Canada Found Guilty for Role in Mining Injustices in Latin America

Canada Found Guilty for Role in Mining Injustices in Latin America

By act and by omission, the Canadian state has been found guilty for its role in human rights violations in Latin America as a result of its efforts to promote, sponsor and protect Canadian mining investments abroad.

By act and by omission, the Canadian state has been found guilty for its role in human rights violations in Latin America as a result of its efforts to promote, sponsor and protect Canadian mining investments abroad. Five Canadian mining companies were also found guilty of related crimes.

From May 31 to June 1, an expert tribunal gathered in Montreal for the first ever Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) in Canada. The PPT is an international initiative established in 1979 to give visibility to underreported human rights violations “where national and international justice systems are found to be incapable of ensuring that rights are respected.” Some forty organizations from Quebec and Canada supported this PPT session on Canadian mining in Latin America, including MiningWatch Canada.

Hundreds of mining conflicts are taking place across Latin America, many in connection with the Canadian companies that dominate the globalized industry. The PPT observed that the root of many conflicts is that mining projects tend to be “undertaken without respect for the right of self-determination of affected peoples and for the right of people to define for themselves their ways of life and their future.”

Jennifer Moore is Latin America Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada and is a contributor to the Americas Program www.cipamericas.org

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