Responding to the recently published letter sent by seven UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights to Shell, Eni and other oil companies as well as the governments of the companies’ home countries and Nigeria regarding the historic pollution of the Niger Delta, Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International Nigeria’s Director, said: 

“Amnesty International has researched and campaigned on the issue of oil pollution in Nigeria since the 1990s. The UN Special Rapporteurs have concurred with our finding that the repeated oil spills in the Niger Delta amount to violations of human rights. For every rights violation, there must be a remedy. Shell and other companies responsible for oil spills in the region must therefore clean up affected areas and compensate local communities for the decades of harm caused by those violations.

“We call on Shell and other oil companies to responsibly divest themselves of assets and operations in a way that respects human rights and the environment. Just because Shell recently sold its Nigerian subsidiary, it does not absolve the company of responsibility for its past actions.”

Background

The UN Special Rapporteurs’ letter to Shell states that: “The repeated oil spills in the Niger Delta over a span of decades severely affected the right to life, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment that is free from toxic substances, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to safe drinking water, the right to an adequate standard of  living, the right to food, the right to housing, cultural rights, the right [of] access to information and the right [of] access to remedy.”

“…Nigeria is being used as an experiment for divestment without clean-up… It is therefore of considerable importance that human rights abuses arising from the form of divestment now being used by oil companies are fully addressed and effectively remediated and compensated.”

Shell’s response is available here.