'On the eve of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil’s (RSPO) annual meeting the Shipibo Konibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya and its representative organisation FECONAU has condemned the failure of the organisation’s complaints mechanism to secure justice for their community.
They have called on the RSPO to implement urgent reforms if it wishes to be a credible body for certifying sustainable palm oil and eliminating human rights and environmental abuses associated with the palm oil sector.
The community of Santa Clara de Uchunya whose ancestral lands and forests have been devastated by a former member of the RSPO (Plantaciones de Pucallpa), currently reconfigured as Ocho Sur PE SAC, have called on the complaints panel to ‘issue their final report about the violations of our rights as Shipibo-Conibo indigenous people as a result of oil palm operations’. In a statement issued during a community assembly on the 26th October 2017 they asked: ‘How is it possible that the company could leave the RSPO in the middle of an investigation and not be sanctioned?’ The community and FECONAU are now calling on the RSPO to close glaring loopholes in its existing complaints mechanism including the ability for members to withdraw from the RSPO during a formal complaint process and thereby escape being held to account.'
Read more: Devastation of Ancestral Lands in Peru’s Amazon. 6000 Hectares of Forests Destroyed, Converted to Palm Oil Plantations
