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Article

12 Jun 2018

Author:
The International Service for Human Rights (Switzerland)

Mauritania: Workshop presents tools to document & resist attacks to defenders from Africa, working on business & human rights


"NGO Forum | Human rights defenders working on businesses face specific risks in Africa", 11 June 2018

On 24 April, during the NGO Forum preceding the 62nd session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, ISHR in collaboration with ...BHRRC...and the Pan African Network of Human Rights Defenders, organised a workshop [that] gathered 24 defenders working mainly on human rights issues related to the work of businesses all over Africa. The aim was to outline the attacks they face; to present tools created to prevent, address and remedy such attacks; to document relevant cases; and most importantly, to share experiences of countering attacks in order to deepen collaboration regionally and internationally. At the start..., participants were asked to identify the economic sectors they considered to be the deadliest for human rights defenders in Africa. They almost unanimously identified the mining sector, followed by oil, gas and coal and thirdly agribusiness...The presentation...highlighted the tools created by the BHHRC [such as the] database of attacks and a documentation checklist used to fill out the database. The presentation...also underlined positive attempts by some businesses, investors and industry associations to take action in defence of defenders, such as the recent statements by the International Council on Mining and Metals and the Investor Alliance for Human Rights...