UN Probes Global Shipping Over Toxic Fuels

The United Nations (UN) has started investigation into human rights abuses associated with the global shipping industry and exposure to toxic chemicals without prior consent.

Through its Human Rights Agency (UNOHCR), it has appointed a Special Rapporteur to look into these issues and report back.

Earlier this week, a special investigation in Forbes revealed a growing scandal behind this year’s hasty introduction of a highly hazardous and experimental type of oil in ships.

The ship fuel is called Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil or VLSFO. It contains a wide variety of undefined toxic chemicals, is now in 70per cent of all ships, and is likely to be an important focus for the inquiry. This fuel – which NGOs have referred to as a super-pollutant ‘Frankenstein Fuel’ – is already suspected as a leading root cause of many shipping disasters around the world, putting the lives of sailors and coastal communities at risk, due to the use of unknown and highly volatile chemicals.

The lead investigator for the UN Human Rights Agency has already begun interviewing officials at the global shipping regulator, the International Maritime Organization. The inquiry will continue collecting evidence through to January 31, 2021.

The investigation will cover both the human rights implications for seafarers on vessels who would have been exposed to the effects of toxic chemicals, as well as to those impacted by oil spills, such as islanders in Mauritius this year and Solomon Islands last year.

The global body has called the exposure of people to harmful substances without their prior informed consent a human rights abuse. It has also said it is a human rights issue for which solutions exist. The question the rapporteur will focus on is why known solutions had not been applied in the shipping industry.

The U.N. has been looking at human rights abuses linked to hazardous substances since a formal mandate was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council 25 years ago in 1995. On 6 October 2020, the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution to look deeper into several issues associated with exposure to harmful substances without prior consent.

The Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights is Dr. Marcos Orellana who was appointed earlier this year by the UN Human Rights body.

Orellana teaches Environmental Law at George Washington University School of Law in the United States, and had been involved in several high profile environmental justice cases. These have covered international human rights law and the environment including presenting at the U.N. Human Rights Council, International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, and in participating in international negotiations on Climate Change. He was worked extensively with Governments and NGOs around the world.

The Head of the UN Human Rights Commission – former two term President of Chile Michelle Bachelet – has been a strong advocate for protecting Human Rights of what she describes as the planet’s ‘Environmental Defenders.’

In 2019, Bachelet brought up these human rights issues against environmentalists at the U.N. Human Rights Council, specifically highlighting the verbal attacks against the then 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg.

In August last year, the UN Humans Right Office signed a formal agreement with the UN’s Environment Protection Program (UNEP) to strengthen human rights and the planet.

At the time, UN Human Rights Chief, Michelle Bachelet said, “Our planet is being recklessly destroyed, and we urgently need stronger global partnerships to take action to save it. We call on leaders and governments to recognize that climate change and environmental degradation severely undermine the human rights of their people, particularly those in vulnerable situations – including the generations of tomorrow.”

“We encourage every State to develop and enforce national legal frameworks which uphold the clear linkages between a healthy environment and the ability to enjoy all other human rights, including the rights to health, water, food – and even the right to life,” she added. “We also strongly encourage greater recognition that the actions and advocacy of environmental human rights defenders are deeply beneficial to all societies. They must be better protected against the threat of violence and intimidation.”

Reports suggest that more than four environmental defenders were killed across the world every week in 2019. This rate has doubled in the last 15 years. The latest death toll highlights the ongoing dangers facing those who are defending their environmental and human rights.

This is the first time the global shipping industry has been subject to such a wide ranging Human Rights inquiry over exposure to toxins without consent.

The inquiry will also look into many of the root causes for how the industry has allowed such a situation to develop in shipping, such as poorly drafted laws, little oversight and monitoring of these laws, deliberately weak enforcement, pressure on poorer nations and communities to be responsible for cleaning up the risks caused by large shipping firms.

There has been a growing spate of maritime incidents that many local communities around the world have been calling for justice on. These include communities in Trinidad, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, around the coast of the Red Sea, Mauritius and Lebanon just this year alone.

There are three themes that are likely to be particularly important for the investigation into shipping, human rights and toxins.

The Special Rapporteur has highlighted that he will look at both toxins spilled from ships, as well as air pollution released from ships that are adding to the climate crisis.

Climate crisis: Indigenous communities in Arctic nations, and coastal communities on low lying island nations are particularly impacted by melting ice caps, rising sea levels and more acidifying oceans impacting coral reef protection. This year, the global shipping industry not only decided to break with Paris Climate Agreement pledges, but the Secretary General of the IMO actively tried to undermine the EU’s own carbon emission regulations for shipping. This is in addition to the U.K. Parliament already calling the IMO no longer ‘fit for purpose,’ for its stance on climate issues. Global shipping has been particularly criticized for using toxic chemicals in ship fuels across the Arctic that could accelerate climate change.

Toxins in ship oil (especially the VLSFO ‘Frankenstein Fuel’): The Special Rapporteur will also be looking at the risk of oil pollution, which has been increasing as ships have become larger, and yet ship designs and protection have not kept pace, a sign of major regulatory failure. The fuel now used by 70per cent of ships, called VLSFO and which was introduced this year, is likely to be a major focus for the Special Rapporteur.

Tens of thousands in Mauritius were exposed to VLSFO in the summer, and the shipping companies responsible have not provided a full chemical analysis breakdown of the toxins that the population was exposed to, including what the health risks are. This represents a major human rights abuse, as many in South East Mauritius who were exposed have been reporting serious health conditions (e.g., skin infections, breathing difficulties and mental illness), that have not been taken seriously by the companies responsible for bringing the pollution to Mauritius. Other communities impacted by ship fuel spills like Solomon Islands last year have seen similar experiences.

Gender impact of oil spills: Oil spills have a disproportionate impact on women. The chemicals have a much more significant on female reproductive organs and health, affecting the health of unborn children. Many women faced greater social and financial pressures following the oil spill as they had been employed in the informal sector (e.g., supporting husbands in the fishing business or making tourist products to be sold on informal beach stands), and so were not eligible for any compensation from funds allocated to the response. The gender dimension was completely dismissed by the companies and countries responding to the oil spill disaster in Mauritius, where in over 100 international consultants, not one was female. This created additional conflict in a country like Mauritius, where it was actually many of the female leaders who had led the response to the oil spill and the fight for environmental and social justice.

Human rights abuses in the response to the oil spill: In what is likely to be a damning assessment of the corporate response to the oil spill in Mauritius, the Special Rapporteur’s scope includes evaluating potential human rights abuses in how the oil spill was responded to. In Mauritius, the response by companies responsible saw a massive disruption of the social cohesion of Mauritius. The grassroots led movement that built the artisanal oil protection booms were sidelined by over 100 unaccountable international consultants who never once held a joint press conference to explain what was going on nor allowed any independent oversight of the cleanup techniques they were deploying.