Petition to European states to stop this act of genocide against Kenyans and other Africans!

We, members of the Errant Natives Movement, note with grave concern that companies in your country have continued to export to Kenya highly hazardous agrochemicals that have been killing thousands of people in the country. We note with much consternation that your governments have continued to approve the exportation of pesticides and herbicides which they have banned for use at home and in the entire European Union. Why, we ask, do your governments allow this to happen?... In this regard, we note that your countries and the United Kingdom approved the exportation of a total of 140,908 tonnes of pesticides in 2018-2019 knowing so well that they are banned from being applied in European farms or fields because of unacceptable health and environmental risks. Furthermore, we note that European corporations like the German companies, Bayer and BASF sell pesticide products locally in Kenya and other countries with active ingredients banned in the EU.

The five largest pesticide companies –including Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta – already generate more than one-third of their pesticide sales from active ingredients classified by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) as highly hazardous. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) present particularly high levels of acute or chronic hazards to humans and the environment. For this reason, many of these pesticides are no longer authorized for use in the European Union.

An Act of Genocide We condemn, in the strongest terms possible, this act of genocide. Exporting banned pesticides to Kenya and elsewhere in the Global South, has led to deaths of tens of thousands of people and externalizes the health problems and very negative environmental impacts of these hazardous substances on the most vulnerable people. This is because scientific research has confirmed the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions and harm to the ecosystem. In this regard, we note that according to the National Cancer Institute of Kenya, more than 32,000 people die of cancer each year while new cancer cases has been over 47,000. We refer to numerous studies and systematic reviews which have established a strong correlation between exposure to highly hazardous pesticides manufactured in Europe and the increased risk of developing various types of cancer. For instance, a review of cancer studies done by the National Library of Medicine, world’s largest biomedical library, found out that most studies on non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia showed positive associations with pesticide exposure. Some showed dose-response relationships, and a few were able to identify specific pesticides. In addition, children’s and pregnant women’s exposure to pesticides was positively associated with the cancers studied in some studies, as was parents’ exposure to pesticides at work. Further, many studies showed positive associations between pesticide exposure and solid tumours while the most consistent associations were found for brain and prostate cancer as well as between kidney cancer in children and their parents’ exposure to pesticides at work. In this regard, the exportation of the highly hazardous pesticides manufactured in Europe has brought not only deaths of tens of thousands of people but mass suffering in the country…