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For Immediate Release
March, 19 2013, 09:56am EDT
Contact:
IN THE US: Jeff Conant, Friends of the Earth US +1- 510 900 0016
IN THE UK: Almuth Ernsting, Global Forest Coalition/Biofuelwatch (UK) +44 -131-6232600
IN GERMANY: Knud Vöcking, Urgewald e.V. (Germany) +49-171-2832408
World Bank Must End Support fo Honduran Palm Oil Company Implicated in Dozens of Murders
Today several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) condemned a statement by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, IFC [1] which defends the record of a Honduran palm oil company, Grupo Dinant, implicated in dozens of murders as well as other human rights abuses. The IFC statement explicitly admits to supporting training for the company's armed security guards.
WASHINGTON
Today several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) condemned a statement by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, IFC [1] which defends the record of a Honduran palm oil company, Grupo Dinant, implicated in dozens of murders as well as other human rights abuses. The IFC statement explicitly admits to supporting training for the company's armed security guards.
The NGOs are : Friends of the Earth International, Global Forest Coalition, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Urgewald, Rights Action, Rettet den Regenwald/Rainforest Rescue, Global Justice Ecology Project, and Biofuelwatch.
A World Bank Ombudsman [2] is currently investigating an IFC loan of $30 million for Grupo Dinant which was approved in 2009, at least half of which has already been disbursed.
This month, an Open Letter by 17 NGOs [3] and an international petition signed by over 63,000 people [4] have protested the loan and called on the World Bank to immediately cease their support for Grupo Dinant.
Since 2009, international human rights bodies have documented dozens of murders of peasant activists and their supporters in connection with land conflicts involving Grupo Dinant, the company's armed security guards and Honduran military and police.
The evidence includes a fact-finding mission report by international human rights organisations in March 2011, a hearing before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in October 2011, an international public hearing on human rights in the region in May 2012 [5] and a report about human rights abuses attributed to military forces in the region by Rights Action, published this month [6].
The recent Rights Action report confirms that at least 88 members and supporters of peasant movements have been murdered in targeted killings in the Bajo Aguan Valley over the past three years. It documents the direct involvement of Grupo Dinant's armed security forces in the violence against peasant movements. Contrary to the World Bank's claims that the violence ended in 2012, two peasant activists were found tortured and murdered in February 2013. [7]
Annie Bird from Rights Action says: "It is a serious indictment of World Bank's role in Honduras's land conflicts that their International Finance Corporation admits to directly engaging with the training of Grupo Dinant's paramilitary 'security guards'. It is not clear whether this engagement is a response to concerns over human rights abuses but retraining paramilitaries implicated in killings is never an acceptable response. The World Bank must cease such engagement and stop supporting Grupo Dinant at once."
Almuth Ernsting from Global Forest Coalition and Biofuelwatch adds: "The World Bank's claims that killings are being investigated by Honduran courts with full cooperation from Grupo Dinant contradict the findings of human rights missions which show a state of total impunity surrounding those murders. Such a state of impunity has been confirmed by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries. Not only must the World Bank cancel its loan but there needs to be a full investigation into their role in human rights abuses in Honduras."
In 2011, the German development bank, DEG, cancelled a loan for Grupo Dinant due to the company's involvement in serious human rights abuses.Yet the World Bank continues to back the company and dismiss all independent evidence, as their recent statement shows.
Jeff Conant from Friends of the Earth US adds: "The World Bank's statement on Bajo Aguan reveals the extent of their complicity with a palm oil company implicated in some of the most serious human rights abuses in Central America today. Years after a damning audit of their palm oil funding and a supposed overhaul of their policies, the World Bank is legitimising the use of armed paramilitaries in land conflicts against peasants who are trying to reclaim their own land, dismissing a vast volume of evidence from independent fact finding missions."
The NGOs demand cancellation of the World Bank's loan to Grupo Dinant and an immediate full and independent investigation into the World Bank's involvement with Grupo Dinant, which must go beyond the remit of the current Ombudsman investigation.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
As Trump Doubles Down on Fossil Fuels, Courts Let Offshore Wind Projects Resume Construction
"The unilateral court victories are evidence of what we've known all along—Donald Trump has it out for offshore wind, but we aren’t giving up without a fight," said a Sierra Club senior adviser.
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While President Donald Trump's administration on Monday again made its commitment to planet-wrecking fossil fuels clear, a Republican-appointed judge in Washington, DC dealt yet another blow to the Department of the Interior's attacks on offshore wind power.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, issued a preliminary injunction allowing the developer of the Sunrise Wind project off New York to resume construction during the court battle over the department's legally dubious move to block this and four other wind farms along the East Coast under the guise of national security concerns.
Lamberth previously issued a similar ruling for Revolution Wind off Rhode Island—which, like Sunrise, is a project of the Danish company Ørsted. Other judges did so for Empire Wind off New York, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia, and Vineyard Wind off Massachusetts, meaning Monday's decision was the fifth defeat for the administration.
Ørsted said in a Monday statement that the Sunrise "will resume construction work as soon as possible, with safety as the top priority, to deliver affordable, reliable power to the State of New York." The company also pledged to "determine how it may be possible to work with the US administration to achieve an expeditious and durable resolution."
Welcoming Lamberth's decision as "a big win for New York workers, families, and our future," Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul stressed that "it puts union workers back on the job, keeps billions in private investment in New York, and delivers the clean, reliable power our grid needs, especially as extreme weather becomes more frequent."
Despite the series of defeats, the Big Oil-backed Trump administration intends to keep fighting the projects. As E&E News reported:
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers reiterated in a response Monday that Trump has been clear that "wind energy is the scam of the century."
"The Trump administration has paused the construction of all large-scale offshore wind projects because our number one priority is to put America First and protect the national security of the American people," Rogers said. "The administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue."
The Interior Department said it had no comment at this time due to pending litigation.
Still, advocates for wind energy and other efforts to address the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency are celebrating the courts' consistent rejections of the Trump administration's "abrupt attempt to halt construction on these fully permitted projects," as Hillary Bright, executive director of the pro-wind group Turn Forward, put it Monday.
"Taken together, these five offshore wind projects represent nearly 6 gigawatts of new electricity now under construction along the East Coast, enough power to serve 2.5 million American homes and businesses," she noted. "At a time when electricity demand is rising rapidly and grid reliability is under increasing strain, these projects represent critically needed utility-scale power sources that are making progress toward completion."
"We hope the consistent outcomes in court bode well for the completion of these projects," Bright said. "Energy experts and grid operators alike recognize that offshore wind is a critical reliability resource for densely populated coastal regions, particularly during periods of high demand. Delaying or obstructing these projects only increases the risk of higher costs and greater instability for ratepayers."
"After five rulings and five clear outcomes, it is time to move past litigation-driven uncertainty and allow these projects to finish the job they were approved to do," she argued. "Offshore wind strengthens American energy security, supports domestic manufacturing and construction jobs, and delivers reliable power where it is needed most. We need to leverage this resource, not hold it back."
Sierra Club senior adviser Nancy Pyne similarly said that "the unilateral court victories are evidence of what we've known all along—Donald Trump has it out for offshore wind, but we aren't giving up without a fight. Communities deserve a cleaner, cheaper, healthier future, and offshore wind will help us get there."
"Despite the roadblocks Donald Trump has tried to throw up in an effort to bolster dirty fossil fuels, offshore wind will prevail," she predicted. "We will continue to call for responsible and equitable offshore wind from coast to coast, as we fight for an affordable and reliable clean energy future for all."
Allyson Samuell, a Sierra Club senior campaign representative in the state, highlighted that beyond the climate benefits of the project, "we are glad to see Sunrise Wind's 800 workers, made up largely of local New Yorkers, get back to work."
"Once constructed, Sunrise Wind will supply 600,000 local homes with affordable, reliable, renewable energy—this power is super needed and especially important during extreme cold snaps and winter storms like Storm Fern," Samuell said in the wake of the dangerous weather. "Here in New York, South Fork has proven offshore wind works, now is the time to see Sunrise, and Empire Wind, come online too."
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A reportedly withdrawn proposal from the US government contractor behind the "Alligator Alcatraz" concentration camp for immigrants in Floridawe to secure a seven-year monopoly on new trucking in the Gaza Strip was blasted Monday by critics accusing President Donald Trump of genocide profiteering.
The Guardian reported in December that Gothams LLC submitted a plan to the White House that would have guaranteed the monopoly and 300% profits from a contract to provide trucking and logistics for Trump's so-called Board of Peace in the obliterated Palestinian exclave.
The Austin-based company was previously known for being a leading recipient of no-bid contracts in Texas and for securing a $33 million deal to help run the South Florida Detention Facility, better known as Alligator Alcatraz, where detainees and human rights groups have described abuses including torture, inadequate and maggot-infested food, inability to bathe, flooding, and denial of religious practice.
Although Gothams LLC founder Michael Michelsen told the Guardian that he had withdrawn the Gaza proposal due to security concerns, critics contend that the story shows how Trump's Board of Peace is, as Center for International Policy vice president for government affairs Dylan Williams put it, "a vehicle for massive exploitation and corruption."
"Trump’s family and associates are poised to make billions at the expense of US taxpayers and Palestinian rights and lives," Williams said.
Ken Fairfax, who served as US ambassador to Kazakhstan during the Obama administration, said Monday on Bluesky, "As Trump continues to spread chaos, the constant graft by him and his buddies remains the only entirely predictable aspect of his rule."
"A built-in 300% minimum profit margin plus a guarantee of an absolute monopoly on all trucking for seven years," Fairfax added. "All for Trump's cronies."
my god, forget 19th-century colonialism, this is 17th-century colonialism. it's hard to shock me these days but "using genocide and the resulting famine to secure a royal colonial monopoly on trucking" is really somethingwww.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
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— Henry Snow (@henrysnow.bsky.social) February 2, 2026 at 9:45 AM
US weapons-makers made billions of dollars arming Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, and sources told the Guardian that US contractors are now vying for a share of the estimated $70 billion Gaza reconstruction action.
“Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this,” said one contractor familiar with the process. “People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they’re trying to get, you know, rich off of it.”
One year ago, Trump said that the United States would "take over" and "own" Gaza, which the president vowed to transform into the "Riviera of the Middle East." He later walked back his remarks, even as plans for US domination of the strip circulated.
Private equity billionaire and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner recently unveiled plans for a "New Gaza" replete with offshore fossil fuel production, luxury apartments, and industrial parks.
"It could be a hope, it could be a destination, have a lot of industry and really be a place that the people there can thrive, have great employment," Kushner said last month as Israeli forces continued their assault on Gaza that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023.
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Addressing Gothams' initial proposal, Charles Tiefer, an expert on federal contracting law who was a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Guardian on Monday that “there’s never been a US government contract that had triple returns on capital, not in 200 years."
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"The fundamental right to go to school and the basic principle of human dignity has been ripped away from our children, our staff, and our families," said the superintendent of the school district in suburban Fridley.
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Teachers slipping to work under cover of darkness. The windows of a school building papered over to stop onlookers from peering in. Classrooms more than half-empty in an eerie echo of the pandemic five years ago.
These are just a few of the scenes that have been reported out of Minnesota schools in recent days amid President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," which has flooded Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding towns with immigration agents who school officials say have left the area feeling like an occupation zone.
As the Twin Cities have reeled from agents' fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, agents with agents with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—including Border Patrol—have been documented detaining, harassing, and in some cases brutalizing students, including US citizens and others with legal status.
The Trump administration has reversed the Biden-era guidance that forbade immigration raids at "sensitive" locations, including schools, churches, and hospitals.
According to the New York Times, "School officials in the Twin Cities say federal agents have appeared at bus stops, and showed up at people’s homes at times when they are coming and going from school."
Some school districts across the state have moved to an e-learning option to accommodate the growing number of students who are too afraid to come to school for fear of being taken by agents.
Minneapolis School Board Chair Collin Beachy told Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul that 6,500 students in the district of around 29,000 had opted to learn remotely on the first day it was offered, which was the Monday after agents were recorded handcuffing staff members at Roosevelt High School before blasting students with chemical irritants.
At one Minneapolis charter school profiled on Monday by the Los Angeles Times, which was left unnamed due to fear of reprisal from the Trump administration, fewer than half of the 800 students, who are nearly all Black or Latino, now report for class in person. Three other charter schools have shut down in-person learning entirely.
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Green craft paper covers the bottom of many first-floor windows so outsiders can’t peer in. A notice taped outside one door says unauthorized entry is prohibited: “This includes all federal law enforcement personnel and activities unless authorized by lawful written direction from appropriate school officials or a valid court order.”
"Three students have been detained—and later released—in recent weeks," the LA Times said of the school its reporters visited. "Two others were followed into the school parking lot and questioned about their immigration status. Several have parents who were deported or who self-deported. Latino staff said they have also been stopped and questioned about their legal status."
One student, 16-year-old Alondra, who was born in the US and is a citizen, told the paper that she and her friend had been detained shortly after school while going to purchase medication for her grandmother.
A car swerved in front of her as she entered the parking lot, and four men in ski masks got out with guns drawn. After she was forced to stop abruptly, another car full of agents rear-ended her vehicle. She said agents began attempting to break into her window and tried to blame her for the accident.
Despite showing her identification, Alondra and her friend were handcuffed and taken to a detention facility for hours. Her feet were shackled together, and she was left in a holding facility alone.
“I asked at least five times if I could let my guardian know what was happening, because I was underage, but they never let me,” she said. She and her friend were both released without paperwork about the incident. At the time of the report, she had still been unable to locate her car.
The school has undertaken protocols to protect students from raids that are "more typical of active shooter emergencies," the LA Times said:
Staff coordinate throughout the day with a neighborhood watch group to determine whether ICE agents are nearby. When they are, classroom doors are locked and hallways emptied until staff announce “all clear.” ...
If agents were to enter the building without a judicial warrant, the school would go into a full lockdown, turning off lights, staying silent and moving out of sight.
The school's executive director, identified only as Noelle, told the paper: "Our families feel hunted."
That anxiety has spread beyond the Twin Cities and into the surrounding suburbs, especially at schools with large nonwhite populations.
In the suburb of Fridley, which the New York Times visited for a report published Saturday, school administrators now escort more than two dozen staff, many of whom are international teachers, to school before sunrise each morning.
In nearby Columbia Heights, "more than two dozen parents and four students have been detained by federal agents, including a 5-year-old boy on his way home from school who was detained with his father."
That boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was released from custody this weekend by a federal judge and returned to school in Minneapolis after being shipped to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, where he became extremely ill. Since then, a measles outbreak has been reported at the facility.
In Fridley, school officials are constantly on high alert, fearing that a similar fate could befall their own students.
The school's superintendent, Brenda Lewis, spends the dismissal period circling the neighborhood, looking for agents.
Last week, she and other educators spoke at a news conference denouncing the terror that ICE had inflicted upon her students and community.
"The fundamental right to go to school and the basic principle of human dignity has been ripped away from our children, our staff, and our families,” Lewis said. “None of this is partisan. This is about children—predominantly children of color—being treated as less than human.”
Since she spoke at the conference, she said masked agents have tailed her car on multiple occasions, and that on Wednesday, they came closer to the school campus than usual. Three other members of the Fridley school board said they saw agents parked outside their homes, and another also says they were followed.
"It is my responsibility to ensure that our students and staff and families are safe, and if that means [agents are] going to target me instead of them, then that's what we need to do, and then they can leave our families alone," she told Bring Me the News on Friday. "But at the end of the day, are they trying to intimidate me to stop? Yes. Will I stop? No."
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