From 12-20th October, we will welcome environmental human rights defenders visiting London from Colombia, Brazil, the US and Chile to hold the world’s largest mining company- BHP Billiton- to account and call for binding legislation that will end corporate impunity everywhere. Join us for a week of action co-organised in collaboration with London Mining Network, Yes to Life, No to Mining, Coal Action Network, Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Threepenny Festival Association and War on Want.

Find out more and support this work!

Between 12-20 October, we will host a week of art, discussion and protest with leading environmental human rights defenders visiting London from Latin America to share their experiences resisting the world’s largest mining company, which has been devastating communities with impunity for decades.

Communities all over the world are rising against mining violence and building real alternatives that offer truly-sustainable futures, assert people’s rights and are deeply rooted in custodianship of land and water. This week of action will be an opportunity to explore this resurgence.

In solidarity with these communities, we will also come together to call for the UK government to commit to a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights to end corporate impunity for good.

As the world’s largest multinational mining company, Anglo-Australian-owned BHP’s AGM is an important moment to build these arguments. BHP’s record of forced displacement, dispossession and catastrophic environmental damage stretches back decades. The company is so powerful it is seldom held to account for this devastation, while indigenous, afro-descendant and peasant communities are hardest hit.

BHP is a clear example of how corporate impunity denies justice to workers and affected communities while it makes massive profits at their expense. This is why we need binding legislation that can put an end to corporate impunity worldwide.

Marking 10 years of international austerity since the financial crisis, we will also question the cosy relationship between the City of London and multinational corporations around the world. The effects of this are being felt today in a global crisis of inequality that connects mining violence in the global South to the collapse of social welfare and the rise of the far-right closer to home.

The system of corporate impunity that allows BHP to devastate territories and communities and escape accountability, is the very same system that let the banks off the hook for the financial crash ten years ago and condemned UK families to a decade of austerity and falling wages while fueling the rise of the far-right.

This is why we need binding legislation that can put an end to corporate impunity worldwide.

Events – more details coming soon!

*** Some events may be ticketed but all are free of charge ***

International delegates:

  • From Brazil, Leticia Oliveira from Movement of People affected by Dams (MAB), a grasroots organisation that works with people affected by 2015’s catastrophic Samarco mining waste dam collapse in Mariana
  • From Colombia, Misael Socarras, an indigenous activist from La Guajira in the north of the country and Rosa Mateus from lawyers’ collective CAJAR
  • From Chile, Lucio Cuenca of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA) will expose BHP’s impacts at the world’s biggest copper mine, Escondida
  • From the United States, Roger Featherstone of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition which is fighting back against BHP’s Resolution Copper project

If you’re in London, join us. If you can’t be there, follow us on social media, support this work and watch this space as we platform the voices of the defenders via social media or just search #BeyondBHP

#BeyondBHP is organised/co-hosted by London Mining Network, Coal Action Network, Colombia Solidarity Campaign, The Gaia Foundation, Threepenny Festival Association and War on Want.