ENVIRONMENT: Dumping of Toxic Waste Affects Human Rights

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 10 1998 (IPS) - Campaigns against the dumping of toxic waste products in developing countries have a humanitarian as well as environmental angle, the United Nations Human Rights Commission declared Friday.

The resolution was based on the position – put forth by a group of African nations – that investigating the growing practice of exporting toxic wastes to poor countries fell within the jurisdiction of the Commission.

The industrialised and several developing member states argued, however, that investigations of the effects of the illicit dumping of toxic products should remain under the jurisdiction of the Basel Convention or the UN Centre for Sustainable Development.

According to Nancy Rubin, from the United States, those entities are better prepared to conduct such investigations. “We believe the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights” is not equipped to do that, she stressed.

But the Basel Convention, which regulates cross-border movements of waste products since 1992, is not concerned with human rights, responded Senegal’s Absa Claude Diallo, speaking for the African bloc.

The Human Rights Commission resolution, approved Friday with 33 votes in favour, 14 against and six abstentions, extended the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the question, Algeria’s Fatma- Zohra Ksentini, for three more years.

Ksentini’s report to the Commission pointed out that in spite of international agreements like the Basel Convention and the 1991 Bamako Convention, there has been a marked increase in flows of toxic products from industrialised to developing countries.

According to UN Environment Programme (UNEP) statistics, developed countries exported 20 percent of their waste to the developing world in 1989, Ksentini underlined.

The members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which groups the world’s most developed nations, produced more than 95 percent of the world’s dangerous waste products in the 1980s, she added.

The biggest exporters of waste products are Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Great Britain and Australia, says the report.

Toxic waste products are generally trafficked and dumped in developing countries or areas inhabited by the poor, the disinherited or people who suffer from discrimination, it adds.

The trafficking is carried out by means of fraudulent policies and is accompanied by violations of a number of rights guaranteed by international human rights instruments.

Ksentini said the disparities in the legal norms of developed and developing countries and ambiguities in international instruments encouraged exporters to seek solutions in the poorest and least industrialised countries. They also took advantage of the economic situation of African countries and other developing nations, she added.

Increased liberalisation and deregulation of international markets has favoured traffickers by making movement by transnational companies easier, thus facilitating cross-border movements of toxic waste products.

The traffickers ship the waste to developing countries after offering attractive financial incentives, and even bribing officials at times, said Ksentini.

Trafficking is also carried out under the guise of “legal” shipments. From 1989 to 1993, close to three million tonnes of waste were “legally” transported to developing countries as part of recovery programmes financed by OECD countries. The leaders in such techniques were Germany, the United States, Austria, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The Baltic states and the countries of eastern and central Europe are apparently the favourite dumping sites, followed by Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

Germany mainly ships its waste products to the Baltic states and eastern Europe, as well as to Latin America and Asia. Half of U.S. exports of waste products, meanwhile, go to Latin America, while Great Britain still appears to prefer Asia, although it is starting to diversify, the report says.

“The most demoralising example are shipments of toxic waste under the cover of humanitarian assistance,” Ksentini told reporters.

She cited the case of a shipment of “humanitarian goods” – toxic products – sent from Germany to Albania, which were apparently sent back to Germany in the end.

Ksentini was commissioned to draw up a list of countries and transnational companies that dump toxic waste products in Africa and other developing regions.