Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 12 December 2017 - Strasbourg

Annual report on human rights and democracy in the world 2016 and the EU policy on the matter (debate)

  Barbara Lochbihler, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, this is quite a comprehensive and good annual human rights report, and I thank the rapporteur for her work. This annual report includes strong language on the shrinking space for civil society, including the call for an EU monitoring mechanism for cases of violations of freedom of assembly and association.

Given that I have only one-and-a-half minutes of speaking time, I would like to focus on the situation of environmental rights defenders, which the annual report explicitly mentions. Their important work often goes against the interests of influential companies, and they face severe human relations by state actors as well. According to the NGO ‘Global Witness’, on average three environmental human rights defenders were murdered each week in 2015. In 2016, there were around four murders per week and this murderous trend went on this year. Almost 40% of the environmental human rights defenders killed are indigenous people.

We are glad that Lolita Chavez, a committed environmental and indigenous human rights defender from Guatemala, is one of the finalists for the Sakharov Prize this year. Environmental human rights defenders like her are under threat when they oppose the interests of corporations and governments. The sectors most affected are mining, extractive industries, agri—business, hydroelectric dams and water rights and logging. The EU and its Member States are clearly not doing enough to ensure corporate accountability and legal redress. It is time to hold accountable those European corporations who contribute to the excessive violence against those activists. I know that it is late, but still I have to say that I really regret that High Representative Mogherini is not here to contribute to this human rights debate.