Benieuwd naar wat we vorig jaar allemaal uitgespookt hebben? Hier kan je CATAPA’s jaarverslag van 2019 downloaden, met onder andere een overzicht van onze activiteiten en projecten in Vlaanderen en Latijns-Amerika en onze vernieuwde missie- en visietekst!
Author: Kim Baert
Ecuador is one of the most affected countries in Latin America by COVID-19, after Brazil and Peru. At the time of writing (14 May 2020) the official figures show 30,502 confirmed cases and 2,338 deaths. These numbers are questioned from different angles, because they probably do not represent reality. Ecuador, but also other countries in Latin America, have a huge backlog in testing large parts of the population for the virus, and the death toll is expected to be much higher than indicated.
The epicentre of the epidemic in Ecuador is located in the harbour city of Guayaquil, the second-largest city in Ecuador. At the end of March, the first images appeared of corpses wrapped in plastic and left behind in streets and rubbish bins as well as images showing cardboard boxes used to store the bodies. These shocking images were shared all around the world. In March, the city counted more than 70% of all confirmed cases in the country, a number that has since fallen to 55%. Quito, the capital city (province of Pichincha) is the region hardest hit after Guayaquil, but like other parts of Ecuador has been spared of similar disaster scenarios.
President Lenin Moreno came under heavy pressure. Numerous organisations and members of the civil society wondered how the government would deal with this health crisis. After all, COVID-19 is a major challenge for a country that is already in an economic and political crisis. The towering external debt and falling oil prices place Ecuador in a particularly vulnerable position.
The huge external debt and a scheduled repayment in March 2020 led to a petition from civil society and the Ecuadorian parliament to postpone the debt repayment to be able to spend more resources on the health system. The Ecuadorian government did repay $325 million on 24 March 2020. The most important creditors are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and China. This repayment caused a lot of criticism in Ecuador because it made clear to many that the current Moreno government does not consider the health of its citizens a priority. After several negotiations between Ecuador and the creditors, other debt repayments were put on hold. Additionally, emergency financial assistance was requested from the IMF to deal with the current health crisis.
The falling oil price caused additional damage to an already fragile national economy, which is mainly dependent on oil exports. The sector has suffered quite some losses in recent months. The corona crisis, the falling demand for oil, and the subsequent conflict between Saudi Arabia and Russia, led to a fall in the global oil price and dealt a severe blow to all oil exporting countries, including Ecuador.
Moreover, the further course of the corona crisis has led to an historic event. On 20 April 2020, the oil price of the American WTI (West Texas Intermediate) fell to as much as – $37 per barrel, a price well below zero. The WTI serves as a benchmark for the oil price in Ecuador, where the same trend occurred. This negative price can be explained by a low demand for oil products and the lack of storage space to store the oil barrels.
On top of the crash in oil prices, the oil industry suffered another heavy blow with a major ecological impact. On 7 April 2020 – in the midst of the corona crisis – an oil spill caused serious damage to the northern Amazon of Ecuador, more specifically on the border between the provinces of Napo and Sucumbios.
The cause of the leak was the rupture of several oil pipelines, including the SOTE (Sistema de Oleoducto Transecuatoriano), OCP (Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados) and Poliducto Shushufindi-Quito. The rupture occurred because of erosion in the river Coca causing landslides and damaging the pipes.
The companies Petroecuador and OCP immediately announced the suspension of oil production. Now, a month later, they are increasing the production rates again even though no clear measures have yet been taken to remedy the social and ecological damage caused by the leak.
The region, where the oil spill occurred, is considered a high-risk zone. Already during the construction of the oil pipelines, environmental organisations such as Acción Ecológica and experts in geology had warned about the possible adverse ecological and social consequences. Indeed, the oil spill is considered a huge risk as its course is passing the active volcano Reventador as well as three protected national parks (Cayambe Coca, Sumaco Napo Gelaras and Yasuni). The social impact of the rupture is also significant: the spill’s course crosses populated centres and pollutes not only the Coca river but also its tributaries, leaving more than 35,000 people without clean water. A disaster that has become all the more critical during the COVID-19 crisis.
In response to the current economic and sanitary crisis, the Ecuadorian mining sector has put itself in the spotlight as the only salvation from this precarious situation. Compared to the long history of the oil sector, mining is a relatively new industry in Ecuador, although it has a similar social and environmental impact.
The government took fairly strict measures to protect public health from COVID-19 in mid-March, but they appear not to apply to everyone. The mining companies operating in Ecuador indicated that they would temporarily suspend their activities because of the COVID-19 outbreak. In practice, however, operations continued.
Moreover, the mining sector abused the quarantine measures in order to put material for further exploration and exploitation on their sites. This happened at various locations in the country. In the province of Pichincha and more specifically in the Pacto region (DMQ), a mining company used the emergency situation on 16 March to install new machinery. These developments would not have been possible under normal circumstances, due to resistance from the local population.
The mining and oil industries are considered strategic sectors in Ecuador and have therefore been given a ‘carte blanche’ to continue their operations. This provoked a lot of criticism because this way mining companies are putting local and indigenous communities at risk. According to MiningWatch Canada, mining camps pose a major risk to the further spread of the coronavirus, despite current measures. Moreover, the regions where mining takes place are often remote from adequate medical facilities and there is less access to safe drinking water. For example, the indigenous Shuar community, located in the southern provinces of Ecuador (Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe), reported that the presence of mining companies puts them in a very vulnerable position.
The two largest mining projects in the country, Fruta del Norte (gold mining) and El Mirador (copper mining), which officially started the excavation and production of gold and copper in 2019, have reduced their number of employees on-site by more than half. Local authorities in the province of Zamora Chinchipe, where the projects are located, had called for a temporary suspension of production in order to reduce transport and relocation in and out of the site. El Mirador responded to this call and in the meantime decided to focus on building a second tailings dam (‘Tundayme’) to store chemical waste. Once the corona measures are lifted, El Mirador will again increase its production to full capacity.
The recent collapse of the oil industry in Ecuador raises questions about the dependency on crude materials and the rigid adherence to non-renewable and finite energy sources. There are also concerns among environmental organisations about the rapid rise of the mining sector, which promises to lead the nation out of the crisis, but which, like the oil industry, is causing enormous damage to local communities and the environment. In the past decades, Ecuador has suffered enormous impacts because of its dependence on the extractive industry, a reality that has been confirmed once again by the current economic and sanitary crisis.
Read more about how the COVID-19 health crisis is affecting Peru, from the first Ten days of quarantine till the current situation in the Peruvian Amazon.
With literature on metal supply chains beyond trade being very limited, CATAPA’s investigation on polymetal mining in Bolivia aimed at unraveling the subnational, national and transnational actors and processes involved in mining activities. Field research was carried out in the department of Oruro, Bolivia. The fact-finding mission provides elements to assess the local implications of the global ICT industry. This helps to shape a specific meaning of what “Making ICT Fair” would mean in each part of the supply chain by providing a framework to determine labour, community, environmental and legal issues involved in this targeted context.
In Oruro (Bolivia), the supply chain for tin, silver, lead and zinc – metals that are (amongst others) required by the electronics industry for the production of its devices – involves multiple actors. Before export, minerals here are extracted mainly by mining cooperatives (beside state mines and large and small-scale private mines) and sold to local trading companies, that are therefore the first suppliers within the international supply chain of these metals. Ore minerals are then concentrated. Tin is smelted by one of the two industrial smelters located in Oruro and then exported, mostly to the USA and The Netherlands. Silver, lead and zinc concentrates are directly exported to metallurgical plants in Asia (South Korea, China and Japan) and Europe (Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain).
Investigations were conducted from extraction, processing and smelting to export. Case studies provide concrete examples of six mining cooperatives, some local suppliers, the state smelter and the main international traders active in the area. This research revealed the consequences of the lack of mandatory social and environmental quality standards that could be imposed at the relevant scales to the companies when buying these metals; and the absence of traceability criteria that could create a link between the different actors and therefore a possible “social responsibility” of the buyers towards the local actors.
The fact-finding mission aimed at collecting data on the impacts of mining in different stages of the supply chain.
The specificity of Oruro relates to the major role played by small-scale cooperatives in Bolivia’s local mining economy, as this type of mining involves a large amount of the region’s workforce. These cooperatives are indeed a system of “self exploitation” as they don’t have direct contact with the companies that are buying their minerals. If the cooperative framework implies a certain freedom for the workers (who are supposed to be associates of the cooperatives), it also leads to operations being conducted in a very traditional way, i.e often still relying on manual work, despite a relative increase in mechanization the last decenia.
At the extraction stage, cooperative workers are subjected to irresponsible safety and health conditions, the most significant being the limited protection with respirators, which leads to a number of cases of silicosis (also known as the miners’ disease, caused by silica dust in the lungs).
Cooperative miners working in the areas of the concentration process are impacted by the uncontrolled and careless use of toxic substances such as xanthate, cyanide and kerosene, which cause direct irritation of the eyes but also long-term effects for the nervous system and internal organs. Health and skin disorders are caused by working in direct contact with acids and heavy metals as well as excessive exposure to sun and dust.
Another major problem within local mining activities is the lack of long-term planning. As miners expand their mining explorations, the lack of information available can lead to dangerous situations whereby an area is accessed that had previously been marked as a “no-go-zone”.
Despite the laws for the protection of “Mother Earth” in Bolivia and the requirement (in most cases) of acquiring an environmental license prior to conducting mining extractions, all mining activities imply large environmental damages. The main impacts are mine byproducts like acid water, the mining waste dumped into open air and the discharge of the chemicals used in the concentration processes (a pH of 3 or lower is common for the water flows around mining areas).
The mining exploitations have a serious impact on agriculture nearby and downstream. The environmental consequences often force farmers to become miners since their lands are too contaminated. It is hard to calculate all the impacts on the ecosystems stemming from the many mining sites and it is just as hard to remediate.
Women in cooperative mining in Oruro are mostly elderly widows, having lost their husbands in mining or related activities, or single mothers with children. Their access to the cooperative membership is restricted because women are traditionally believed to bring bad luck inside the mines. Thus, they mainly work outside smashing discarded rocks or in other areas with less income possibilities.
The miners’ income depends on luck – either they find metal-rich minerals or they don’t. In the selling process, women are particularly tricked and paid an unfair price. Many women work informally, even outside the cooperative framework. They do not have health insurance or a pension fund. They are generally the main caregivers of their families, hence, women almost always carry the double burden of productive and reproductive work.
The environmental degradation caused by mining activities has an impact on agricultural activities, making it impossible in many areas to grow crops, raise cattle or fish. This has led to the migration of farming communities towards mining sites and cities.
The lack of capital in this cooperative model makes it difficult to sustainably manage the mining activities. The short-term perspective creates uncertainty regarding the incomes of the miners, especially in periods of low prices, but also due to the finiteness of the ore they extract.
Due to low metal prices, cooperatives may have difficulties investing in improving productivity of the mine through machinery, engineering and exploration for future ore veins. International commodity trading companies benefit from their oligarchic position by using strategies to unfairly reduce the price of minerals at the origin, a strategy which directly impacts the cooperatives – the weakest link of the chain in international trade. The cooperatives face losses as a result.
The investigations in Oruro have shown that there is a need to raise awareness on human rights violations in mining areas at State level in order to call for an improvement of their conditions. This is necessary to provide resources and controlling personnel in order to guarantee the enforcement of laws regarding the protection of “Mother Earth” and the different environmental regulations, but also for the monitoring of human rights regarding social, labour and safety standards.
Bolivia has ratified different international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which obliges States to provide “just and favorable conditions of work” (Article 23) as well as “the right of everyone to a standard of living that is adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family (…) and the right to provisions in the event of unemployment in circumstances beyond his control” (Article 25 § 1).
The 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) obliges States to guarantee “safe and healthy working conditions” (Article 7 ii b) as well as the “highest attainable standard of health” (Article 12 i).
The American Convention on Human Rights (also known as the Pact of San José) also provides protection for Bolivian miners, which foresees the right of “Just, equitable and satisfactory conditions of work” (Article 7) and “the right to health” (Article 10).
The international trade of Oruro’s zinc-silver-lead concentrates is dominated by a small group of international companies importing and reselling or smelting these minerals: Korea Zinc, Trafigura and Glencore. Even if these companies are not legally bound by the human rights treaties mentioned above, they are the core stakeholders within the chain and are responsible for these violations through a controlled fulfillment of the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD’s Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains.
Tracing the supply chain aims at shaping a more responsible framework for the relations between the global companies and their different suppliers, as part of a growing call for social responsibility of transnational corporations. This would mean, regarding the ICT supply chain, that extracted minerals which fail to meet minimal social and environmental standards can not be traded on the international market anymore.
The OECD Guide Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas specifically defines “Due Diligence” as an “on-going, proactive and reactive process through with companies can ensure that they respect human rights and help them ensure they observe international law”.
“Risks” are defined in relation to the potentially adverse impacts of a company’s operations, which result from the company’s own activity or its relationships with third parties, including suppliers and other entities in the supply chain. This very broad scope considers that International trading companies are bound to respect this due diligence obligation towards all parties involved in the supply chain, including the mining cooperatives.
Making ICT fair would require that the international metal trading companies in Oruro follow the different steps of due diligence as requested in the Guide:
In order to achieve satisfactory results for the local actors, the different stakeholders in the supply chain should become partners in a new monitored framework, where public institutions must have a role to push and control the different initiatives.
Assessed cooperatives as well as local suppliers showed clear interests in a monitored system aiming to improve the management of the supply chain, which is a starting point to be optimistic about the development of a fair and responsible ICT sector, which would need to include:
Read the full report below.
News comes and goes. With social media as the main outlet for civil society organizations in Colombia to get their stories heard, a story can be famous for a day after which it disappears in the mass information. Mines & Territory aims to register and share these stories for longer than just a viral thread. Mines & Territory collects the most remarkable events that have occurred in the past month regarding extractivist matters in Colombia and summarizes them in English so that the information is accessible to anyone interested and raises awareness internationally to the current eco-socio realities in Colombia.
Collection, summary and edition by Jonas Adriaensens, Daniela Marques, Yoline De Mol, Karlijn Van Den Broeck and Dayana Corzo.
We at CATAPA look back with pride at the 11th edition of the Open Min(e)d International Speakers Tour: the extraction of life, gold and oil. Hong Kong based speaker Lap Hang Au zoomed in on the unnessaccary poor labor conditions for workers in ICT factories in China. Yefferson Rojas Arango took us to Colombia and told us of his experience fighting the extraction of gold, a basic resource in all our ICT products, in his own hometown. And lastly, Antonella Calle Avilés put the ecological and social consequences in the spotlight of the extraction of oil in Ecuador.
Over the course of one week these three highly inspirational people toured through Flanders sharing their experiences with young and old, during fun events and interesting guest lectures they reached up to 1100 people with their stories!
Our week started at Breakfast with a Rebel, where Antonella was one of six rebels people could sit down with at the breakfast table. Over coffee and delicious vegetarian food she talked about extractivism and feminism.
Antonella was present at the very first edition of GEC Talks at the Gentian Ecological Centre, together with two other strong woman telling inspiring stories about gender equality and environmental justice.
Antonella, Yefferson and Au taught their guest lectures at KU Leuven, the University of Ghent, Arteveldehogeschool, HoGent, VIVES Brugge, the University of Antwerp and the Electronic Institute ELEC. Addressing classes of sociology, ethics, cultural history, social work, business management and many more. By the end of the week Corona countermeasures restricted our ability to visit the schools, but luckily we found creative online solutions for a couple of the lectures.
Our guest speaker Au even reached the Flemish Parliament at a conference on the Green Transition, by giving a presentation on the working conditions in Chinese factories where batteries for electric cars are made. He also was the keynote speaker during a webinar in a series directed to big buyers of ICT organised by the Fair ICT Flanders project.
All three speakers attended the network workshop Internationalisation of the Extractivism Struggle, exchanging experiences, tips and tricks on how to create sustainable and international alliances.
CATAPA is grateful for our amazing guest speakers, who were so motivated to share their stories, for their strength and determination in relation to their fight, for protesting against large companies which give too little voice to local communities and workers. This is why CATAPA organizes the Open Min(e)d tour every year, to say aloud what should have been recognized years ago and which despite today’s means of communication remains too discreet. Thanks to the help of our many Catapistas, it is possible each year to open the eyes of Flemish citizens, continue to learn that there are many alternative ways of consuming. So that together we may change.
CATAPA is a volunteer movement which strives for a world in which the extraction of non-renewable resources is no longer necessary. The extraction of such materials always entails major social and environmental impacts and fuels conflict. In working towards global social and environmental justice, we focus on mining issues (ecological disasters, human rights violations, etc.) in Latin America, where we support local communities in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia who are threatened by large-scale mining projects.
Our main activities are:
CATAPA is a grassroots movement, which means that we are mostly dependent on the work of our volunteers – the Catapistas. As a grassroots movement, we also work together with other grassroots movements in our partner countries.
Catapa is currently engaged in two campaigns at EU level and one at regional level, together with European and local partners. The main goal of these campaigns is to make the supply chain of ICT devices, which includes smartphones, laptops, etc. more sustainable and fair.
CATAPA focuses on the very first part of the global ICT supply chain: the extraction of metals and minerals. The first stage of electronic devices’ supply chain is raw materials extraction, since they contain a wide range of different metals and minerals. Extractivism causes devastating environmental impacts and human rights violations across the globe. Also the ICT production sector is characterized by inhuman and dangerous working conditions, strongly affecting workers’ physical and mental health. Both individuals and public consumers have an essential role in influencing the supply chain because they may make decisions and ask for policies that can change the current unsustainable system.
Catapa works to reach fair ICT through:
We are looking for two ESC (European Solidarity Corps) volunteers to support the CATAPA movement, and in particular the campaigns about fair ICT. One volunteer to support with Communications and one volunteer to support with the Education and campaigning areas. The volunteers will be trained to think critically and spread knowledge of these issues and to encourage other young people to become active EU citizens. The tasks are flexible depending on your learning goals and the needs of the organisation.
You will mainly be working in our office team (4 part-time staff + 2 ESC volunteers + variable number of interns) which supports the work of the movement. Since CATAPA is a volunteer movement, you will be working in close collaboration with motivated and enthusiastic volunteers.
Essential
Desirable
Essential
Desirable
This call is part of the European Solidarity Corps. It’s an European Union initiative which creates opportunities for young people to volunteer in projects abroad. This means Belgian people can’t apply for this vacancy.
The volunteer positions will start from the 1st of September, for a period of 12 months and 30 hours a week.
Please send your CV and motivation letter to communication@catapa.be before the 7th of June 2020. Please, remember to specify which one of the two positions you are applying for in the subject of the email and in your motivation letter. If you have any questions concerning these vacancies, don’t hesitate to contact us at the same email.
More information: www.catapa.be
Author: Mirna Fernández
If there is one thing which the Covid-19-outbreak has brought to the surface in a very clear way, it is the existing global inequalities. To which extent communities are able to withstand the crisis, depends a lot of their access to healthcare, sanitation and food systems.
The reality in the region of Loreto, located in the Peruvian Amazon, shows that this pandemic and its socioeconomic implications will pose severe threats to some of its most vulnerable communities.
When the first positive cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Loreto, the hospitals were already close to collapsing. The Peruvian Health Minister, Victor Zamora, announced that Loreto was facing two “big problems” at the same time: Coronavirus and Dengue.
Before the arrival of Covid-19 the region of Loreto was victim of one of the worst episodes of a dengue epidemic in the history of the region. According to the National Center for Epidemiology, Prevention and Control of Diseases (CNE), only in the first 3 months of 2020, the number of cases of dengue in Peru reached 8 times the amount of cases compared to the same period last year. Loreto has reported the biggest number of cases, with 3,925 in total, which is 31 times higher than the same period last year. This was already a heavy burden for the weak regional health care system. In the hospitals, few beds were available for the many patients that needed to be covered by mosquito nets to prevent the spread of the disease to other patients in the hospitals.
The Covid-19 outbreak disrupted Loreto, as the region doesn’t have enough beds ready to use in Intensive Care Units (ICU). The Regional Hospital of Loreto – the biggest and most equipped hospital of Loreto – has only 12 ICU beds for Covid-19 patients, of which 10 are already in use. The other hospitals in the region all together have only 9 extra ICU beds and all of them are in use already by non Covid-19 patients. This should cover a population of 884 000 inhabitants. Belgium, in comparison, has a population of 11.46 million inhabitants and 1864 ICU beds, of which 785 remain free for future patients needing Intensive Care. The fact that only 2 ICU beds remain free for the whole region of Loreto is a hard reality check.
While the pandemic is spreading in the region, everyday we hear reports from health personnel dropping out due to a lack of protective equipment. A hospital called ESSALUD had to close temporarily when 4 health workers were tested positive, and improvised health centres had to be put in place to continue the medical attention for its patients. The president of the Medical Federation of Loreto, María Huilca Chambi, pointed out the lack of biosecurity for the personnel taking the samples for Covid-19 testing. “We are putting our lives at risk”, she said.
Loreto is currently the region with the fourth highest amount of most positive cases in Peru, with 619 to date. This is the result of 2876 tests performed in the region since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the official government data. There is an obvious lack of tests, labs and equipment for the personnel’s health, which did not improve much since the beginning of the outbreak. This raises questions about the credibility and transparency of the local authorities.
Loreto does not have a diversified agricultural production, due to the hard conditions that the Amazon ecosystem poses on peasants. With mainly poor, infertile soil where crops are often suffering from erosion due to heavy rains and from different plagues, only a limited variety of crops can survive. Therefore, the region needs to import massive amounts of food, especially vegetables, from other regions of Peru.
The transportation of imported food is especially complicated for Loreto. Its main city, Iquitos, which has about one million inhabitants, is the only major city in Peru that is not accessible by road. The imported food from other regions needs to arrive either by air or by ground transportation until Yurimaguas, and from there by boat for more than 3 days. The regional food supplies reach Iquitos by boat, coming from local communities settled on the river sides.
Family agriculture produces 70% of the food supplies that are consumed in Peru. In many cases, this means that the surplus food production of small families is sent to other regions by means of passengers’ transport, which is now prohibited by the State of Emergency. The cargo transport of food supplies is allowed, and people working in the food supply sector are officially allowed to pass by regularly. However, to obtain the necessary permits with the National Police, you would need to provide certain certifications that many small producers don’t have.
Therefore, if prices of basic food in the region have increased, it is directly linked with the State of Emergency declared by the government of Peru and its transport restrictions. Basic fresh food items like eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and onions have doubled in price since the beginning of the lockdown.
Speculation is another cause of increasing food prices. There was a wave of panic among the inhabitants of the country, especially during the first days of the lockdown, so the markets and stores were wiped out of some products. The resulting demand in turn increases the prices. While the Peruvian government is trying to send positive messages to the population ensuring that there will not be a shortage of food supplies, the outcome is nonetheless that the prices of some products might take a while to stabilize after the panic-buying.
There are also very strict and inconvenient rules put in place during the State of Emergency regarding groceries shopping. In Iquitos, markets start business around 5 am and the police force the vendors to start closing by 9:30 am. The result is a major assembly of people trying to buy their food in the very early hours of the morning, which absolutely poses more risks for mass contagion.
There is no national action plan for Covid-19 focused on Indigenous Peoples, despite the demands from the largest national indigenous organization, Aidesep, and the regional organization of indigenous federations, Orpio. They demand the participation of indigenous peoples’ representatives in the planning and implementation of measures to avoid scenarios of mass contagion in the indigenous communities.
Indigenous peoples’ organizations from Loreto such as Fediquep, Feconacor, Opikafpe and Acodecospat have proposed sanitation protocols to be urgently implemented, but they are still waiting for a response from the government. Loreto compasses more than 24% of the Amazon indigenous population in Peru according to the latest national census. It is the region with the most indigenous communities in the country, which count about 1200. But in most of these communities, health posts have a shortage of supplies, even more so during this sanitary crisis.
There is only one lab in the region that can process the Covid-19 molecular tests: it is located in Iquitos. The Regional Health Director, Percy Minaya León, mentioned that his main concern is the population in remote areas and close to international borders, which includes indigenous and native communities. In these areas, the health care personnel that takes samples for example in Santa Rosa o Caballococha (near the borders with Colombia and Brasil), must travel by boat on the Amazon river for more than 12 hours and then go back to the lab in Iquitos with the samples for testing. There are not enough tests, nor enough personnel to cover these areas appropriately in terms of Covid-19 testing.
Out of fear of getting infected by the virus, several native communities took the decision to block all entrances to their territories in order to isolate themselves. They prefer not to receive any donation rather than exposing themselves to possible infection. However, not everybody is respecting their decision. There are unscrupulous merchants, hostile public officials, rapporteurs, illegal loggers and miners, uninformed military and police, and other outsiders who do not understand that their decision falls within their right to self-determination and is valid and well-founded.
There are many basic needs which lack coverage for indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon, now representing major obstacles for their wellbeing during this health crisis. According to the census for native communities conducted in 2017, only 9,8% of the indigenous population in the Amazon has access to the Internet, where they could consult the most recent prevention and protection measures. Moreover, only 25,8% of these communities have access to a public drinking water system, complicating washing hands to prevent infections.
To overcome this crisis, the national and regional governments have a huge amount of work to do, especially in these remote areas, to avoid the worst-case scenarios, in which the most vulnerable communities become infected on large scale. After the crisis it will be necessary to evaluate to which extent the government failed to meet the needs of the indigenous population during this pandemic.
You can also read more about the COVID-19 situation in Peru in our other blog post Caning, arrests and social issues: Ten days of quarantine in Peru.
DISCLAIMER:
This article was written on March 25, after the first ten days of quarantine in Peru. By now, after six weeks of quarantine, a lot has changed, of course, and there is a lot of new information known. To begin with, the Peruvian Government announced two weeks ago that they wanted to reach a number of 12.000 COVID-19 tests a day, which they have reached this week. Until now, 27.517 results came back positive. 728 People have died from COVID-19 in Peru so far. It took a long time before the virus reached Cajamarca, but now there are 127 confirmed cases here. Over the whole country, 3.765 patients are in the hospital, 545 of them on intensive care. The Government is focusing on having more beds on intensive care available for patients and is buying and constructing more ventilators that should be ready to use this week. According to official numbers, there are now 719 beds on intensive care exclusively for COVID-19 patients. This means there are now 164 beds still available over the whole country.
The quarantine that would first only last for two weeks, got extended twice already and will most likely be extended again. The Government is now evaluating whether or not some measures can be lifted from next week on, as the quarantine is still bringing a lot of questions and issues with it. Last week the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations had already registered 125 cases of rape and 14.222 cases of domestic violence during the quarantine. Nine women were killed in their own homes in less than six weeks. There are serious economic issues, as 42 percent of the inhabitants of Peru is left with no income, and many still haven’t received their corresponding help from the Government. Classes have started again online and through TV- and radio channels, although not every family has access to them. There is still no solution for indigenous villages. And how come mine workers are allowed to travel home in the middle of quarantine, but thousands of Peruvians are still stuck far away from their homes without help? A lot of Peruvians were far away from their homes when the quarantine suddenly started, and still haven’t made it back home. Various groups of people started walking extremely long distances to make it home, simply because they can’t afford to stay where they are for this long. Over 30.000 people registered for humanitarian transportation from Lima to Cajamarca. The Government of Cajamarca offers transportation to 600. How do you choose who can go home?
Peru did great responding this fast to the crisis by declaring a national quarantine. But there are still many, many issues to be resolved, that we can’t just forget. Hopefully more solutions will come up soon.
Monday marked the start of the second week of quarantine in Peru. What does quarantine imply in a country like Peru?
We escaped for a few days to a cabin in the forest, away for a while, away from the world, the crazy world that we don’t seem to understand at all these days. And when we wanted to step back into that world after a few days, it turned out to be closed for us. Peru is in quarantine. An entire country, and already almost an entire world, in quarantine.
For a while now the corona virus has the entire world in its grip. In every single conversation of the past few weeks another corona horror story came up. We’re bombarded with numbers of deaths which are difficult to grasp and which make the situation seem even more unreal, no matter how real it all is. And little by little, we pass all phases.
In general, Peru has taken the situation very seriously.
Denial, because surely the virus won’t be that much more serious than the usual flu. Doubt, because it suddenly seems to spread very quickly. Fear, because it is getting closer and closer and the measures are getting more drastic. Anger, because why are so many people still not taking it seriously?
In general, Peru has taken the situation very seriously. We spent a few days in our ’cabin in the woods’, as we jokingly called it. A few days away from the corona craze that we didn’t understand yet and seemed to still be light years away. And then you’re in the car back to the city on Sunday night when you suddenly have cell phone reception again and hear the president of the nation declaring on live television that all of Peru is going to be quarantined.
Where to, the friend behind the wheel asks, where do you want to spend the next few weeks? Do I drop you off at your mom’s or at your boyfriend’s? Because wherever you get out of the car, that´s where you’re staying.
So here we are.
On Sunday the 15th of March Peru heard the news. On Monday everyone had one last chance to relocate, before all national and international transport was put to a halt at midnight. Borders closed. Everything closed. Only supermarkets and other food stores, hospitals, pharmacies and banks are allowed to remain open.
Panic arose on Monday. Because what does quarantine mean in a country like Peru, without any form of social security?
The president promised 380 soles (about 100 euros) to every family who wouldn’t be able to make ends meet during the 15 days without work. But how do they decide which families can’t? And how do they get the money? And when exactly? Questions arose, as did the unrest.
A day without work equals a day without food.
Only after a whole week there was some news about the 380 soles. A website was launched where you could sign up for a chance to receive the allowance. That same day, officials appointed by the government went to the communities looking for families in need. Only a week later. Not hard to imagine the level of concern that flooded the population.
And rightly so. Peru is no Belgium, where most of the citizens continue to work from home. Peru is a country in which more than 70 percent of the population works in informal sectors. In which the vast majority of the population is dependent on their daily income to put food on the table. A day without work equals a day without food.
And what about all non-Peruvians in the country? Every day I see the necklace that was made by my two fantastic Venezuelan friends hanging around my neck. What about them? What about the thousands of Venezuelans in Peru who are left to their own?
Markets were flooded by panic and people that first Monday. People took whatever they could get and ran. Market vendors started to panic, prices doubled, tripled. Policemen trying to keep the peace and to arrest anyone stealing, now also had to start arresting vendors raising their prices. The chaos grew.
Waiting in line for three hours to buy eggs, only to find out they are sold out. Bosses who don’t believe in quarantine and demand employees to show up at work. Bus companies that continue to sell bus tickets, only to have the police rush in and shut everything down at the time of departure.
Tourists who don’t have a clue what is happening and go back to their hostels, some of them finding themselves in front of locked doors. Because doesn’t corona come from Europe?
And me, wanting to make use of those last hours of free movement in the evening, which was allowed until midnight. Only to find 15 soldiers blocking my way after only half a block on my bike. The quarantine is no joke.
On the second day the severity of the situation becomes even more clear to us. On Tuesday, the Ronda Campesina starts roaming the streets in the north of the country. The civilian police. The gravity of the situation sinks in in Cajamarca, where the rondas command far more respect than the police will ever do. The declared state of emergency brings back memories of the protests against the mega mining project Conga here, in which several people lost their lives.
My neighbors all got locked up for a night for playing football in the park.
On Wednesday, the government declares a ‘toque de queda’, a curfew. No one is allowed to be outside between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., no matter what. People who disobey are arrested immediately.
The following morning, social media is flooded with videos of the first violations of the rules. A man who went to take out the trash and immediately got surrounded by five police cars. To the police station. A man who got arrested, jumped out of the police car and was chased by the policemen. A man who wanted to walk his dog and got arrested right outside his front door, with on the background his wife screaming about the dog being taken away, not about her husband.
My neighbours all got locked up for a night for playing football in the park. We laugh, but the quarantine is no joke. The quarantine is serious.
And the quarantine has to be taken seriously. There are 250 intensive care beds in Peru. 250. And look at how many cases there are now. In Peru, the figure currently stands at 480. Seven people lost their lives in just a few days.
This is just the beginning. We have to fix this now, because Peru can’t cope with a crisis like the ones in Italy or Spain. Honestly, who can?
And like this Peru was the first country across Latin America to impose such strict measures. And yes, it is scary to see soldiers, police officers and farmers with firm sticks walking through the streets. It’s scary to hear the stories from the past and see how citizens are losing more and more rights and how we are slowly moving in the same direction.
But it is even scarier to realize that there is not a single hospital here in Cajamarca that will be able to save an emergency corona patient. That to gain access to a ventilator, you have to travel at least seven hours to the coast. That there are currently only 50 ventilators left in the entire country, and they will most likely all be in use by the end of this week.
It’s scary that upon calling the corona emergency number for my friend who has been sick for three weeks, we were casually told that “this would mean that she would have had corona virus for three weeks and in that case she would have been dead for a long time already, so she shouldn’t worry”. I understand that the line is overloaded, but then when will you be taken seriously? When do they test you?
In the meantime the Amazon region is facing the highest number of dengue cases in the history of Peru.
It is scary to realize that in the meantime the Amazon region is facing the highest number of dengue cases in the history of Peru, and there will not be a single bed left for the first corona patient needing intensive care.
It’s scary to realize there are several thousands of Peruvians suffering from tuberculosis who, if infected, will not survive the virus.
And it’s scary to see that more than 18,000 people have already been arrested for disregarding quarantine measures and are continuing to go out on the streets as the virus spreads.
The quarantine is serious, the quarantine is necessary, Peru has acted well. But with the quarantine a lot of issues and problems arise. And I’m not just referring to the economic problems.
For fifty percent of women and girls in the country, their home is the least safe place to be. It’s the place where they are most exposed to sexual abuse and gender violence. The first feminicide since the start of quarantine was committed in Arequipa on Monday. It barely took a week for a woman to be stabbed to death in her own home by her boyfriend. Two reports of rape have thus far been made, involving a little 4 year old girl and a 14 year old, both in their own house.
Mandatory imprisonment with your rapist, can you imagine?
The emergency line of the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations received 2,500 calls in the past week. 208 complaints were made. 38 women have already been transferred to relief centers. Prolongation of the quarantine raises difficult issues. Mandatory imprisonment with your rapist, can you imagine?
And what about the abuse of power that quarantine entails? Discrimination? Corruption?
Several officers seem to have set their own rules, forcing people to close their windows or even turn off their lights after eight o’clock, threatening with gunshots. Other policemen arrest random people on the street, because who can prove that they are actually on their way to the supermarket or that they have only been outside for half a minute?
Others will make an exception if you give them some money – how many agents accepted money when a friend’s uncle traveled seven hours back to Cajamarca on the seventh day of quarantine?
And then there is the video of a military captain. Instead of taking a young man that wasn’t respecting the curfew to the police station, the captain beat him on the street. Various times. Hard. The man in question has since been fired, although he receives support from nearly all over the country. After all, people say, military soldiers are trained to serve their country ruthlessly, and we must understand that a soldier is not the same as a police officer, and doesn’t work the same way.
So what does that mean? Should we just tolerate this type of aggression then? Can we expect more of this? And why is there such a contrast in the way people are arrested in the wealthier neighborhoods, such as Miraflores in Lima, compared to the young man of the video for example? And why are women treated differently than men? Or why was I not checked at the supermarket while the local woman next to me was immediately arrested? How do we tackle this kind of discrimination?
And what about the congressmen who allowed themselves and their families to board a humanitarian flight from Lima to Cusco? A flight that was organized to return vulnerable families stranded at the airport in Lima, often without money, to their families. Who gives them the right to take those much needed places?
It’s no surprise the people of Peru have become alert. And that the bus that suddenly appeared a few hours’ drive from Cajamarca during the night from Thursday to Friday was immediately noticed. Vigilant citizens sent photos and videos into the digital world, and the bus route was followed all over Cajamarca on social media. The mysterious bus de la muerte was approaching the city. Who was on the bus, where did it come from?
The bus was coming from Moquegua, in the very south of the country. It had already traveled 2000 kilometers, about 35 – 40 hours, across the entire country. How can a bus travel 2000 kilometers in the middle of a national quarantine? How is it possible that no one has made the bus stop during its 40 hour journey while I can’t even reach the corner of my street on my bicycle? And who was on board?
Turns out there were 32 passengers on the bus. 32 mine workers. There you have your answer. The bus had permission. And just like that, 32 passengers who had crossed the entire country, entered Cajamarca, where no case of the coronavirus had yet been detected. Panic.
How would we survive a quarantine without winning copper? Extremely essential, of course, mining.
But the bus was allowed to drive. On Tuesday, we were already informed through an official document that the Ministry of Economy will make exceptions for essential activities during the national quarantine. And how would we survive a quarantine without winning copper? Extremely essential, of course, mining.
The speculations started immediately. Is the declared state of emergency being used in the interest of mining? Why is no one in the country allowed to work while the mining companies just carry on with their business? Isn’t that also a form of discrimination? On Friday, President Vizcarra spoke out about the issue and declared that they would not accept pressure from any group with a particular interest in society.
According to his statement, some mining activities are carried out in remote places, where workers are isolated, where no one enters or leaves, and it is arranged that these activities may continue given proper isolation.
The departure of workers, such as the group from Moquegua which drove all the way to the north of the country, is however prohibited because it violates the measures.
But is that the only aspect that conflicts with the measures? The interprovincial movements? What about the hundreds of trucks that transport minerals between different regions every day? What about the rural population in the immediate proximity of the mining activities? Or the employees who often travel two or more hours, back and forth, to get to their work at the mine? It suddenly turns out these activities are not as isolated as they make it seem.
In the south of the country, complaints against the mining company were made public by the mine workers themselves, as well as by the local communities near the mining projects Las Bambas, Antapaccay and Shougan. The mining companies continue to work normally. Not just isolated, not just the basic tasks, barely any extra safety measures. Business as usual, 24 hours a day. And that is a violation.
The Peruvian government should always put the health of its inhabitants above personal interests.
The Peruvian government should always put the health of its inhabitants above personal interests. Which does not include buses driving across the country to let employees go home in the middle of quarantine.
Health comes first. When three young people arrived to Cajamarca all the way from Arequipa, after illegally having traveled for over 30 hours in cardboard boxes in the back of a truck, their own families denied them access to their own homes, to protect themselves and everyone around them. The three youngsters were arrested on the street shortly after. If a family can deny their own family members access to their own home to not put anyone at risk and follow the measures, then the government should for sure start taking these measures more seriously themselves. And then it should for sure be possible to suspend the work in the mines for a while, or at least ensure that the activities are carried out following the proper isolation measures. Neither the employees nor the neighboring communities, the most vulnerable part of the population of Peru, should be put in danger.
Different communities all over the country have now closed their access roads by themselves. The streets are quiet. Thousands of disobedient Peruvians are still being arrested every day, but at the same time the conscience about the importance of quarantine is growing.
Peru has responded, and incredibly fast. The world seems to be standing still for a moment, but it isn’t. The world isn’t standing still, we are. And let’s continue to stand still for a little longer.
Stay inside.
Our Catapista Hernán Manrique wrote the following interesting and critical piece about the ICT supply Chain of electronic devices, by analysing and reviewing the three documentaries from our last Doculatino Film Festival.
During October and November of last year, CATAPA organized the Doculatino Film Festival. Held in the cities of Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven, this edition of the festival was part of the Make Information and Communications Technology (ICT) fair European campaign, whose goal is to achieve a more transparent and fair ICT supply chain.
The documentaries showed various insights into the globalized ICT supply chain of some of our favourite devices. The first documentary, Minga (2019), directed by Damien Charles and Pauline Dutron, takes us into a journey through Latin America where it shows some of the major environmental conflicts between local communities and multinational mining companies. Death by Design (2016), directed by Sue Williams, explores how employees from the ICT supply chain work in unsafe environments where they come into touch with toxic substances during the production and assemblage of computers, smartphones, etc. Finally, The E-Waste Tragedy (2014), directed by Cosima Dannoritzer, reveals what happens with our electronic devices once we stop using them, showing that whether we recycle them or not, they reproduce vicious patterns of toxic waste disposal in developing countries.
This review intends to discuss some insights on poorly known aspects of the ICT supply chain, as well as to introduce some alternative scenarios as portrayed in the documentaries.
Did you know that your smartphone resembles a mine of precious minerals and rare elements? It might seem odd, but each smarthphone contains at least 60 different minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, gold, copper, and so on and so forth, that are extracted from all over the world. Such variety is so large that, according to the Geological Society of the United Kingdom, the average smartphone uses 75 out of the 81 elements in the period table.
Extracting these materials at the large-scale needed for the ever growing ICT demand is a daunting challenge that requires millions in investments. Companies are always exploring new areas where to find these materials that allow the permanent interconnection of our digital economy. However, as with many other things, there is a very different picture at the other side of the coin.
What are the social and environmental costs of mining in developing countries? Scientists from all disciplines have continuously shown the large social and environmental damages produced during mineral extraction. Are they inevitable? That is hard to tell, but what we know is that efforts to regulate mineral extraction are rarely enough and its accountability differs widely from one corner of the world to another. Environmental and labor safety regulations in poor and developing countries are usually sacrificed to the laissez-faire of free markets. For this reason, developing countries with plenty of mineral resources have sometimes been signaled as being ‘cursed’ by such abundance. Having said this, now let’s see how our three documentaries can help us to understand how such ‘curse’ works.
Minga presents some of the major struggles from various communities in Latin America against mining extraction. At these first stages of the ICT supply chain, rentier states seek to encourage extractive industries to invest in their national territories through various stimulus, such as low environmental and social regulations, financial incentives, etc. In many cases, governments portray such investments as a promise of modernity for rural communities near mining concessions that are depicted as ‘pre-modern’ or ‘left behind’. However, both environmental and social externalities affect the livelihoods of people from these areas. Heavy metal pollution, respiratory diseases, decreasing outputs in agriculture, etc. are some of the main consequences of inadequately environmental regulations in the mining sector.
For these reasons, it shouldn’t be a surprise that various communities near mining zones have risen up against extraction. Among many other cases, Minga shows one of the greatest conflicts against gold mining in Peru: Conga. This case became infamously known due to the agressions from part of the Yanacocha company and the Peruvian security forces against Maxima Acuña Chaupe (Goldman Environmental Prize 2016), a peasant woman from the Andean region of Cajamarca who refused to sell her land to Yanacocha. However, despite gaining global recognition in environmentalist circles for her defence of water sources, her life is still in danger. Maxima’s case is not an atypical story; hundreds of persons have lost their lives for opposing the extractive industries. Several cases from extractive localities in the Global South show that sometimes the rush for obtaining these precious minerals and rare elements needed for our devices privileges profit over life and the environment.
After extraction, minerals travel a long way to finally reach the facilities where, after several transformations, they are turned into key pieces of our ICT devices. Death by design takes us on a journey from mid 1970’s and 1980’s California to contemporary Shenzen in China to reveal what happens behind the scenes of this billion dollar industry.
Electronics and semiconductors necessary for personal computers require a large use of toxic chemicals, such as sulphuric acid, hydrazine sulphate, etc. Some decades ago, these products were mainly produced in the United States. However, in the midst of what would be later known as Silicon Valley, the increasing number of ill workers due to the exposure to such chemicals led to hundreds of lawsuits against some of the major ICT companies of the time. Not only there were accused of causing severe illnesses, such as brain cancer, breast cancer, etc. but also of polluting underground waters by storing chemicals below ground. After thousands of petitions, the Environmental Protection Agency from the United States obliged major ICT companies to clean up sites they contaminated.
However, this was only a partial triumph. Given that since the 1980s companies have enjoyed more flexible legislations to relocate their investments elsewhere, they decided to go abroad. Heavier environmental regulations in the United States led to a massive search for free-regulations areas across the world. It’s in this way that Shenzhen in China became the main hub for this industry. With inadequate labor regulations, companies could operate at a much rapid scale and with less concern for workers. Soon outsourcing would become the rule. With almost no labor rights and high production quotas established by ICT companies, outsourced workers became increasingly exploited. Death by design shows some of the consequences of such lax regulations. These include several accidents in the plants, disastrous explosions and fires in assembling facilities and even suicides during working hours.
Finally, the E-waste tragedy traces the path that electronic devices follow after we stop using them. Why would this be a tragedy? The documentary cleverly starts by portraying the dumping sites where they end up in Africa where the massive accumulation of toxic e-waste poses great environmental and public health problems for developing countries that import developed countries’ waste. But how did all this e-waste end up there?
This is exactly the challenging question that the E-waste tragedy seeks to respond. E-waste trafficking is a criminal activity that involves millions of dollars. According to the experts interviewed in the documentary, despite EU regulations to prevent e-waste trafficking, more than 65% of these products never reach an official recycling plant and less than 1% of mobile phones are recycled in Europe. Thus, most e-waste is not recycled, but sold to the black market, where it is later exported through the main European ports.
But there is more. Once ICT devices end up in African dumping sites, large groups of people, especially children, dismantle smartphones and others electronics with their bare hands in search not just of screens and batteries but also of small electronic pieces, such as buzzers, transistors, capacitors, etc. After collecting some considerable amounts of electronics, these are later sold to brokers. This situation is similar in surrounding areas of Shenzhen, where Chinese workers use rudimentary and toxic methods to identify valuable electronic pieces from old devices. These products are then refurbished before getting into circulation once again. Again where? In China.
But how do these old devices (of which many of them were supposed to be recycled) and their small parts get their way into China? E-waste trafficking has Hong Kong as one of its main routes to enter China. The port of Hong Kong, one of the largest in the world, is a free port with low customs regulations. With more than 63,000 containers arriving everyday, Hong Kong represents a privileged entrance into the Chinese market. Indeed, it has been estimated that 36,000 e-waste containers enter China through Hong Kong every year. After arriving, most of the e-waste, once refurbished and repaired, find their way into Shenzhen, which is strategically located a few kilometers from there. Finally, all these different electronic devices and their small parts are offered as new in Shenzhen, where once bought they travel to new destinations to be sold and resold again and again.
The three documentaries screened in Doculatino show a reality that is hard to deny. The ICT supply chain involves several formal regulations and decent jobs around the world while at the same time it also allows the advancement of groundbreaking technologies that are changing the world. However, all this progress is also accompanied by more negative issues, such as conflicts, environmental pollution, child labor, e-waste trafficking, etc. We might not be aware of such problems, because most of them occur far away from the comfort of our homes. And that is exactly one of the main concerns that these documentaries point out: even without knowing it, we might be contributing to some of these hazards that affect thousands or even millions of lives around the globe.
Inform yourself about how ethical your devices are: There are several websites with relevant information on the provenance, labour conditions, and other characteristics of our devices. You can find some of them in the following links:
Make sure to hand your old devices to certified recycling operators: Recycling is not as easy as it sounds. Some companies offering to recycle for free might actually be part of E-waste trafficking networks. Don’t forget that most of EU’s e-waste is never recycled, but rather trafficked. Here you can find some useful links:
Think twice before buying a new electronic device: Instead of reproducing the vicious cycle that most electronic devices follow as seen in these documentaries, repairing your devices can be a much better option. It’s cheaper, it’s easier and it’s much more sustainable. Here you can find some links that show you where to repair your devices (you will be surprised that even some of them encourage to do it yourself!):
Think circular: If you want a more fair and sustainable future, it’s about time to start thinking circular!
Author: HERNÁN MANRIQUE LÓPEZ
Today is the 50th Anniversary of #EarthDay, a historic moment of reflection and celebration… But, what is different this year?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us in different measures and proportions, we all know that nothing will be the same again. It’s time to reflect, prevent, and reinvent.
After 8 years of work promoting sustainable land-management and forest regeneration with local communities, supporting indigenous federations in making their fundametal rights respected, and accompanying indigenous students on their journey to become professionals, the Chaikuni Institute faces a critical situation. If we don’t quickly raise enough funds we will have to end our activities.
Now, more than ever, we need your support. We are working to mitigate the effects of climate change by regenerating the most important terrestrial ecosystem, the Amazon rainforest. We can’t give up. There is too much to be done.
Celebrate nature, celebrate life and celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day with us. Please, DONATE NOW and become part of the global movement to fight climate change
All donations will be matched a 50% until April 24 as part of the Climate Action Campaign of Global Giving!
The 2020 Climate Action Campaign is an exclusive opportunity for GlobalGiving partners working on climate action to participate in a five-day matching campaign and compete for five year-long slots in the GlobalGiving Climate Action Fund. The Climate Action Campaign runs from Monday 20th of April 20 till Friday 24th of April.
The campaign is centered around the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
*GlobalGiving is the largest global crowdfunding community connecting nonprofits, donors, and companies in nearly every country.
