The Tragedy of Textile

IMS and Danwatch, a Danish independent investigative media and research centre, have received a grant from Google to develop a new digital platform that links up local journalists in conflict zones with international media outlets, paving the way for their stories to reach a global audience

Clothing and shoes from brands like Bestseller, Nike, Puma, Asics, Vans and North Face are manufactured at textile factories in Cambodia, where garment workers faint by the hundreds every year. Doctors, experts and the women themselves blame exhaustion, malnutrition, overheating and panic.

The life of a Chilean activist was threatened last week as a result of his involvement in a Danwatch investigation into avocado production and water theft in Chile. “Absolutely reprehensible,” say supermarkets that have been buying avocados from Chile.

Avocado production in Chile is draining water resources to such a degree that local residents now lack water. In the area where most of Chile’s avocados are grown, a battle is being waged over water rights. At least one supermarket chain has indicated it will change its purchasing policy for avocados from this area.

Mass gang-rape, brutal beatings and killings – including of babies and young children. A new UN report documents horrifying assaults by Myanmar's security forces on the Muslim minority Rohingya in a sealed-off area in the northern Rakhine State. Danwatch photographer Shafiur Rahman has met some of the assaulted women who fled to Bangladesh.

Europe’s five largest pension funds have €7.5 billion invested in companies with business activities in and around illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is at odds with United Nations guidelines, clear warnings from 18 European countries, and undermines the two-state solution, experts warn.

36 publicly traded companies with economic activities in or around settlements, checkpoints, the separation wall or involved in extraction of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories - with investments from the five largest European pension funds.

A state of emergency in Nepal has paved the way for green energy projects intended to relieve the country’s energy crisis. But following the approval of new hydroelectric power plants, conflicts have arisen between the government and local communities who feel their voices were not heard in the process, leading to several violent clashes between police and locals in 2016 alone.

Maersk has sent two ships to be recycled at a shipyard in India considered by experts to be dangerous. Cancer, mutilation and death caused by a lack of protective equipment threaten employees, according to occupational safety experts that have reviewed Danwatch’s documentation. Maersk concedes that there are problems.

Google is preparing to acquire a large share in Kenya’s prestigious green-energy Lake Turkana Wind Power project, but the deal is mired in accusations of violations of indigenous peoples’ rights and a court case over illegal land acquisition. In a leaked letter obtained by Danwatch, Google investors say they are “deeply concerned”.