Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this keynote address at the end of the conference.
And for those of you who haven't yet met, I'm Kato Regan, the director of the Vonovia Institute.
And although this is not the time to be welcoming you, I nevertheless want to welcome you.
It's been a wonderful two days. I know I've attended quite a few of the sessions, but not been able to be at all of them.
And all of them, I think,
have been extraordinary accounts of work being done on human rights related issues in transnational human rights abuses from all over the world.
And so thank you to all of you, put so much effort into your presentations and for coming and presenting them here.
And I hope people have had an opportunity to meet and talk to people that they hadn't met before,
which is or is one of the best things about an event like this.
So I'm particularly delighted to welcome our keynote speaker and the respondent.
Both of them and I say to both of them that we've done a very wants to boast about the fact that they're
both members of our advisory council and we will be having our advisory council meeting tomorrow.
And in the audience, there are several other members of our advisory council.
I can see Rodrigo Primly and Chris Stone and Helena Kennedy, who is the founding fellow of the Bonner Vera Institute,
who without her energy and vision, we would not be here at all.
So always a great welcome to Helena when she when she visits us.
And in this address, we are going to think about the possibilities of using litigation to prevent human rights abuses,
which I think is really an unusual way of thinking.
Many people always say the problem with litigation that comes after, so we're looking very much forward to what you have to say.
Alejandro and Alejandro and Chaytor is, as you all know, the founder and executive director of the Mexico City based Pro Desk,
and we're very much look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you.
Well, good afternoon, thank you, everybody, to for coming on or staying after two or four days of a very interesting but also very long conference.
My name is Sally Hambantota. I am a human rights lawyer.
I have a round of 20 years now working on the defence of human rights in Mexico,
and I am also the founder and the executive director of a Mexican organisation called The Project of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Privacy.
And we are principally dedicated to the defence of rights to the land territory
and natural resources of agrarian communities and also indigenous communities.
And we also work for the defence of legal rights,
particularly the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining with some unions, but principally with collective of workers.
We have an integral defence methodology that includes strategic litigation, organising the strategies, corporate research,
political communication and advocacy of strategies at the national, regional and international level.
And I have to say that I am a little a little bit intimidated because it is August 4th.
No, of course. And because am because all my colleagues that are present here are amazing human rights lawyers,
also amazing academics that had been doing this work for for several years and is some.
You really sent some of my colleagues from Latin America.
They they had been a present in the history of of their own country and also having an impact very
important for the history of democracy and dignity in solo in not only in Argentina or Colombia,
but I think for for the entire continent. So for me, it's an honour being here,
just sharing some of my my analysis and my thinking and also trying to to answer the question that is set for these.
This presentation, which is how effective can how effective can be litigation for preventing human rights violations?
And I would like to start saying that the all the interesting discussions held here in the past two days AM have mentioned
it principally the obstacles and the challenges for achieving justice on the framework of business and human rights.
And im a huge part of the work.
This is, of course, identifying the the barriers and the obstacles seen in defending human rights and defending
cases where the right to land territory and natural resources are being affected,
principally for the lack of protection of the government in Mexico and also for the participation of national
corporations in what the Mexican government and other governments called the the model of development.
And that is something that I wanted to bring here, because the analysis about the obstacles and the challenge of the law in our experience
have to be link to the analysis of what is happening with the the current economic model,
a the the law and the different legal systems that are being set around the world.
We all know a is is are working principally for maintaining the status quo and the economic model,
and there is demonstrating that is not any longer a working and we have different kind of crisis.
I have, I can say in Mexico now and probably in other countries in Latin America, we are facing a huge crisis of violence in Mexico.
We have around a 43000 of people that have been disappeared in less than 10 years.
The violence against women and these horrible crime that is called the feminist side is happening every day, every day.
Nine women are being killed in Mexico only for the fact of being women with extreme violence every day in Mexico, that is happening.
Another reality that is happening in Mexico is that.
Only 11 families are the ones who have the 30 percent of the GDP.
Only 11 families and those families are the ones who are defining not only the economic future of the country,
but also the the law reforms that have to happen in order to maintain the status quo.
The mainstream is to this globalisation tend to focus on the global north.
States, governments and the actions that they take on countries from the global south.
However, in this global economy has another important stakeholder, which is the transnational corporations.
In the current model, these corporations have all the incentives to maximise their profits.
And they argue that someday under the trickle trickle down effect, profits will be distributed amongst the rest of the population.
It is no doubt that the tensions between the so so-called one percent and the rest of the population are growing everywhere.
As I was saying in Mexico is a very good example, but it's happening also in the United States and other countries.
Inequality is becoming a big problem in countries of the global north as well,
and it might be a source for discomfort that leads to the rise of nationalism, alt right governments undermining democratic institutions.
However, the situation the situation is far worse in the global south.
According to the narrative of the US national companies and the states that support their model of development,
the embarrassment of the investment from national companies in the global south countries will
mean better living and working conditions for the rest of the population in these countries.
Mexico is one of the countries with the most free free trade agreements, trade agreements signed, and it has 15.
It has the 15 biggest GDP in the world, however, and after fully embracing neoliberalism in the 1980s,
poverty rate in Mexico is more than 50 percent and it is now.
It is now proven that women and indigenous people have a pretty, pretty difficult way to escape this the so-called cycle of poverty.
It is more in in its more than 13 years at risk.
We have seen some of the effects goes by transnational corporations.
The inequality in the power relationships between workers and corporations is growing at an alarming rate.
Corporations are forcing workers to work more hours, and they are pushing the state to good retirement funds and to make labour models more flexible.
Those national employers have designed a very efficient mechanism that dilute their responsibilities regarding human and labour rights,
with the possibility offered by the global economy of relocating most of the
industries and with labour policies that promotes practises such as outsourcing,
which promotes the creation of human supply chains. Big corporations often avoid the responsibilities regarding labour rights across their supply,
their supply chains and even inside their own companies.
Furthermore, unions are losing its power to effectively defend labour human rights and in the case of Mexico.
Unions had been used extensively by corporations to to protect their own interests.
Transnational corporations are now in disparate need of land and raw materials to continue to continue the escalation of the industrial model,
and no part of the world is now safe from these predatory activities or from its dire consequences.
Communities see their land and territory threatened by corporations.
These corporations are growing smarter by the day.
They now know that the law is one tool to get away with their goals, but not the only one they can use.
They also bribe local leaderships to support the projects.
They consensually divided communities, and they accuse human rights defenders of being anti-development.
In some cases, also corporations allied with local organise in cartels, drug drug cartels and unfortunately,
human rights defenders are more there, and it is more and more complicated to find who is the guilty of these murders.
In the case of Mexico, some of these communities have been fighting for their land and territory for generations and generations.
They fought against the colonial time.
Then a 19th century Mexican liberals, liberals and then the 20th century authoritarian regime.
Unfortunately, the number of communities that succumb for the 20th century, capitalism and globalisation are on the rise.
We are now seeing the forced displacement displacement of these communities to pave the way for extractive mega-projects.
And this is being explained as mere migration from the rural areas to the cities.
Therefore, companies now accumulating through this position are taken away from communities and individual,
not individuals, not only their land and their workforce, but also their dignity.
I believe we must fight back by building what we call as basis of hope, as we call them at risk.
But how can we build them? How can we prevent the human rights violations?
In the case of the of the defence of land and territory,
this has been developing an approach which we know we now we now call a strategic prevent preventively litigation.
One of the issues we encounter was that the defence of human rights often takes a reactive approach.
In the case of the defence of land and territory, for example,
a mine is unlawfully built and then the community files a complaint asking for the mind to withdraw.
This seems logical in theory, but in countries like Mexico,
it often leads to the perpetuation of the human rights violations and the impunity of the transnational companies.
The justice system is very slow, and that gives time to the companies to continue extracting valuable resources,
damaging land and territory and maximising their profits, while at the same time communities see their rights violated.
Even when there is a decision from the court,
judges often write a ruling taking into consideration the consequences it will have on the company in their
reasoning or their in a mega project to create operations means unemployment and millions of dollars
in revenue and investments lost no matter the ecological damage or the rights of the communities to have
a fair say on the use of their land and territory that is ruling out based on human rights perspective.
And they save safeguard the corporations interests these demoralised communities and further encourage transnational
companies to continue with a strategy of acting first and then asking for permission for this game out came up with.
It's a strategic preventive litigation approach by supporting the community of Union Hidalgo in the state of Oaxaca.
The community reach out to protest for help against a wind farm from the company Pemex, which is part of the Spaniard company Renault Value.
This wind farm was built following a series of human rights violation of USIS and unlawful activities.
The company promised great benefits for the community, but they remain to be seen its disadvantage.
On the other hand, are visible.
Wind turbines are contaminating the soil and generating noise pollution, and the wind parks have de facto stopped the expansion of the community.
The three, the free transit of people through the communal lands and the use of land for agriculture and for grazing province,
started the defence of the community rights to land and territory and demonstrate the illegalities that led to the construction of the park.
However, the company doubled down on its strategy and managed to build a second park in 2017.
Unfortunately, the damage to the community had already been done.
The community of Union Hidalgo is located in the.
It's more of the one to pick a region that has always been followed her political importance for Mexico.
It's here, it is here. Logical characteristics make the region ideal for the construction of wind parks in this hat.
Attract has attracted national investors to the area.
With this in mind, province and the community realised that it wasn't a matter of whether new wind parks were going to be built in unit algo,
but rather a matter of time and detecting when they were going to be built.
For that reason for this. Started working in the community through a preventive approach.
A collective subject was strengthening the communal agrarian institution, where re-establish and communities leadership were enhanced.
In 2016, the company Electricity, the France EDF announced its intentions to build a wind farm in the community of Hidalgo and in 2017, promoters of.
I arrived at the community to emphasise the supposed benefits these new wind farm will have for the community.
This new wind farm will completely surround the community and with this situation for this decided to
intensify its work in the community and travel extensively to get as much information as possible previously.
Also, a compromise to the alternative use of law as mean to tackle these five structural problems in this case.
And as part of the judicial strategy,
the first one is the lack of access to information previously filed dozens of public information request to learn more about the project.
Furthermore, police file a complaint to court with the sole purpose of getting new information of report of the project permits,
environment permits, environment evaluations, amongst others.
This, in turn, led to the exact name of the company that wanted to build a wind farm, as well as the name of the project.
The second was the lack of effective participation of the community in the decision making process.
Provis carry out an extensive advocacy campaign with national and national stakeholders.
The community finally had the chance to speak with authorities to explain its situation and process, manage,
manage to involve other organisations such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to study the case.
The fatal one was lack of effective access to justice process gain time by feeling complaints in different courts,
with the goal of further strengthening the community to fight back.
However, I have to say Mother Nature had its say as well.
The whole region was deeply affected by an earthquake you probably remember in September of 2017,
and damages were best and the major and the major spoilers partially collapse.
This didn't stop, of course, the government and the company in their attempt to build a park,
and they tried to go ahead with a so-called indigenous consultation.
Even when the community was literally just taking their dead family from from the damages, that was terrible.
I have to say brothers and the community demanded the consultation be stopped to care for the situation and that work for some months.
In April 2018, the consultation process begun again and protests resorted to people who were born in the
community but were living in different places to file complaints in their places of residence.
This allowed for this to avoid a local court, particularly aligned with the corporations interests, and the indigenous consultation was stopped.
This was a landmark decision in Mexico, since they recognise that a consultation could be legally challenged in court while being implemented.
Therefore, not having to wait after its conclusion. The fourth reason was the asymmetrical power relations between the community and the public and
private stakeholders in favour of the wind farms process understood that the best way to return power
to the community was to make a peaceable the situation and the human rights violations committed by
the company and the public authorities who were supposed to look after the community's interests.
For this, can the community file a complaint at the national contact point in France?
This national contact point have the role of suggesting corporate actions align with the O.C.D. guidelines for multinational enterprises,
and most of the times they must be filed in the country where the human rights violation of Mexico.
In this case, however,
after a previous experience with the Mexican branch made clear that they were interesting in defending the corporations interests
and for this managed to get the complaint filed in the national contact point in France to one of the audience or hearings.
A woman leader from the community travelled to France to deal to tell firsthand
the violations that were occurring in company of lawyers with poor desk.