People's Health Tribunal Veredict

The People's Health Tribunal convened on Saturday 13th May. Communities across the globe came together to hear testimonies from those facing the brutal human and environmental right violations of Total and Shell. DemocracyNow! covered our disruption of the African Energy Summit as we brought the voices of the testimonies, from Niger Delta to South Africa, directly to these oil companies.

Through a comprehensive evaluation of these testimonies, an international judging panel of environmental justice movement leaders, including Nnimmo Bassey, Jacqueline Patterson, Dimah Mahmoud and Kanahus Manuel, have released their verdict. The judges unequivocally declared Shell and Total’s operations in Africa guilty of perpetrating activities that are "extremely harmful to the livelihoods, health, right to shelter, quality of life, right to live in dignity, quality of environment, right to live free of discrimination and oppression, right to clean water, and right to self-determination of the impacted communities." The verdict also finds the companies’ actions amount to effective genocide and ecocide.

You can read the full verdict here!

The demands of the verdict target these companies, relevant governments, multilateral institutions and also recommendations for movements. We demand the implementation of full reparative justice for these communities, including:

• Compensation for affected persons and clean-up of toxified ecosystems;
• The restoration of land rights and an end to the criminalisation of land defenders;
• An end to new exploitation and the phase out of existing fossil fuel infrastructure;
• Reparations for the climate crisis;
• The initiation of proceedings under the international criminal court.