15 October” 2012
Concluding a three day meeting in Phnom Penh convened by the Indonesian Human Rights Commission” with the support of RRI Partner Forest Peoples Programme” SawitWatch and the Community Legal Education Center of Cambodia” the South East Asian Human Rights Commissions called for action to protect communities and indigenous peoples from the expansion of agribusiness.
The meeting was a follow up to the Bali Declaration on Human Rights and Agribusiness. Their appeal is targeted at national governments to reform their laws so they protect human rights and require businesses to uphold human rights standards. They also called on the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights to remedy the problems resulting from the proliferation of transboundary agribusiness investments and operations in the region. They appealed to the Cambodian Government to resolve the long standing land conflict in Koh Kong Province between a Thai-Taiwanese sugar plantation company and local people and to the European Union and the sugar importers Tate and Lyle and the American Sugar Refining Company to investigate the continuing human rights violations.