More than seven hundred families who were driven from their land to make way for an industrial sugar plantation in Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey Province in 2008 and 2009 have received a payment from the Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol Sugar Corporation Limited. It took seventeen years of sustained advocacy and, ultimately, bringing a class action against the company in Southeast Asia’s first-ever transboundary human rights litigation, but the families have now secured a measure of justice. 

“I’m very happy that we’ve reached the settlement for all of our communities,” said Hoy Mai, a community leader and lead plaintiff in the case. “After we receive the development fund, we will be able to pay off our debts and restore our livelihoods. We will not need to leave our families and migrate to Thailand anymore.”

“We’ll be able to make a living and support our children to go to school,” added Smin Tit, the other lead plaintiff. “It will contribute to making a better life for our community.”

Following legal proceedings in Thailand and a court-led mediation process, plaintiffs reached a resolution with the company in February 2025. Mitr Phol agreed to make a substantial, though undisclosed, donation to support the community, which was paid to the families’ fiduciary in May. On May 14, 2025, the court issued an order to dismiss the case.

Inclusive Development International and Equitable Cambodia have been providing legal and advocacy support to Hoy Mai and other community leaders since 2010, including working with the plaintiffs and a team of Thai lawyers from the Community Resource Centre Foundation and the Legal Rights and Environmental Protection Association to file the groundbreaking class action suit in 2018. This was in addition to pursuing many other complementary avenues for accountability, such as engaging with Mitr Phol’s buyers and filing a complaint to the Thai Human Rights Commission, which found the company responsible for the land grabs and recommended that it compensate the displaced families.

A long road to justice

“This was a long road to justice,” said David Pred, executive director of Inclusive Development International. “Community leaders from Oddar Meanchey kept up this fight for nearly two decades, in the face of an enormous power imbalance. By taking the case to the Thai courts and effectively engaging with the big brands that source sugar from Mitr Phol, they were able to shift that balance of power and negotiate a remedy  that they were satisfied with.”

After a Mitr Phol subsidiary, Angkor Sugar, secured a land concession from the Cambodian government in 2008, the communities and smallholder farmers living on and working the land were forced out to make way for an industrial sugar plantation. Hundreds of families were displaced, losing rice fields, orchards, grazing land, crops and access to forests that sustained their livelihoods. In one village, O’ Bat Moan, police and private security forces violently evicted residents, bulldozed houses, torched fields, and beat and arrested villagers.

At the time, Hoy Mai traveled over 300 kilometers by foot while pregnant to the capital Phnom Penh to petition the Prime Minister for help. Instead, she was arrested and gave birth in prison. For nearly two decades, she has fought for justice, including as a lead plaintiff in the Thai litigation.

A precedent-setting legal case

This case was the first time in Southeast Asia that a multinational company was sued for alleged tortious activities in a foreign country in a class action suit. The outcome shows that bringing such a suit to hold transnational corporations accountable in their home countries for abuses they commit abroad can yield tangible results for communities and for corporate accountability.

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In recent months, there has been a worrying escalation in the Cambodian government’s repression of critical voices. This has included attacks on two prominent human rights groups, Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) and Equitable Cambodia. In both cases, the reprisals are linked to the groups’ legitimate human rights activities, and in particular to their efforts to ensure human and labor rights protections in projects supported by the World Bank Group.

We call on World Bank Group leadership to demand that these attacks be stopped and to use its leverage, consistent with its Position Statement on Retaliation Against Civil Society and Project Stakeholders, to ensure human rights defenders and civil society organizations in the country can continue their work without facing further reprisals. 

Attack on leading labor watchdog 

CENTRAL is one of Cambodia’s leading labor rights organizations. On June 28, 2024, the Ministry of Interior requested that the National Audit Authority of Cambodia (NAA) conduct an audit of CENTRAL and a “national security” audit was launched on July 15, 2024. The audit request came just weeks after CENTRAL published a report assessing the effectiveness of Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a joint program between the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank aimed at improving working conditions in the garment sector by assessing the compliance of 660 participating factories with international labor standards. CENTRAL’s report found evidence that BFC was failing to identify freedom of association violations in participating factories and made several recommendations to improve BFC’s program, including by making their compliance reports available to workers and providing a grievance mechanism to allow workers to contest its findings.  

The decision to launch a national security audit was preceded by escalating actions by government-aligned unions, including protests outside CENTRAL’s offices, legal complaints against CENTRAL’s staff, and petitions to the Cambodian government to investigate CENTRAL. The audit, which is clearly a response to CENTRAL’s report on the BFC project, has been roundly condemned by the American Apparel and Footwear Association and the Fair Labor Association (representing the apparel brands that source from Cambodia’s factories), United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and national and international civil society organizations. The ILO and IFC have yet to comment.

Attack on leading development watchdog

Eang Vuthy, Executive Director of the Cambodian land rights NGO Equitable Cambodia (EC), is facing baseless criminal charges due to his organization’s advocacy on behalf of communities affected by harmful development projects. At the end of March 2024, Mr. Eang received a summons informing him that he had been charged with Incitement to Commit a Felony or Disturb Social Security—punishable by up to two years in prison—and ordered to appear before an investigating judge at Phnom Penh Capital Court for questioning on 4 April 2024. 

Since 2012, Equitable Cambodia has played a key role in helping communities seek redress for human rights abuses caused by large-scale development and private investment projects—including several World Bank-backed projects—through strategic advocacy and litigation. As a result, the organization and Mr. Eang has faced years-long attacks and judicial harassment, including a defamation charge against him in August 2016 and a six-month-long suspension of the organization in 2017.

The latest criminal complaint against Mr. Eang, filed by the Ministry of Interior, is the most serious attack so far. Moreover, the charges concern Equitable Cambodia’s legitimate activities and day-to-day work supporting communities to file formal complaints to international accountability mechanisms to seek recourse for harms that they have suffered.  These include a high-profile complaint regarding predatory lending and human rights violations caused by microfinance institutions backed by the IFC. The IFC’s Ombudsman was conducting its investigation mission on the case in March-April 2024, when Mr. Eang received his court summons notifying him that he had been criminally charged. He has strong reason to believe that the charges are a reprisal for this work.

A trial and conviction of Mr. Eang would set a dangerous precedent and would have very serious and far-reaching consequences for civil society in Cambodia.

Cambodia’s closing civil society space

These attacks are part of a broader crackdown on civil society that must be stopped before the last remaining democratic space in the country is closed. 

In the years that followed the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, which ended over two decades of war and horrific atrocities in Cambodia, a vibrant civil society and free press took hold and helped to advance a new era of democracy and human rights in the Southeast Asian nation. This began to change with the adoption of highly restrictive NGO and telecommunications laws in 2015. This was followed by a string of politically motivated prosecutions of opposition party leaders and elected officials, trade unionists and human rights defenders over the past decade, alongside the shutdown of over thirty independent news organizations. Since Hun Manet became Prime Minister last year, this crackdown on critical voices has escalated to target Cambodia’s leading non-partisan human rights organizations. 

While the Cambodian government has a history of repressing and jailing members of the political opposition, the Ministry of Interior’s attempt to criminalize the otherwise legal day-to-day work of registered human rights NGOs and their leaders represents a new level of repression, that threatens the existence of all remaining independent NGOs in Cambodia that provide critical support to the most vulnerable people in the country.

The World Bank Must Speak Out

There are numerous international institutions that provide development assistance to Cambodia, and which have a responsibility to intervene in defense of Equitable Cambodia and CENTRAL, but perhaps none more than the World Bank Group. That is because the recent attacks are believed to be in retaliation for the organizations’ work addressing World Bank programs.   

In 2018, IFC adopted a Position Statement on Retaliation Against Civil Society and Project Stakeholders, where it states that it does not tolerate any action by a client that amounts to retaliation – including threats, intimidation, harassment, or violence – against those who voice their opinion regarding the activities of IFC or its clients. In this statement, the bank notes that “respect for human rights includes the ability of stakeholders to engage freely with IFC and its clients.”  In 2021 IFC also published a “Good Practice Note for the Private Sector, Addressing the Risks of Retaliation Against Project Stakeholders”, which outlines the steps that IFC’s clients should take to screen for, prevent and address reprisals.

We call upon World Bank President Ajay Banga to make clear to the Cambodian government that the Bank will enforce its policy of zero tolerance for retaliation. This means that, before approving any new investments in Cambodia, the World Bank Group Board should verify that the legal harassment of CENTRAL and Equitable Cambodia has stopped and its staff are able to continue to freely engage in their legitimate human rights activities in support of project-affected communities and workers.  

Signed by:

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Inclusive Development International congratulates the Koh Kong communities on this victory, which marks both a resolution of their long-standing struggle and an important win for the global movement to advance business respect for human rights. It demonstrates that multinational corporations—in this case, major global sugar buyers—can and should contribute to remedy for human rights abuses to which they contributed through irresponsible procurement decisions.  Finally, it is a testament to the hard work and tenacity of Cambodian advocacy groups, including Equitable Cambodia and the Community Legal Education Center, and community representatives who have persevered in their quest for justice over the course of so many years.  

Inclusive Development International is proud to have supported the campaign for justice for these communities for many years—including through our research linking the UK-based Tate and Lyle Sugars to KSL’s Koh Kong plantation. Our 2013 report with Equitable Cambodia, Bittersweet Harvest, highlighted the role of Tate and Lyle and other European buyers in driving a surge in forced displacement in Cambodia resulting from industrial sugar plantations that were developed to take advantage of preferential trade privileges granted by the European Union. The report helped lay the basis for the years-long Cambodia Clean Sugar Campaign, as well as litigation against Tate and Lyle in the UK related to the land grabs and subsequent use of child labor on the Koh Kong Sugar plantation. The litigation (Song Mao & Ors v (1) Tate & Lyle Sugar Industries, (2) Tate and Lyle Sugars Limited) has since been withdrawn. 

A press release from Equitable Cambodia is available here.

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Mitr Phol is the largest sugar company in Asia and the fifth largest in the world. Past and current buyers include Pepsi, Nestle, Mars Wrigley, Corbion, Marubeni and Coca-Cola. Plaintiffs have previously called on Mitr Phol’s buyers to do everything in their power to ensure remediation for the displaced families, in line with their responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

“While we are moving closer to securing justice through the Thai courts, the process is painfully slow for our families and children who have grown up in poverty because, after more than a decade, we have not been compensated for our stolen land,” said Smin Tit, an affected community representative and one of the plaintiffs in this case.

Plaintiffs filed the landmark class action lawsuit in 2018, following a 2015 investigation by the Thai National Human Rights Commission which found Mitr Phol responsible for the evictions and called on the company to “correct and remedy the impacts.” Farmers and their families have been left impoverished after their lands were seized, crops looted and homes demolished and burned to the ground. To date, plaintiffs have secured important victories in Thai court, including a decision in July 2020 recognizing their class status and the recent denial of Mitr Phol’s motion to dismiss. The Bangkok South Civil Court set September 21, 2022, for the next pre-trial hearing.

Implications for Mitr Phol’s corporate customers and sugar trade associations

While not directly implicated in the lawsuit, consumer brands that source sugar from Mitr Phol have an obligation under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to use all available leverage to address known human rights violations that they are linked to through their business relationships. This includes Mitr Phol’s ongoing failure to provide compensation and other appropriate remedies for the losses and human rights impacts suffered by the evicted families.

Sugar industry trade associations also have leverage they should be using. Earlier this year, the UK National Contact Point, a government body that handles complaints against British multinational enterprises, found that the UK-based “sustainable sugarcane” certification body Bonsucro violated its international human rights responsibilities by readmitting Mitr Phol to the organization without addressing its abuses in Cambodia. Several of Mitr Phol’s past and current buyers are also members, giving them considerable influence over the steps Bonsucro takes to hold Mitr Phol accountable for its human rights responsibilities.   

“It is long past time for Mitr Phol’s corporate customers to use their collective leverage with the company to demand that it finally compensates the Cambodian victims and put this disgraceful matter to rest,” said David Pred, Executive Director of Inclusive Development International.  “These communities shouldn’t have to wait for the end of a lengthy litigation process to realize their right to remedy for harms that have been substantiated repeatedly in multiple forums.”

An English translation of the appellate court decision is available here.

For more information about the case, please see:    

The post Thai Court Greenlights Trial Against Global Sugar Supplier Mitr Phol appeared first on Inclusive Development International.

(Phnom Penh) – The UK-based “sustainable sugarcane” certification body Bonsucro violated its international human rights responsibilities, according to a statement released by the UK National Contact Point (UK NCP), a government body that handles complaints against British multinational enterprises. The NCP found that Bonsucro breached the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises when it admitted the Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol as a member after thousands of families were violently thrown off their land to make way for the company’s sugarcane plantations in Cambodia.

The statement was issued following an 18-month examination of a complaint brought on behalf of the affected families by Inclusive Development International, Equitable Cambodia and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO). 

“For years, Bonsucro has been providing cover for the sugar industry’s worst human rights offenders and the big brands that source from them,” said David Pred, Executive Director of Inclusive Development International.

The UK NCP found that Bonsucro “did not undertake an appropriate level of due diligence” when it readmitted Mitr Phol as a member in 2015. It also found that Bonsucro failed to use its leverage with Mitr Phol to remediate the harms suffered by Cambodian communities devastated by the company’s land grab.

Despite its continued refusal to provide compensation or other appropriate remedies to the families, Mitr Phol remains a Bonsucro member in good standing and continues to supply some of the world’s biggest brands, including Coca-Cola, Nestle and Mars Wrigley.

“If Bonsucro wants its ‘sustainable’ seal of approval to be considered credible in the eyes of consumers after this examination, it has only one choice, which is to terminate Mitr Phol’s membership immediately,” Pred added. 

Multi-stakeholder initiatives like Bonsucro that claim to promote socially responsible and sustainable business practices, and that offer certification to companies that meet their qualifications, have become increasingly prominent as the public demands ethical sourcing in consumer goods. The UK NCP statement affirms that multi-stakeholder initiatives like Bonsucro are themselves subject to international human rights rules and will be held to account when they abuse the public trust and fail to demand that their members adhere to even the most basic standards of ethical conduct. 

Mitr Phol’s human rights violations are well-documented.  After securing legally dubious land concessions from the Cambodian government, Mitr Phol colluded with local authorities to grab 9,400 hectares of land from smallholder farmers for an industrial sugarcane plantation in northwestern Cambodia. Between 2008 and 2009, more than 2,000 families in 26 villages were forced to give up their land for the project. Affected households lost extensive rice fields, orchards, grazing land, crops and access to non-timber forest products that sustained their livelihoods. One residential village, O’Bat Moan, was completely destroyed. Police and private security forces descended on the village, forcibly evicting residents, bulldozing houses, torching rice fields, and beating and arresting villagers. The families were left homeless and landless, with many forced to migrate to Thailand to find work.

An investigation by the Thai National Human Rights Commission found Mitr Phol directly responsible for these human rights violations. But more than ten years later, the company has yet to take responsibility or make amends.

Representatives of the evicted families submitted a complaint against Mitr Phol to Bonsucro’s grievance mechanism in 2011. A year later, the Thai company withdrew from Bonsucro rather than address the complaint. In 2015, Bonsucro quietly reinstated Mitr Pohl without first requiring that it remediated the harms or restarting the complaint process. Inclusive Development International, Equitable Cambodia and LICADHO then filed a second complaint in 2016, which Bonsucro’s board dismissed in December 2018 on the grounds that it had not received “cogent evidence that…Mitr Phol breached the terms of Bonsucro’s Code of Conduct in place at the time.” In its decision, the UK NCP rejected Bonsucro’s argument that it should not be held accountable to OECD’s standards on responsible business conduct for its actions in this matter.

“Today’s decision is a vindication of our long struggle to hold Bonsucro accountable for enabling Mitr Phol’s abuses,” said Eang Vuthy, Executive Director of Equitable Cambodia. “But our work isn’t over, and we won’t stop until Mitr Phol is forced to compensate the people whose lives it destroyed.”

In another win for the Cambodian communities seeking justice against Mitr Phol, a U.S. federal court last week ordered the Coca-Cola Company to release findings from a prior investigation into its sugar supplier. The order came in response to a petition filed by Inclusive Development International on behalf of plaintiffs in a related class action litigation against Mitr Phol that is ongoing in Thai courts.

The final statement of the UK NCP is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/idi-ec-and-licadho-complaint-to-uk-ncp-about-bonsucro-ltd/final-statement-idi-ec-and-licadho-complaint-to-uk-ncp-about-bonsucro-ltd

The complaint is available at:

https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/UK-NCP-Specific-Instance-Bonsucro-FINAL.pdf

For more information, see:

https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/cases/cambodia-mitr-phol-sugarcane-land-grab/

The post Sustainable sugar group Bonsucro ignored rights abuses by member, UK body finds appeared first on Inclusive Development International.

(Atlanta, GA.) – A U.S. federal court in the Northern District of Georgia last week ordered the Coca-Cola Company to turn over evidence related to an ongoing class action against Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol in the Thai courts. The decision, an important victory for plaintiffs representing hundreds of Cambodian families who were violently displaced to make way for an industrial sugar plantation, comes in response to a petition filed in December by Inclusive Development International, asking the U.S. court for help obtaining information relevant to their case.

Mitr Phol, one of the world’s largest sugar companies and a key supplier for Coca-Cola, is accused of complicity in the violent eviction of more than 700 families in rural northwestern Cambodia between 2008 and 2009. Coca-Cola has previously taken specific steps to investigate Mitr Phol’s role in these allegations, but has never made its findings public. Now, the Cambodian plaintiffs are demanding access to the information.

In its decision, the court found that the information sought “is essential to the full and fair adjudication of the Thai proceedings,” and ordered Coca-Cola to respond within 30 days. The decision requires Coca-Cola to turn over numerous documents and designate a representative or representatives for a deposition.

Following are responses from Inclusive Development International and the plaintiffs’ Thai Counsel:

“The information obtained we hope will shed light on the serious human rights abuses at issue in the Thai litigation,” said Sarah Jaffe, senior legal and policy associate at Inclusive Development International, in response to the court’s order. “Coca-Cola’s prompt response and compliance with the court’s request will be an important measure of its willingness to support human rights protections in the industry.”

“Access to the information Coca-Cola has could be game-changing for the communities seeking justice in this case and help pave the way for holding Mitr Phol to account after so many years,” said Sor.Rattanamanee Polkla, executive coordinator of Community Resource Centre Foundation and one of the Plaintiffs’ lawyers.

For more information on the Cambodian plaintiffs’ petition for support from the U.S. Federal Court, please see:

https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/cambodia/cambodians-seek-coca-cola-companys-help-in-case-against-asias-largest-sugar-supplier/

For more information about the case, please see:    

https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/cases/cambodia-mitr-phol-sugarcane-land-grab/

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Today, plaintiffs representing hundreds of families who were violently displaced to make way for an industrial sugar plantation in Cambodia have filed a petition in the Northern District of Georgia asking the U.S. Court to help them obtain evidence from Coca-Cola. The evidence would be used to support their landmark case against Thai sugar giant, Mitr Phol Sugar Co., accused of complicity in the families’ evictions.

Mitr Phol, the largest sugar company in Asia and the fifth largest in the world, supplies sugar to some of the world’s best known consumer brands. Past and current buyers include Pepsi, Nestle, Mars Wrigley, Corbion, and Coca-Cola. 

“As Asia’s first transboundary class action on human rights abuses, this case is breaking new ground for people across the region affected by land grabs and other abuses,” said Sarah Jaffe, senior legal and policy associate at Inclusive Development International. “Coca-Cola has information about Mitr Phol’s actions and the plaintiffs and the Thai Court deserve the opportunity to review it. The truth should not be allowed to collect dust in corporate file cabinets, especially when serious human rights abuses are at issue.” 

In 2018, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in Thai courts accusing Mitr Phol of having been complicit in the violent eviction of more than 700 families in rural northwestern Cambodia between 2008 and 2009. The families’ lands were seized, their crops were looted, and their homes were demolished and burned to the ground. In 2015, the Thai National Human Rights Commission found Mitr Phol responsible, calling on the company to “correct and remedy the impacts,” but the plaintiffs are yet to receive compensation for their losses.

More than a decade after being displaced, many families are still struggling to recover and remain deeply impoverished. “Since Mitr Pohl took my land, my family and I have suffered tremendously. My house was burned down. I was arrested without reason, and as a result, my family had nothing to eat and had to collect trash to survive. To this day, I have no land or house,” said Ma Okchoeurn, an affected community member, when the suit was filed in 2018.

The plaintiffs are attempting to force Mitr Phol to finally reckon with its role in the abuses they suffered and to provide damages to those that were displaced. In July 2020, they secured an important victory when the Court of Appeals recognized their class status, enabling displaced families to bring the case as a group. The case is now moving toward trial. Plaintiffs are represented by Thai counsel at the Community Resource Centre Foundation and the Legal Rights and Environmental Protection Lawyers Advocacy Association, with the support of Inclusive Development International and Equitable Cambodia. 

This case could be a watershed moment for corporate accountability in Southeast Asia. As the first case seeking to hold Thai companies accountable for abusing human rights while operating abroad, it has the potential to redefine access to justice for victims of corporate abuse, and Coca-Cola has an opportunity to contribute to its success.

In November 2013, Coca-Cola disclosed that Mitr Phol was one its top three global sugar suppliers. The company simultaneously committed to a “zero tolerance” policy against land grabs within its supply chain and introduced a plan for developing standards and audit requirements for its suppliers. Coca-Cola also took specific steps to investigate and substantiate the allegations against Mitr Phol that now form the basis for the class action litigation in Thailand, but those findings have never been released publicly.

Today, Inclusive Development International filed a request in Atlanta asking the court to order Coca-Cola to produce evidence for use in the Thai lawsuit. The U.S. Foreign Legal Assistance Statute (FLA) permits U.S. courts to assist foreign litigants in obtaining evidence from companies found in the United States. “Hundreds of individuals whose lives were destroyed so that Mitr Phol could profit are now seeking justice through the courts.  The case is also a key moment for the accountability of Thai companies under Thailand’s Business and Human Rights National Action Plan,” said Sor.Rattanamanee Polkla, executive coordinator of Community Resource Centre Foundation and one of the Plaintiff’s Thai lawyers. “The information Coca-Cola holds is vital to support access to justice for the affected communities.”

For more information about the case, please see: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/cases/cambodia-mitr-phol-sugarcane-land-grab/

Related Documents

Mitr Phol Memorandum of Law

The post Cambodians Seek Coca-Cola Company’s Help in Case Against Asia’s Largest Sugar Supplier appeared first on Inclusive Development International.

Despite new leadership and a strong commitment to sustainability, Peugeot has refused to publicly condemn land grabbing and environmental damage by its partner.

Mediations have restarted between the Indigenous communities harmed by the project and THACO, but so far the company has refused to return the land. It is time for Peugeot to hold their partners accountable for land grabs and human rights abuses.

Read our open letter to Linda Jackson, CEO of Peugeot, to learn more.

The post Peugeot: act against land-grabs in Cambodia now appeared first on Inclusive Development International.

This week from Geneva, the United Nations is hosting its annual Forum on Business and Human Rights. Thousands of participants from government, business and civil society groups from around the world will gather online to discuss current issues regarding the implementation of the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – which outline the global authoritative standards on the business responsibility to respect human rights.

Inclusive Development International has joined with our partners at Equitable Cambodia and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) to issue a joint statement to the forum. The statement highlights a decade-long struggle by displaced Cambodian communities against Asia’s largest sugar company and explains how a number of prominent companies attending the forum are failing to meet their responsibilities under the Guiding Principles.

To make way for a sugar plantation in Cambodia, a Thai sugar company, Mitr Phol, colluded with the military to raze people’s homes, forcibly seize their land and loot their harvested rice crops.

Extraordinarily, Mitr Phol continues to be a member in good standing of the sugar industry’s sustainability certification initiative Bonsucro, while corporate customers of Mitr Phol, such as Coca-Cola and Corbion, are attempting to wash their hands of any responsibility for human rights abuses that are directly linked to their own supply chains.

The Executive Director of Equitable Cambodia, Eang Vuthy, renewed our joint call for Mitr Phol to undertake remedial action with the communities immediately.

“This problem won’t go away if this company continues to deny the reality of the violations it caused in Cambodia. People will use every legal means possible to hold them accountable,” said Mr. Eang.

Inclusive Development International’s Executive Director, David Pred, said the brands that continue to source sugar from Mitr Phol, such as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Mars and Corbion, should utilize their leverage as key customers to demand that Mitr Phol engage in settlement talks with representatives of the affected families.

“These communities had their homes destroyed, their land seized and their livelihoods taken from them by force.  Companies like Coca-Cola can’t claim to be responsible corporate citizens if they are willing to tolerate such serious human rights abuses in their supply chains,” said Mr. Pred.

Mitr Phol’s human rights abuses have been investigated and confirmed by many institutions including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Thai Human Rights Commission and multiple human rights NGOs, including Inclusive Development International.

Earlier this year the communities scored a major legal victory when the Thai courts granted them class status in their legal action against the company for its harmful actions in Cambodia – paving the way for the first transboundary human rights class action in Asian legal history.  But Mr. Pred said it was a long road ahead for the communities seeking justice.

“Legal battles can take years to play out, whereas big brands like Coca-Cola and Nestle have the power and the clout to get Mitr Phol to sit down at the negotiating table with community members next week.  If Mitr Phol continues to refuse to engage with the communities and meet its responsibility to compensate them for the damages it caused, then the brands should stop buying their tainted sugar – that is what the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights require,” said Mr. Pred.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Joint statement by Equitable Cambodia, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights and Inclusive Development International to the Ninth Session of the United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights

Letter to Coca Cola – Company Response

Letter to Mars Wrigley – Company Response

Letter to Nestle – No written response received to date

Letter to Corbion – Company Response

Letter to Pepsi – Company Response

The post Time for Mitr Phol, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Mars Wrigley and Bonsucro to live up to their human rights responsibilities appeared first on Inclusive Development International.

The transboundary class action Hoy Mai & Others vs. Mitr Phol Co. Ltd. is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.  It was filed under Thai laws permitting a class action to be brought by foreign plaintiffs for abuses committed by a Thai company overseas.

The complaint accuses Mitr Phol of complicity in the forcible displacement of the families to clear the way for an industrial sugarcane plantation in rural northwestern Cambodia.  Between 2008 and 2009, the families’ land was seized, their crops were looted, and their homes were demolished and burned. Some of those who sought to defend their rights were jailed.

The affected communities have been fighting for justice ever since. In 2015, the Thai National Human Rights Commission found Mitr Phol responsible for the land grab and called upon the company to “correct and remedy the impacts.” So far, Mitr Phol has steadfastly refused to provide any form of compensation to the Cambodian families whose lives it destroyed.

The decision recognizing class status, which was delivered today by the Bangkok South Civil Court, allows the families to bring the case as a group, ensuring access to justice and preventing the laborious and costly process of bringing hundreds of individual lawsuits.

“Today’s win marks a huge step forward for the plaintiffs and all the people affected by the evictions. The voices of those who have been harmed can now be heard.  The court’s decision shows that access to justice is possible, and that their decade-long fight has not been for nothing,” said Eang Vuthy, Executive director of Equitable Cambodia.

For Thailand and the region, the decision changes the legal landscape, providing that class action legislation can be used in transboundary cases and to protect some of the region’s most vulnerable people.

“The importance of this legal precedent cannot be overstated,” said Natalie Bugalski, Legal Director for Inclusive Development International.  “This is a David vs Goliath case that will redefine access to justice for the victims of corporate abuse in Southeast Asia and beyond.”

It is also a key test of corporate accountability. Mitr Phol is the biggest sugar supplier in the region and has counted some of the world’s largest consumer brands, including Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mars Wrigley and Corbion, as past and current customers.  While Coca-Cola took initial steps to investigate the allegations against Mitr Phol, it failed to use its leverage to compel the company to provide redress to the victims in Cambodia.  Instead, in 2018, Coca-Cola informed Inclusive Development International that it no longer sourced sugar from Mitr Phol. It has never reported the termination of the supply relationship publicly.

Mitr Pohl is also a member of the sugar industry’s “sustainability” certification body Bonsucro, which is under scrutiny by the UK National Contact Point for the OECD (a government body that monitors the operations of British businesses overseas) for failing to hold Mitr Phol accountable for its abuses against these communities.

For the families represented in this lawsuit, it has been a decade-long battle for justice.

“As a representative of the people in Oddar Meanchey province, I am very happy with this result, I hope to get justice in the future. We will all continue to fight until the end.” said Hoy Mai following the decision on Friday.

“I applaud the Thai court for supporting the Cambodian people in Oddar Meanchey by deciding that our case is a collective one,” he said. I hope we, the victims, get justice. According to the results, it is a new hope for our struggle going forward.” Said Smin Tit, affected community representative.

Learn more about this case here.

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