Greetings from Basel, a hotbed of business and human rights activity!

That’s not true, unless you count my barren office corner as a hotbed. I just wanted to write and let everyone who has been so supportive of NomoGaia know that I’m not just slacking off while I’m out here, and neither is the rest of the Nomogaia team. Since I wrote from Bolivia, NomoGaia has become the proud employer of zero paid employees. My student stipend is supported by Newfields (a consulting firm out of Atlanta – they literally wrote the book on Health Impact Assessment), so Nomogaia can now dedicate all of its funds to projects. This is great, since we have plenty going on. Mark has been advising the global oil and gas industry association, IPIECA on human rights standards, going back and forth between the US and London. I had the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar on human rights impact assessment for Business and Social Responsibility (BSR) and helping John Ruggie’s new organization, Shift.org, organize thoughts on field-based experiences with HRIA to help their corporate clients. Blair has been busy finalizing one last trip to Bolivia and starting work on an HRIA of a fish farm in Chile. She also coordinated the translation of a summary of the HRIA methodology into six languages, which are all available online now at nomogaia.org and at business-humanrights.org.

I head back to the UN (a train ride away, in Geneva!) early next month to follow up on advances in the field. If all goes well, we’ll be back in Bolivia, Uganda and Chile before March of next year. The photos and emails will be more exciting then!

Author: Kendyl Salcito, executive director, NomoGaia

Kendyl Salcito developed her expertise in human rights and business as a foreign reporter in Southeast Asia and North America. She has advised industry groups on corporate human rights performance and contributed to the development of the UN’s Guidance Principles for Human Rights and Business.

Hi! This isn’t just me being a bad photographer. This is me taking a shot of (foreground) the roof of the jewelry-making factory we’re assessing. They buy gold from Newmont mines in Nevada, import it to this factory (really, all the checkerboard corrugated metal roofs you see in the foreground) where Bolivians make jewelry, and then ship it back to Wal Mart for the Love, Earth line of “socially responsible” jewelry. In the background, left, you can see La Paz creeping up the surrounding mountains. In the background, right, you can see Mt. Illimani, which is an awesome peak.

It’s a national holiday here, though, so we’ve spent more time watching revelers than interviewing rightsholders. Please note this gentleman’s approach to being in the parade and overlook my inability to take a clear photograph.

We’re not just messing around down here. Even though it’s a holiday, the markets are full. We’ve been interviewing every jewelry-maker we can find to get a grasp on the industry.  Bolivian women (and some men) have been making jewelry in La Paz for at least 4 decades, but it used to be a household/family activity. Now factory setups have sprouted (of course). The workers are allegedly treated poorly, though we haven’t been able to verify that yet. El Alto (below), the sister city of La Paz, is a million-person town with the fastest growth rate in Bolivia. There’s money there (see fancy house, left; giant cell phone company advertisement, right; paved roads, center) but crushing poverty, too. Newcomers struggle to find work and take anything they can get.

One awesome jewelry maker has offered to let Blair come visit her home next weekend and see how her jewelry is made. She made these earrings, which I now own. We’ve been procuring a lot of jewelry in these conversations, because it seems horribly rude to take up 45 minutes of a vendor’s time and not buy anything.

The central government called national intelligence in Buliisa to tell them I’m no longer invited to the district. I’m being sent back to Kampala. Apparently the national research council was wrong when they said I could travel here without permit letters.

Sigh.

Parting shots from Buliisa below.

– A young aspiring lineman. He demonstrates the malnutrition that’s  neglected in the area. Reports of “excellent nutrition” in Buliisa observe that there is cows milk and fish for protein but don’t account for the fact that children are not generally fed these items. Fish sells for higher prices in Hoima and Kampala, so it is transported to cities rather than eaten locally.

– Football. The guys with shoes weren’t nearly as good as the
barefoot guys. An excellent match.

– Bicycles under a schoolyard tree

– Secondary school children who told me about their families

– Sunrise in Buliisa

– Smiling child (the gratuitous ‘adorable African children’ shot)

– Parliamentarian’s house. Has he been active in parliamentary
discussions of oil? Curiously, no, but he recently built a very nice
house. Speculation is rampant.

– Annette and her 4th child. Annette is educated and savvy, and she is hoping for a job with the oil companies.

Despite being forbidden from moving around town for the past two days, I had a bevvy of interesting conversations with folks who have come through the Parish for various reasons.

I spent the day in Kabaale, where residents were told last Thursday that they’d be evicted to make way for an oil refinery. No word on when, so keep going about your daily lives as if we’re not going to take away your ancestral lands and inadequately compensate you.

Kabaale is the same town where a powerplant *might* be planned (to be built by a Norwegian company). They’re like Russian Dolls: the powerplant is a microcosm of the refinery, which is a microcosm of oil development in general.

Powerplant: when surveyors started demarcating land, locals hadn’t been informed. In terror, they started looking for answers (from local leaders, regional leaders, oil companies) and got none. So they rioted in the streets (street) of Kabaale, looking for the regional leader’s head or some information. What they got was an “office” in town only occasionally staffed and an announcement that when the land was needed people would be updated. 2 years later, no updates, but there are rumors the power plant is not going to happen. No one knows who was planning to build the power plant.

Back across town, where people were just informed their land would soon become a refinery, no one rioted, because when the minister of energy, the district police commissioner, the military and a bunch of other big men from kampala showed up to announce the plans, they threatened to “use force” against anyone who attempted to “sabotage” the refinery plans. People don’t know what, exactly, that means, but when four LCs (local government leaders) banded together to prevent surveyors from traipsing through property (and breaking crops), the government responded by sending the military to help with the land staking process.

Speaking of land, I spent part of the afternoon with a landowner whose acreage will be taken for the refinery. He asked government officials about compensation rates and was told they hadn’t been set. He tried to sell his land but no one will buy it, because they know the government compensation rates will be low. AFIEGO (a remarkably brave Ugandan NGO) told the people to ask the government to rent their land from them, that way after the oil stops in 30-40 years, they can have their property back, and along the way they can have an annual income from it. The government replied no, they don’t have the money to rent the land (but they have the money to buy it?) and no, no one can apply for titles to their land now – it’s too late, it has already been designated for the refinery.

The heavy-handedness is being used not just to prevent protest, but also to actively prevent people from pursuing what is rightfully theirs (namely, title and adequate compensation).

Here’s another issue. As one woman described it, “Water is painful in Kabaale.” In the dry season the boreholes run dry by midday, so resourceful people show up early, fill a bunch of jerry cans and sell them for 1000 shillings per jerrycan (roughly $0.50). With water that scarce, the refinery better have a pretty awesome plan for sourcing water. If they touch the local aquifers everything will be a mess. The people who are currently doing what the government says out of fear will have nothing left to lose.

There’s one other thing. No one would talk to us in Kabaale town. The people who were sitting in the shop where we bought a coke all left when we arrived. A group of men loitering under a tree stared at us every time our car went by. A slender old man whispered to a shopkeeper to find out why we were here (he used Kiswahili, and he called us fools). People wouldn’t even let children hang around and stare at the white girl. People ALWAYS let kids stare at the mzungu. Jonathan, who might be a paranoid crazy person or might be 100% right, kept pointing out people and assuring me they were security. There’s a rumor (unconfirmed) that the government is using cattle herders to spy on people. This could seriously just be racism, but it could also be true. One herder was found with a pistol on him (don’t know how that came to pass), and the herders relocated to the oil area made no complaints when the government once again resettled them off of the oil area. I tend to think it’s a far-fetched conspiracy theory, but Museveni most definitely has spies in the oil area (one local expert says the government knows every time she goes to the oil area, even when she goes unannounced). And it really doesn’t matter whether it’s true – it’s the kind of thing that will exacerbate tensions between cultures.

From a human rights perspective, any company that sends oil to this refinery is complicit in civil and political (and property) rights violations. Risks to health, environment and water are possible but unknown and, to date, totally understudied. It would take an extremely proactive company to invest significant human and financial resources in the area to ensure that its activities could not be considered complicit in mistreatment. While oil contracts and production agreements languish in parliament, such investment is not visible out here.

Tomorrow, Kaiso/Tonya. I’m nervous that the community will be closed off like Kabaale. If so, that’s a story in itself, but it doesn’t get me much information.