GENEVA (8 July 2019) – Industry’s extraction of natural resources routinely inflicts acute human rights violations on
racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalised groups, said the UN’s human rights expert on
racism.
In her report to the Human Rights Council on racial inequality and discrimination concerns arising from global
extractivism, Special Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume says “powerful States – including those that have yet fully to
reckon with their colonial extractivism legacies – must commit to undoing the structures of subordination and inequality
that persist” in the extractive economy. This economy includes mineral and fossil fuel extraction, and monocultural
large-scale agricultural, forestry and fishery operations.
The UN expert connects the contemporary extractive economy to the racially discriminatory history of colonial
extractivism.
“Powerful States and their transnational corporations, and the political elites of weaker States that are territories of
extraction, emerge as the clear winners… the scale of corporate benefit from the extractivism economy is staggering. At
the same time, those peoples who in the past were colonised on the grounds of false claims of their racial inferiority,
today continue to bear the greatest cost of the extractivism economy.”
The report says many populations including much of the global South, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples,
and other marginalised groups continue to be denied an equitable share in natural resource extraction’s development and
economic benefits. These groups are also subject to gross human rights violations, including violations of the right to
life; rights to racial equality and to be free from discrimination; to health and a healthy environment; to water; to
free speech and assembly; to participate in political processes; and to just and favorable working conditions.
The report also highlights the particular human rights abuse suffered by women, who confront unique threats, especially
where these women are also members of ethnic, racial or indigenous minorities.
Achiume noted existing reforms and continuing international progress in implementing due diligence, transparency and
human rights requirements but stressed that “the status quo does not yet place a meaningful check on the global reach of
transnational extractive companies”.
Her report urges States to centre substantive analysis of rights to racial equality, gender equality, and
non-discrimination in their reform, regulation, and evaluation of the extractivism economy.
“All participants in the extractivism economy should reject a colour-blind or gender-blind approach that ignores the
persisting structural and individualised racial discrimination in the operation of such an economy. States,
corporations, multilateral organizations and human rights actors must all take seriously the substantive approach to
racial equality articulated in the present report and work to diminish the impact that race, ethnicity, national origin
and gender have on the human rights situation of many within the extractivism economy.”