About 15 human rights defenders have been meeting in Dakar...These activists, having come from a number of West African countries, are discussing the topic, “Community-driven initiatives: Sharing tools to increase impacts in West Africa”. This meeting is organised by the NGO Lumière Synergie pour le Développement, in partnership with OSIWA (Open Society Initiative for West Africa), and Business & Human Rights Resource Centre…The workshop has brought together about 15 civil society activists from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Niger and Cameroon, among other countries [also Ghana, Guinea and Republic of Congo]. Each [activist] presented a specific example of human rights abuses related to investment projects – most of them financed by multilateral [and bilateral] development institutions...

From Sierra Leone, Shiaka Musa Sama described the stranglehold of Bolloré over a sizeable territory. The struggle launched by local communities in 2011 eventually led to the arrest by police and criminal charges against about 50 people for merely insisting on their rights to information [about the plantation’s impacts on their lands]... [also cites impacts of Shell in Nigeria, Electricity Development Corp. in Cameroon]

According to Greg Regaignon, of Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, “In Senegal and elsewhere, economic development is often privileged, without protecting the rights of communities...[or taking account of] exclusion [of local people] from economic opportunities...” For Aly Sagne, head of LSD, the point is to see how local populations can be more centrally considered, and can access remedies for harms...