Rio + 20 missed an opportunity to bolster human rights

A further update on the Rio +20 summit on human rights. Once again, this article has been taken from the Human Rights Watch website.

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Rio + 20 Missed an Opportunity to Bolster Human Rights
Business, government and development agencies should combat discrimination, which can drive poverty and conflict

"They come every day … four or five cars usually – 20 to 60 soldiers. They say, 'We need this land for sugar, so you shouldn't be here' … We say, 'We don't want [sugar]', but that is not the right answer. They hit us or they take us to jail."

These are the words of a Mursi man, an indigenous pastoralist in southern Ethiopia, describing to Human Rights Watch how he and his community have been forced to move from the Lower Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia to make way for sugar plantations.

The rights of these indigenous people to be consulted and give their free, prior and informed consent before relocation were cast aside. Instead, local government and security forces carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions, used physical violence, and seized or destroyed the property of indigenous communities. More forced evictions in the Omo Valley are threatened in the near future.

In a speech in Jinka, the capital of the South Omo region, in January 2011, Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, said: "Even though this area [the Lower Omo] is known as backward in terms of civilization, it will become an example of rapid development." This is just one example of a government misusing development goals as an excuse for sacrificing human rights.

View the rest of the story here.