Europe imports Amazonian commodities linked to violence

Mary Menton and Claudelice Santos

2022

European countries import beef, palm oil, minerals and other commodities from Brazil through companies that purchase from farms and mines with proven links to human rights violations and environmental crimes including massacres, assassination attempts, slave labour, illegal deforestation, and pollution. Through analysis of case studies in the South/Southeast of Pará, known as the epicentre of violence against environmental human rights defenders, we found evidence of numerous crimes by companies and farms within the supply chain of European markets. For example, chain-of-custody documents show that large beef export companies purchased cattle raised on the farm where 10 landless workers were massacred in Pau D’Arco in 2017 and where Fernando dos Santos Araújo, witness to the massacre, was murdered in January 2021. These violence footprints of EU markets should be tackled through mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence and insistence upon transparent and traceable supply chains. Given the links between EU markets and these rights violations, the EU must hold companies accountable for these atrocities and increase support to the EU human rights defenders mechanism to protect frontline defenders who speak out against these violations.

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