Human rights organisation Amnesty International has launched a mass fundraising campaign via social networks for a hard-hitting advertising campaign targeting the oil company Shell.
It is the first time Amnesty International has used fundraising to pay for a campaigning advertisement.
The full-page newspaper ad highlights Shell’s responsibility for pollution in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, where oil spillages and gas flaring have polluted people’s water supply and devastated livelihoods based on fishing and farming.
It will be timed to coincide with Shell’s AGM on 18 May.
Amnesty International UK poverty & human rights campaign manager, Naomi McAuliffe, said:
The AGM is where Shell’s Board is held to account by its shareholders, so it’s an ideal time for us to try to influence the company’s policies.
Because of the activity of Shell and other oil companies, people in the Niger Delta are left to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land and breath in air that stinks of oil and gas. We want to expose the culprits and get them to come clean and accept responsibility.
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From a press release
Anybody going to start blaming the Nigerian Govt for taking the oil revenues and not spending them in the Delta?
Or for not insisting upon higher environmental standards which would reduce the amount of tax Shell pay to the centre?
Tim @ 1
I have not seen the Nigerian Government adverts coverning their vast profits with greenwash. Have you?
Having said that, I think we tend to let industries in general and the oil industry in particular off the hook with regard to governance in these issues. That greenwash is effective, as a few cosy images is enough to placate 90% of us.
Re: Tim @ 1
Why do you expect the Nigerian government to stand up to Shell when even the US government won’t? Get real.
Why don’t Amnesty get some of their Cage Prisoners lads on to this. Those guys will have Shell shitting themselves in short order, mark my words.
Tim W, is your point that Amnesty Int. and sites like Liberal Conspiracy are so blinded by disgust for Western corporations/hobbled by political correctness/straightjacketed by ideology etc etc that they will not dare to criticise an African government?
Because that really would be a staggeringly silly point to make and very easy to refute comprehensively:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/nigeria
The Amnesty campaign begins “Oil companies and the Nigerian government must clean up the oil industry in the Niger Delta”
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/oil-companies-and-the-nigerian-government-must-clean-up-the-oil-industry-in-the-niger-delta
It’s not them hobbled by ideology and political prejudice – it’s you.
I look forward to your retraction. Thanks.
“Tim W, is your point that sites like Liberal Conspiracy are so blinded by disgust for Western corporations/hobbled by political correctness/straightjacketed by ideology etc etc that they will not dare to criticise an African government?”
Given the above article, yes.
Shorter Worstall: “The bigger boys made Shell do it.”
Tim W you have been proven wrong, now man up and apologise – you look like an even bigger partisan twit otherwise.
wtf does this have to do with amnesty.
“Given the above article, yes”
Come on, Tim. You know what an Internet search engine is, and you know how to use them.