Nigeria: Amnesty International says pollution has created human rights tragedy in the Niger Delta

ABUJA, Nigeria - Amnesty International today called the situation in the Niger Delta
a “human rights tragedy,” saying that the people of the Niger Delta
have seen their human rights abused by oil companies that their
government cannot or will not hold to account.

“The Niger Delta provides a stark example of the lack of
accountability of a government to its people, and of multinational
companies’ almost total lack of accountability when it comes to the
impact of their operations on human rights,” said Audrey Gaughran,
Amnesty International’s Head of Business and Human Rights and co-author
of a major new report, Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger
Delta, released today at a press conference in Abuja.

The report examines oil spills, gas flaring, waste dumping and other
environmental impacts of the oil industry. The majority of the evidence
on pollution and environment damage gathered by Amnesty International,
and contained in its new report, relates to the operations of Shell,
the main oil company operating on land in the Niger Delta.

“People living in the Niger Delta have to drink, cook with and wash
in polluted water. They eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins
– if they are lucky enough to be able to still find fish. The land they
farm on is being destroyed. After oil spills the air they breathe
smells of oil, gas and other pollutants. People complain of breathing
problems and skin lesions – and yet neither the government nor the oil
companies monitor the human impacts of oil pollution,” said Audrey
Gaughran.

The human rights impact of pollution in the Niger Delta is greatly
under-reported. The majority of people in the Niger Delta depend on the
natural environment for their food and livelihood, particularly through
agriculture and fisheries.

“The Nigerian government is aware of the risks that oil-related
pollution poses for human rights, but has failed to take measures to
ensure those rights are not harmed. Despite the widespread pollution of
the Niger Delta’s land, rivers and creeks – and the many complaints
from people living in the region - we could find almost no government
data on the impact on humans of any aspect of oil pollution in the
Niger Delta.”

Amnesty International said that government regulation of the oil industry has been wholly inadequate.

“The Nigerian government is failing in its obligation to respect and
protect the rights of people in the Niger Delta to food, water, health
and livelihood,” said Audrey Gaughran. “Some oil companies, for their
part, have taken advantage of this government failure, and have shown a
shocking disregard for the human impact of their activities.”

There have been some recent signs of improvement, however. The
recently-established National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency
(NOSDRA) appears to have a more robust approach.

“We welcome the more pro-active approach NOSDRA appears to want to take – but it needs more resources,” said Audrey Gaughran.

“The government must address the human impact of oil industry
pollution. They have a duty to protect their citizens from human rights
abuse or harm by businesses – and they are failing in that duty.”

The organization also accused the Nigerian government of effectively
placing substantial responsibility for remedying human rights abuses in
the hands of the very actors responsible for the abuse – the oil
companies.  As a result, remedies are often ineffective.

However, in its report, Amnesty International does not lay the blame solely on the Nigerian government.

“A government’s failure to protect the human rights of its people
does not absolve companies from responsibility for their actions,” said
Audrey Gaughran. “Oil companies such as Shell are not free to ignore
the consequences of their actions just because the government has
failed to hold them to account. The international standard is not
‘whatever a company can get away with’ - there are international
standards for oil industry operations, and in relation to environmental
and social impacts, that oil companies in the Niger Delta are very well
aware of.”

“Despite its public claims to be a socially and environmentally
responsible corporation, Shell continues to directly harm human rights
through its failure to adequately prevent and mitigate pollution and
environmental damage in the Niger Delta,” said Audrey Gaughran.

Shell and other companies also do no adequate monitoring of - or
disclosure of information on - the human impacts of oil operations.
Communities in the Niger Delta frequently do not have access to even
basic information about the impact the oil industry has on their lives
– even when they are the “host” community. This lack of information
feeds fears and insecurity within communities, contributes to conflict
and fundamentally undermines human rights.

Amnesty International said that clean-up processes in the Niger
Delta frequently fail to meet any expert understanding of good
practice, with some companies negligently allowing unqualified staff to
clean up oil spills, resulting in ongoing contamination of land and
water.

Almost every community visited by Amnesty International recounted
that creeks, ponds or rivers had been damaged by oil spills or other
oil-related pollution – often more than once, leading to community
anger.

Communities and armed groups in the Niger Delta have also
contributed to the problem of pollution, by vandalizing oil
infrastructure and the theft of oil. But the scale of this problem is
not clear.

“The Nigerian government desperately wants to see an end to the
conflict in the Niger Delta,” said Audrey Gaughran. “But the poverty
and conflict that continues to scar the Niger Delta will not be
resolved until underlying causes – including decades of environmental
damage – and impunity for abuses of the environment and human rights
ends, and until the Nigerian government garners sufficient political
will and the means to deal with the oil company activities that cause
widespread damage to human rights.”

Note to editors:

On 1 July 2009 Mr Peter Voser will take over as the new Chief
Executive of Royal Dutch Shell. As the new Chief Executive he inherits
the legacy Shell’s failures and poor practice in the Niger Delta. This
legacy is – in significant part - the result of Shell’s failure to
effectively prevent and address environmental damage and pollution
caused by its operations.  Amnesty International has sent Mr. Voser a
copy of its report, and called on him to make cleaning up Shell’s
operations in the Niger Delta a top priority. As a first step – Amnesty
International has joined colleagues from the Niger Delta to ask Mr
Voser to ‘come clean’ on Shell’s impact on human rights by disclosing
critical information and making a public commitment to assessing the
social and human rights impact of Shell’s operations.