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Memorandum: Amnesty International’s concerns regarding Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta and the ongoing failure to respect human rights and the environment
This memorandum outlines Amnesty International’s serious concerns about Shell’s impact on human rights and the environment in the Niger Delta, and the company’s failure to take adequate action to end damaging practices and redress decades of harm. Shell’s failures persist despite significant evidence based calls on the company to make meaningful changes in the way it operates in the Niger Delta. In 2011 the evidence confronting Shell was confirmed in a ground-breaking study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that looked at the impact of oil pollution in the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta. The UNEP report confirmed that serious environmental damage had occurred in Ogoniland, one area of the Niger Delta, over many years. It found systemic failures in Shell’s approach to cleaning up pollution and rehabilitating land, which have exposed tens of thousands of people to a sustained assault on their economic, social and cultural rights.