By Julie Inglese

Palm oil mill by Marufish, on Flickr

While high demand for palm oil in Africa and Southeast Asia is widely known for being a large environmental concern, Voice of America (VOA) reports that there also is an underlying human rights issue that is being neglected. 

VOA spoke with Norman Jiwan, the executive director of Transformation for Justice Indonesia and the co-editor of a new report on the issue. Jiwan told VOA that the expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia "has created serious land conflict because of the land grabbing" from indigenous peoples without consent. This in turn is threatening the food supply of some communities.

The same issues have emerged in Africa and advocates are working with palm oil companies in hopes of settling land disputes.

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November 18, 2013

By Aliza Kempner

Across Cambodia, newly minted sugar plantations have generated thousands of jobs for destitute migrant workers and subsistence farmers as well as hundreds of jobs for skilled factory workers. Still, there is reason to believe that international trade pacts fostering exports of products like sugar that seek to help the world’s poorest countries can have the unintended effect of encouraging land grabs by wealthy, politically connected families. Cambodian corporations obtained tens of thousands of acres from the government as economic development concessions for large sugar plantations, while paying modest compensation to families pushed off the land. 

The New York Times paints an interesting picture of the facts on the ground and explains the genesis of the conflicts. 

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October 08, 2013