A unique partnership between a growing business outsourcing provider and an environmental charity has seen 3,000 new trees planted in forests across the world.
The Sigma Connected Group and charity Treedom entered into a partnership in 2021 which sees one tree planted for every employee who passes their probation with the company, helping to counter the effects of carbon emissions and support farmers in countries such as Tanzania, Ecuador or Madagascar.
As part of the initiative, Sigma Connected employees receive a photo of the moment the tree, which could be a fruit tree or another species, is planted. They also receive regular updates about the farmer who is benefitting, with the opportunity to plant a virtual tree and watch it grow in the virtual Sigma Forest.
The milestone comes as Sigma announced it has now reached 5,000 employees across South Africa, the UK and Australia.
Gary Gilburd, CEO of Sigma Connected said: “Our link up with Treedom is an important part of our corporate responsibility programme and it’s brilliant to reach 3,000 trees being planted in just two years.
“The partnership is unique because as we grow as a business, the project grows too, and it ultimately helps to reduce our carbon footprint as well as supporting local farmers.
“It also comes at an important time as we reach a total of 5,000 people across the whole Group. That is a huge milestone for us too, but we don’t forget that for every person joining means one more tree in the ground.
“We look forward to working with the team at Treedom for many years to come.”
Sigma Connected offers ‘white label’ customer contact centre services across the energy, water, retail and financial services industries.
Founded in 2010, Treedom allows people to adopt or dedicate a tree, improving the environment and helping to provide social benefits to farmers and their workers in Tanzania, Ecuador and Madagascar. Treedom has planted more than one million trees in Africa and South America. Bizcommunity
Last week, civil society in Burundi breathed a collective sigh of relief at the announcement that five human rights defenders charged with state security crimes had been released from prison. But as is often the case in Burundi, their relief was short-lived. Four days later, an appeals court in Bujumbura confirmed the conviction of journalist Floriane Irangabiye.
Irangabiye was convicted in January on charges of criticizing the government during a radio broadcast, in defiance of her most basic media freedoms. Her conviction came less than a week after lawyer and former human rights defender Tony Germain Nkina was released following two years of unjust imprisonment.
Irangabiye was given a 10-year sentence and fined 1,000,000 Burundian Francs (US$480). Her months-long detention without charge and the prosecutor’s failure to produce credible evidence of a crime during the trial amounted to flagrant violations of Burundian and international law.
Adding insult to injury, the appeals court’s decision was announced on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, underscoring Burundian authorities’ contempt for freedom of the press.
The five rights defenders released last week were charged with rebellion and undermining state security and the functioning of public finances. The charges appeared to stem from their relationship with a foreign organization and the funding they received from it. Three were acquitted and two were convicted of rebellion, fined 50.000 Burundian Francs ($25), and handed a two-year suspended sentence. They work for some of Burundi’s few remaining human rights organizations, and their arrests sent a chilling message to the few activists who stayed in Burundi despite a brutal crackdown against civil society triggered by the country’s 2015 political crisis.
As Burundi, faced with serious economic and humanitarian challenges, is pressing international partners to restore financial assistance, it seems reckless to jeopardize the government’s relationship with donors over abusive arrests and trials of human rights defenders and journalists. Yet after repeated convictions and acquittals, it looks increasingly like they are being used as bargaining chips.
Burundi should put an end to this cynical game. The European Union, the United States, and Burundi’s other international partners should call for Irangabiye’s immediate and unconditional release. They should also make clear, through public statements and concrete demands, that their trust in Burundian authorities will only be restored once they truly respect the rights of media and civil society. - Human Rights Watch
On 27 April, TotalEnergies announced staggering profits of $6.5bn for the first three months of 2023. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) revealed that in 2022, TotalEnergies was one of the five worst companies for projects linked to attacks against human rights defenders (HRDs). The company is developing the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project in Uganda and Tanzania.
According to the records held by the BHRRC, projects operated by TotalEnergies are linked to at least 42 attacks against HRDs since 2015. As many as 14 of these – a third – were committed in 2022 alone.
Specifically, all 13 attacks in 2022 involved activists and defenders fighting against the EACOP project. The French oil giant is the majority shareholder in the pipeline.
Total’s EACOP project
The 1,443km-long pipeline will transport oil from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania for international export. TotalEnergies and EACOP project partner China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC) have discovered oil fields with approximately 1.7bn barrels of recoverable oil. These oil fields sit on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda’s national oil company is also involved in the pipeline project.
In September 2022, the Parliament of the European Union (EU) passed a resolution calling for the developers to bring the pipeline development to a halt. It highlighted that the project could have severe impacts on the communities living along the path of the proposed development. Moreover, the resolution suggested that over 100,000 people are at risk of the project displacing them.
A report by Just Finance International identified that communities have already raised issues around insufficient compensation. The project consortium has been acquiring farmland since 2018. Many communities fear that the inadequate compensation will push them into poverty.
As a result, communities and environmental and human rights campaigners have formed an alliance to fight the project. The StopEACOP movement has mobilised multiple protests in Uganda. In addition, it has inspired solidarity actions from groups across the world.
However, Just Finance highlighted that the Ugandan authorities, police, and project subsidiaries have subjected HRDs helping communities in Uganda to increasing criminalisation and safety threats.
Heartless profiteering
As the Canarypreviously reported, the StopEACOP international coalition of activists and communities has also been calling for investors to shelve the project.
Coordinator of StopEACOP Zaki Mamdoo said that the company’s huge profits for the start of 2023 demonstrated the need to:
stop the flow of money to reckless fossil fuel companies like Total.
On 2 May 2023, British multinational bank Standard Chartered announced it would not finance the pipeline. The announcement followed pressure from the StopEACOP movement. Significantly, this now brings the number of banks who have distanced themselves from the project to 25. Moreover, nine out of ten of TotalEnergies’ top financiers have confirmed they will not back the project.
Mamdoo called Standard Chartered’s announcement “a victory” for the impacted communities and climate activists across the world who have been fighting the project.
TotalEnergies is truly heartless in its relentless profiteering on the African continent. The firm’s ever-growing profit margins are generated at the expense of our communities, the natural world, and an exploited African workforce.
Despite multiple banks confirming that they will not finance the project, the BHRRC briefing showed that it has continued to cause violence against communities and activists.
A call for fossil fuel abolition?
Police violently arrested four StopEACOP HRDs in December 2022. They arrested the activists without a warrant during another peaceful demonstration. Between the arrest on 9 December and the morning of 12 December, the police kept one of the activists in an unknown location. The authorities also charged the four defenders with ‘common nuisance’.
The BHRRC briefing revealed that police are the primary perpetrators of attacks. The attacks against StopEACOP HRDs exemplify this. In addition, it identified that authorities’ malicious use of the judicial system to criminalise defenders was the next most common type of attack.
What this highlights is the complicity of the criminal justice system in the physical and systemic violence enacted against human rights and environmental defenders. Moreover, this is part and parcel of racial capitalism. This is a system which innately devalues Black and brown lives and exploits Global South communities for corporate profit.
Evidently, it points to a need to abolish all the oppressive machinery of a system which criminalises HRDs fighting for the rights of marginalised communities. Moreover, this system is enabling corporations to commit violence against them.
Climate justice essayist Mary Annaise Heglar argued that:
We have to get rid of this world where human beings are disposable, but systems that we know to be harmful are indispensable.
The bottom line
In short, the BHRRC report shows that we cannot end the era of fossil fuels without first ending the colonial and capitalist system that underpins it.
Overall, the BHRRC recorded over 550 attacks that companies, governments and unidentifiable perpetrators enacted against HRDs in 2022. On top of this, it found that 75% of these were committed against people protecting land, climate, and environmental rights. These include attacks that companies themselves will have perpetrated against HRDs, as well as those they did not commit directly.
TotalEnergies responded to the BHRRC findings. It said that:
In particular we recognize the important role of Human Rights Defenders… We do not tolerate any threats, intimidation, harassment or violence against those exercising their Human Rights to freedom of expression to protest peacefully against our business or activities.
Yet, as the 13 HRDs awaiting court show, the Ugandan state continues to criminalise pipeline protesters. Furthermore, TotalEnergies is continuing to develop the project in a country violating the rights of its citizens.
Fossil fuel and extractive companies like TotalEnergies claim to engage in due diligence on human rights. In reality, however, they operate in the same ways they have always done. Consequently, marginalised communities like those in the path of the EACOP project continue to pay the price. But as long as it doesn’t impact the company’s bottom line, anything goes. By Hannah Sharland, Canary
The United States has announced an increment in visa processing fees countrywide.
According to a statement from the US Embassy, the changes will take effect from May 30.
The statement pointed out that the “application fee for the most common noni- immigrant visa types which has been costing $160 (Sh21,800) will now attract $185 (Sh25,206).”
“Visitor visas for business or tourism (B1/B2s) and other categories, such as student (F) and exchange visitor visas (J), will increase from $160 to $185. The fee for certain petition-based non-immigrant visas for temporary workers (H, L, O, P, Q, and R categories) will increase from $190 (Sh25,916)to $205(Sh27,962),” it stated.
“The fee for a treaty trader, treaty investor, and treaty applicants in a specialty occupation (E category) will increase from $205 (Sh27,962)to $315(Sh42,966),” the statement further read.
It further indicated individuals who already paid the existing, lower NIV fee will not have to pay the difference once the fee increases on May 30, 2023.
“All NIV fee payments made on or after October 1, 2022, are valid for 365 days. Receipts for NIV fees paid prior to October 1, 2022, will continue to be valid until September 30, 2023,”it read.
According to the statement the slight increases to the costs of some fees reflect the rising cost of the inputs associated with the services provided by consular sections around the world.
“Visas for work and tourism are essential to President Biden’s foreign policy, and we recognize the critical role international travel plays in the U.S. economy,” it stated. By Wangeci Thuo, Capital News
Asia Abdelmajid, a Sudanese actor, was killed in the crossfire in Khartoum at the age of 80 (Social media)
Sudan's first professional female stage actor was killed in fighting in the north of Khartoum on Wednesday, according to the BBC.
Asia Abdelmajid, 80, was killed in a crossfire as the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continued their bloody conflict on the streets of Sudan's capital.
An acclaimed actor, Abdelmajid burst onto the scene in a 1965 production of the play Pamseeka, which was performed at the national theatre in Omdurman to mark the anniversary of Sudan's first revolution against a coup leader. She was considered a pioneer in her craft and later became a teacher.
Abdelmajid's family told the BBC she was buried just hours after her shooting on Wednesday morning in the grounds of a kindergarten where she had been most recently working.
It is not clear who fired the shot that killed her during ongoing clashes in the northern suburb of Bahri, or Khartoum North.
Footage emerged on Thursday of army soldiers celebrating in Khartoum North as they claimed victory over the RSF in the city. The army says it has been patrolling the area around Khartoum's airport, looking to flush out RSF fighters.
Eyewitnesses told MEE that there was still fighting around key strategic buildings in the airport district, including the army headquarters and the presidential palace. Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) air strikes are ongoing, with an Egyptian military source telling MEE that Egyptian pilots are flying some of the planes.
Seeking to upset its rival's aerial supremacy, the RSF has reportedly taken in a new supply of man-portable air-defence systems, known as Mpads.
More than 500 people have been killed and over 4,000 injured since fighting broke out in Sudan on 15 April. About 334,000 people are estimated to have been internally displaced, and over 100,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the UN.
MEE yesterday revealed previously unreported details relating to the early hours of the fighting, including an RSF assault on the residence of SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the timeline of attacks, and the seizure in March of large quantities of gold disguised as cookies on a Russian flight at Khartoum airport.
Dire humanitarian situation
As the fighting continues, the security and humanitarian situation in Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman is deteriorating.
Sources on the ground told MEE that banks and markets across Khartoum have been looted by gangs, some with the assistance of the RSF. Petrol stations are all out of service and most of the gold markets have been looted.
Sudan: How an RSF attack on Burhan set the tone for a bitter conflict
In Khartoum, 61 percent of health facilities are closed and only 16 percent are operating as normal, leaving millions of people without access to healthcare, the UN said. Residents of the city have told MEE about a serious shortage of affordable food and medicines.
Violence is ongoing in other parts of Sudan, including in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, and Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reported on Wednesday that at least 191 people had died in fighting in Geneina. The NRC also reported the "mass looting of aid".
Sources on the ground told MEE that a ceasefire in North Darfur was holding up. Elsewhere, particularly in the capital, ceasefires brokered by regional and international powers have not been maintained.
Cameron Hudson, a former CIA analyst and senior associate at the CSIS Africa Program, told MEE that the announcement of ceasefires had much to do with public relations.
“Both sides share an interest in creating an impression among the international community that they are cooperating with calls for ceasefires and that they are acting responsibly,” he said. By Oscar Rikett, Middle East Eye
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