Paraguay responsible for human rights violations
Thursday, 15 August 2019, 10:10 am
Press Release: United Nations Human Rights Commissioner
GENEVA (14 August 2019). Paraguay must undertake an effective and thorough investigation into fumigations with agrochemicals and the subsequent poisoning of peoples, including children, and contamination of water, soil and food, according to an expert UN body.
In a decision published today in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Committee urged Paraguay to prosecute those responsible, to make full reparation to the victims, and to publish the decision in a daily newspaper with a large circulation.
The full decision is available to read on-line.
The victims are rural workers from the same family, engaged in family farming in Canindeyú Department, an area of major expansion of agribusinesses and extensive mechanized cultivation of genetically modified soybeans.
The large-scale use of toxic agrochemicals in the region has had severe impacts on the victims’ living conditions, health, livelihoods, contaminating water resources and aquifers, preventing the use of streams, and causing the loss of fruit trees, the death of various farm animals and severe crop damage. The victims have experienced a range of physical symptoms, including nausea, dizziness, headaches, fever, stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhoea, coughing and skin lesions. The contamination has so far resulted in the death of one person and the poisoning of 22 other inhabitants of this community.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1908/S00066/paraguay-responsible-for-human-rights-violations.htm