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Justice Comes to Those Who Wait
JUNE 12, 2009Eazibee, HappyNews ColumnistA very positive milestone has been reached in the name of environmental justice, as reported in Nigerian newspaper This Day. www.thisdayonline.com
For more than a decade, the Ogoni tribe in the Niger Delta has struggled to protect their land and their people from the damage done by local oil exploration and extraction. In the 1980s and 1990s, local protesters - many of them targeting their ire at Shell as the major corporation operating in the region - had some success in attracting international attention, but were then suppressed by Colonel Sani Abacha's military regime.
Ultimately, several protesters - including local leader Ken Saro-Wiwa - were tried and hanged, all as Shell turned a blind eye. Indeed, many have postulated that Shell gave a helping hand to the Nigerian authorities... We may never know the details.
However, the families of the protesters have now secured something of a victory, following a 13-year attempt to take Shell to court under an ancient US federal law, now winning an out-of-court settlement of $15.5m. Saro-Wiwa's son and other plaintiffs will use some of the funds to establish a community trust for the Ogoni, which will support projects in areas such as education, agriculture and small enterprise development.
It's not a huge amount of money, but it will help. Perhaps more important are the ramifications of this case across Nigeria and globally, as the concept of corporate social responsibility is reinforced and multinationals are shown not to be above the law. This is Saro-Wiwa's legacy.Read the story from "This Day Online": www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=145716
Read the story on Reasons to be Hopeful: http://reasonstobehopeful.blogspot.com/2009/06/environmental-justice-comes-to-those.html
Eazibee hails from the UK but now lives in New York, where she works as a consultant - focused on health and environmental issues in developing countries - alongside raising a young family. She devotes any free time she has left to screenwriting and blogging. Reasons to be Hopeful is her principal blog, which she started in October 2007 in an effort to counter the negativity dominating the mainstream newswires. She aims to capture good news from across the world, reflecting the positive experiences of many different communities. Please feel free to send any good stories you come across to eazibee(at)gmail.com.
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