https://rightsindevelopment.org/news/cre-bulletin-may-2025/
The Coalition for Human Rights in Development is a global coalition of social movements, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups working together to ensure that development is community-led and that it respects, protects, and fulfills human rights.
We do so by making sure that communities have the information, power and resources to determine their own development paths and priorities and to hold development finance institutions, governments, and other actors accountable for their impacts on people, peoples and the planet.
Updates from our CRE partners
With the support of the CRE, communities around the world are holding development banks and international investors accountable, mobilizing to advance their rights, and building solidarity with other communities facing similar challenges. Below, we highlight some of their powerful struggles.
Africa
- In February 2025, several CRE collaborators from Africa and beyond — including Agnes Koilel and Timothy Ngetich from Kenya, Loreto Vásquez Salvador from Asamblea Ciudadana Última Esperanza (Chile), and two representatives from Seinoli Legal Trust in Lesotho — participated in the Finance in Common Summit in Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to the summit, they also joined a workshop focused on community-led perspectives on the just energy transition. You can read more in this multimedia report.
- In the heart of Kenya’s Rift Valley, the Menengai geothermal project — despite being promoted as a sustainable solution advancing a “just” energy transition — is causing serious noise, air, and environmental pollution. But in March 2025, our CRE partner, the Menengai West Stakeholders Forum (MWESFO), celebrated an important legal victory. Acknowledging community concerns about the project’s harmful impacts, a local court revoked one of the company’s licenses and ordered a new, comprehensive environmental and social assessment. Read their story in this blog.
- In January 2025, the CRE and International Accountability Project (IAP) convened the workshop Community Conversations on Just Energy Transitions in Kenya in Nairobi. The event brought together land and environmental defenders, journalists, legal practitioners, and representatives from four communities directly affected by renewable energy projects in Kenya. As the push for green energy accelerates, many communities find themselves at the center of large-scale renewable energy developments — yet too often, their voices are excluded from decision-making processes. Read more in this article by DiploBrief.
Latin America
- In the past few months, the CRE has organized a series of webinar and learning circles with its collaborators in Latin America:
- “Contar para resistir”: a webinar with independent journalists from Mexico, Central America, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, exploring how storytelling can support resistance, an initiative co-designed with Saltapatrás and Milpamérica Resiste (recording available here in Spanish).
- A four-part webinar series on Strategic Litigation for environmental defenders and communities defending their land rights, co-organized with Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL) and Earth Law Center, with the participation of AIDA (see recordings of the first two sessions here). Join us for the final session on June 3rd by signing up here.
- A four-session learning lab on understanding the basics of corporate and financial structures with Inclusive Development International (IDI) and PODER Latam, to trace financial actors behind harmful development projects and build advocacy strategies.
- Resistance to False Green Solutions in Chile In March 2025, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group – ahead of their Annual Meetings – held its Green Investment Forum in Magallanes, Chile, a region considered critical because of its role as “global green hydrogen hub”. The meeting took place behind closed doors, but communities and civil society organizations mobilized to denounce how these investments are being imposed without consultations and prioritizing corporate interests over the rights of local populations. Read the communiqué by ACUE, a CRE partner, signed by local communities and CSOs. During the IDB forum, Patagonian grassroots groups also organized a two-day online counter-forum, to foster collective organizing and co-create strategies to push back against extractive “green” projects.
Watch recordings of day 1 and day 2.
Brenda Gutiérrez, President of the Indigenous Changa Community “Pabla Almendares de Peralito, Salitre y Paposo,” submitted a letter to Chile’s Environmental Assessment Service in Santiago. The letter demands urgent attention to the threats posed by the green hydrogen and ammonia INNA project, citing the lack of Indigenous consultation and environmental risks to marine ecosystems. Brenda was joined by several Coalition members and other allies from the region (including Sustentarse, FIMA ONG, Fundación Tanti, Tsikini, and the Red de comunidades impactadas por IFIs).
Asia
- In West Papua, Indonesia, our CRE partner GempaR-Papua is mobilizing in solidarity with Byak Indigenous communities, who are facing land-grabbing and threats of eviction because of different development projects (including the construction of a military base and airport in their land). In the area, local communities are also threatened by different agribusiness projects, such as sugar cane and palm oil plantations.
- In Uzbekistan, one of our CRE partners – Uzbek Forum for Human Rights – has been demanding accountability and justice from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), following the news that Indorama Agro prepaid its loans to both development banks — leaving behind a trail of human rights violations without providing any remedy. You can read more in this joint letter. Recently, Uzbek Forum for Human Rights also published a report on the compulsory acquisition of homes and farms in the country. These acquisitions are often carried out to facilitate large-scale private development projects, frequently backed by international investments.
- Our CRE ally collaborator BankTrack published a new statement which shows commercial banks are considering providing finance for a highly controversial JSW Steel’s proposed industrial steel complex in Odisha State, India, despite strong opposition from local communities due to its poor human rights and environmental records. On May 2, the communities filed a complaint against Australian and Japanese banks.
CRE collaborator spotlight
The Agrupación Ciudadana de Última Esperanza (ACUE) is a community-based foundation in Última Esperanza (Magallanes, Chile) that has been working for the past 10 years to promote sustainable development from an ecofeminist perspective, focusing on self and collective care practices. They promote a vision for decolonial development rooted in economic, social, and environmental justice. From the local to the international level, ACUE has also woven ties with other movements resisting extractivist megaprojects across the Global South.
“I believe knowledge can be produced from lived, situated experience—helping to de-elitize knowledge spaces that are traditionally tied to power. As a feminist, I feel a deep responsibility to bring popular and situated knowledge back to the center”, says Loreto Vásquez Salvador, A.C.U.E spokesperson.
In this op-ed, you can read Loreto’s reflections upon returning from the Finance in Commons Summit (FICS) and how she connects these critiques to the IDB Annual Meetings that took place shortly after in her home country of Chile.
Media, reports and publications
- Sacrifice zones are areas where big businesses and transnational corporations pollute rivers, air, water, and soil for profit — while local communities pay the price through degraded health and damaged ecosystems. Many of our CRE community collaborators are working to mend the fractures inflicted on their land, health, and dignity. Read some of their stories in this analysis published by Mongabay, which shares the testimonies of four CRE collaborators: Red de Conciencia Ambiental “Queremos Vivir” in Tula, Mexico; Pueblo Chango in Antofagasta, Chile; Odimodi community, Nigeria; Srikandi Lestari Foundation, Indonesia.
- In India, Karbi and other tribal communities have accused the Assam government of undermining the free, informed and prior consent of the people, to set up the 1000 MW solar park with Asian Development Bank (ADB) loans and private investment. ADB maintains that the project is “consistent with India’s long term climate mitigation policy”, but it’s failing to take into account that the project will displace local communities from fertile and ecologically sensitive lands, depriving them of their livelihoods. Read more in this article by Downtoearth.
- Our CRE ally collaborator Inclusive Development International has launched ESG Watch — a company database and website that tracks over $39 billion in environmental, social and governance (ESG)-focused investment flowing to companies that are linked to serious social and environmental harm. ESG Watch provides a platform to amplify the voices of communities affected by harmful corporate activities, publicize evidence of harm and hold financial services firms and investors accountable for fulfilling their human rights responsibilities.
