in order to promote mining investments to the detriment of human rights, and that it implements measures to ensure that Canadian mining firms comply with the international human rights treaties binding on both Canada and countries where such firms operate.
“The financial and political support that Canadian mining companies receive from the authorities of their home state, along with the absence of solid institutions and adequate regulatory systems in the host states, are key elements of the current pattern of human rights violations derived from this extractive industry in Latin America,” says Daniel Cerqueira, from the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF), one of the Work Group members.
“Canada has been able to influence a weak Peruvian state which, ever since the Fujimori government in the 1990s, has loosened all the legal frameworks in order to attract investment,” says Javier Jahncke from the Peru-based Red Muqui, also in the Work Group. According to Jahncke:
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2014/may/14/canadian-mining-serious-environmental-harm-iachr