News:
April 17, 2023
Coordinator of the Friend of the Earth (FoE) Africa, Madam Rita Uwaka has disclosed that they would engage Community lawmakers who represent the various member states in the West African sub-region as part of addressing issues of human rights abuses.
FoE African made a presentation at the May & June 2022 Ordinary Session of the Community Parliament in Abuja.
FoE Africa – a non-governmental environmental organization which operates in 72 countries around the world with 11 countries in Africa, (of which the West Africa sub-region is one) to check abuse and other human right violations by multinational companies operating on the continent, made a presentation at the May & June 2022 Ordinary Session of the Community Parliament in Abuja
In an interview with journalists after a three days training in Ghana which saw participants from Cameroon, 
Tanzania, Togo, Liberia and Ghana, the coordinator of FoE Africa noted that they have identified significant number of human rights violations, social, environmental and gender impact issues in communities and countries like Nigeria , Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.
And it’s something that member states governments see as development opportunities, and they have the opportunities to expose these human right violations; and they are determined to take this fight to the ECOWAS lawmakers and journalists to make a case to national governments.
She further admonished national governments not to see the workings of these multinationals as development opportunities since they rather destroy lands and the forest which contribute to climate crises, biodiversity crises, food crises, and care crises because Africa is facing a lot of multiple crises.
“A lot of us do not understand the implications of these things. We, as civil society organisation and a regional body that is concerned of our environment, the right of forest dependant, the indigenous people and local communities, women are victims of these dangerous eco-businesses”.
Again, there are wrong definitions being sold out to member states governments by the foreign cooperation’s, and added that one cannot deprive people of their resources and turn to say there are development, “when you take away their ancestral lands?”
“We are not only facing colonialism as Africa, we are now facing agric pro-colonialism where our forests have come to their knees for the takeover of plantations; they are not for public good but taken over by private interest to feed international market and they constitute a lot of environmental nuisance because they cause a lot of agro toxins that flow through our forests, water bodies that our communities depend on for their daily survival. Our water bodies, surface water, soil pollutions were not seeing all kinds of diseases which has become prevalent as a result of forests being cut down”.
She further pointed out that of these diseases, we did not see all these when our forests were there and not touched but we are now seeing all these bad weather pollutions now that corporations have become more influential they are backing bad practices and policies on the ground and they are mobilizing our government against our people.
And sub Committees whose areas of work is connected to issues that we talk about, a lot of our forests have been cleared; our land, soil have been grabbed by multinational corporations and most of them are oil palm plantation and rubber plantations. There are unregulated lobbying practices especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, part of Nigeria, Ivory Coast; and in Ghana there are international syndicates engaging in illegal timber trade and pollution of forest mangroves, she stated.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com