Ali Hussein Jaloud, a 21-year-old Iraqi who lives next to one of BP’s biggest oilfields, was meant to ask a question at the company’s annual shareholder meeting today. He was going to challenge the CEO on why his company continues to poison his neighbourhood with cancer-causing pollution. But, just a few days ago, Ali died of a form of leukaemia that has been linked to chemicals released by the burning of fossil fuels. His grieving father will ask why BP did not use its vast profits to help save his life...

Over the past two years, my fellow investigator Owen Pinnell and I got to know Ali while making a documentary for BBC News Arabic, Under Poisoned Skies, which revealed the deadly impact of gas flaring in southern Iraq, including at BP’s Rumaila oilfield where Ali lives, surrounded by oil company-patrolled checkpoints. We also found out that Rumaila has more gas flaring than any other oilfield in the world...

BP said it was “extremely concerned” by the issues raised by our film (and in February said it was working to reduce flaring and emissions at Rumaila) but announced record profits from the oilfield in the year we launched the film...

When we showed that footage to David Boyd, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, he called it “a textbook example of a modern sacrifice zone, where profit is put above human life and the environment”...