Geneva, Switzerland–Facing a mounting democratic crisis and a looming environmental crisis due to offshore oil development, Guyana will report on its human rights record before the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which convenes this week in Geneva. The Justice Institute Guyana and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) are urging the Committee to join other UN bodies in calling on Guyana to account for the threats that fossil fuel development poses to the right to life and that ongoing electoral turmoil poses to the rights to vote and to democratic governance.
Renowned for its dense tropical forests and rich marine and terrestrial biodiversity, Guyana faces questions about how authorizing ExxonMobil to develop its offshore oil and gas resources is compatible with protecting human rights and the environment. Recent reports of excessive gas flaring by Exxon suggest that the new development poses an even greater climate risk than previously thought.
“When oil production began in December, it started the clock on a carbon bomb,” says Erika Lennon, Senior Attorney at CIEL. “The immense gas flaring seen over the last months is merely the first sign of the harm to come. The emissions that will be unlocked by the extraction and burning of Guyana’s vast offshore oil and gas reserves, and the risk of an oil spill or blowout, threaten the rights to life and livelihoods of present and future generations in Guyana.”
The false promise of oil riches is fueling Guyana’s ongoing electoral crisis and putting the nation’s democracy at risk. More than 100 days after the country went to the polls, and more than a week after an internationally monitored recount validated the election results in the official statements of the poll, the country is still waiting for a transition to democratic government. As recently as last week, the country’s chief election officer unilaterally discarded more than a quarter of all votes cast in the election, prompting widespread condemnation both inside Guyana and from the international community.
“Oil production not only threatens the right to life of present and future generations,” says Melinda Janki, who has worked as a lawyer in the oil industry. “It is also undermining democracy and the right of the Guyanese people to take part in public affairs through freely chosen representatives rather than representatives chosen as a result of unlawful conduct by the chief elections officer. The various attempts by the returning officer of district four and by the chief elections officer to declare fraudulent results are an egregious violation of the free expression of the will of the Guyanese electors.”
These latest developments add to concerns that after being delayed nearly a year, the declaration of election results in Guyana will be fraudulent and will disenfranchise the Guyanese people, in violation of their rights under domestic and international law.
Lennon says, “In view of the dual environmental and democratic crises the country faces, it’s a critical time to hold the government of Guyana to its human rights obligations. The session getting underway this week presents an important opportunity to do so.”
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Additional Background on Recent International Action on Guyana
The body meeting this week, the UN Human Rights Committee, is tasked with monitoring countries’ implementation of their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Its review of Guyana’s human rights record follows on the heels of similar monitoring conducted by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in July 2019, and a peer review undertaken by other member states in the UN Human Rights Council in January 2020. Those processes highlighted concerns that Guyana’s pivot to an economy based on large-scale fossil fuel extraction will undermine human rights and the country’s existing commitments to combat climate change, noting, in particular, the disproportionate impacts of global warming on women and children in the country.
Media Contact:
Cate Bonacini, +1-510-520-9109, cbonacini@ciel.org
This was posted on Monday, June 29, 2020