Imagine BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil disaster happening every single year, with little or no public outcry, no media coverage, and all but silence from government and the companies involved. Welcome to Nigeria.

Over the last 50 years, foreign oil companies have spilled over 1.5 million tons of oil here, but there have been no legal convictions against them, and no compensation for spill victims. The Niger Delta is now one of the most polluted places in the world. Snip from Guardian article by John Vidal:

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. “We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,” said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP. This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: “Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.”

With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.

This morning, the 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report was released by the State Department, marking the 10th anniversary of America’s annual human trafficking report card for the world. Only this year for the first time ever, we’re grading ourselves. (You can check out the full report here.)

The 2010 TIP Report was announced in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department, a Titanic-esque ballroom with glittering crystal chandeliers and inlaid gold covering the ceilings. But the fancy architecture was quickly obscured by the hundreds of people who packed in shoulder to shoulder to see and hear Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announce the 10th anniversary of the report. She even opened with a joke about the Fire Marshall, who could have easily mistook the crowd for the mosh pit at a rock concert, but with a higher concentration of pinstripes.

Secretary Clinton called the TIP Report a “fair and transparent” picture of human trafficking around the world, which it obviously strives (and often succeeds) to be. But for years, one crucial element of fairness was missing — although the U.S. saw fit to grade every other country in the world on their efforts to fight trafficking, we didn’t grade ourselves. Well, this year under the leadership of Clinton and Ambassador Lou CdeBaca, that changed, and America was added to the official class roster.

The grades, or “ranks” of the TIP Report each year are given on a tier system. Tier 1 countries are doing the minimum they need to be to fight human trafficking, and some are going above and beyond. Tier 2 countries aren’t doing as much as they should, but are working in the right direction. Tier 3 countries aren’t doing what they should and aren’t really trying. There’s also the Tier 2 Watch List, which is for countries who are working in the right direction, but are struggling in a few specific ways. Countries on Tier 3 may be subject to non-humanitarian economic sanctions.

So what grade do we Americans give ourselves on our very first test? Why, a Tier 1 ranking, of course. But before the chorus of “that’s just the U.S. patting itself on the back” gets going above a dull roar, I have to say that, overall, I think the ranking is deserved. By the standards used in the TIP Report, the U.S. really is doing a pretty decent job combating trafficking. Sure, there’s plenty of room for improvement, but we have developed good legislation, are creating better protections for victims, and have an actively engaged and effective group of NGOs. In fact, one of the biggest reasons the U.S. graded itself this year was pressure from NGOs to do so. I’ll have more detailed analysis on this year’s TIP report to come, but so far the “A” in the class is looking accurate.

In her speech at the launch, Clinton highlighted a few areas, which are arguably the ones the State Department will be focusing on. They include holding companies responsible for “reckless disregard” for slavery in their supply chains, focusing on building public-private partnerships, and giving resources and guidance to countries who want to improve their ranking. There were also all the general denouncements of slavery and congratulations for fighting it for the past ten years. But it was 2010 TIP Report Hero Laura Germino who really summed up the feeling of the room, the report, and the rankings, “We’re all of us fighting for a Tier Zero.”

Apple Inc. said it found more than a dozen serious violations of labor laws or Apple’s own rules at its suppliers that needed immediate correction.

The findings were outlined in a company report on audits of 102 supplier facilities conducted in 2009. That was a year in which questions about the practices of one of Apple’s suppliers came into focus after the suicide of a Chinese worker who held a sensitive job handling iPhones.

Along with many other technology companies, Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., relies heavily on foreign contractors to build its products. Monitoring their labor practices be difficult, and Apple has caught heat in the past on this issue.

The company said in its latest report that “by making social responsibility a fundamental part of the way we do business, we insist that our suppliers take Apple’s code as seriously as we do.”

Apple said it found 17 “core” violations, the most serious type.

Those included three cases of underage workers being hired; eight instances of workers paying “recruitment” fees that were above the legal limits in those countries; three cases in which suppliers used non-certified vendors to dispose of hazardous waste; and three others in which the companies gave false records during the audits.

In the cases involving underage workers, Apple said three facilities had hired a total of 11 workers who were 15 years old in countries where the minimum employment age is 16. Apple noted that the workers were no longer underage or weren’t working for the facilities anymore when the audits were undertaken.

Apple has been pressured before to answer questions about its suppliers’ practices.

Last July, a 25-year-old Chinese worker whose job involved shipping iPhone prototypes to Apple killed himself by jumping from the 12th floor of his apartment building amid an investigation into a missing iPhone. The worker, Sun Danyong, worked for the Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese manufacturer that has long been one of Apple’s key suppliers.

The Texas Rangers baseball team are celebrating finally getting two new pitchers from the Dominican Republic just in time for spring training. The team hired Omar Beltre and Alexi Ogando five years ago, but they were banned from traveling to the U.S. at the time because they had been convicted of being involved in a human trafficking ring in the DR.

But the two new pitchers have served their time and even performed voluntary community service. The ban has been lifted, and they are now eligible to play baseball in the U.S. The big question is, will their past involvement with human trafficking haunt them in their new lives in Texas?

When Beltre and Ogando were Major League Baseball hopefuls, they and about 30 other baseball players got an offer that sounded too good to refuse. They would pretend to marry women in order to get them into the U.S. with the players. Once in America, the men and their fake wives would part ways, the women most likely trafficked into prostitution. In exchange for what was essentially filling out falsified paperwork, they’d each receive $3000. Beltre and Ogando both took the deal. But the U.S. State Department uncovered the scheme before any women could be trafficked to the U.S. All the baseball players involved were banned from getting visas to the U.S. — a ban that ended up stretching over five years.

Beltre and Ogando, according to many who have met them, are both deeply sorry for their role in the scheme. During their wait to be allowed to join the Texas Rangers, the men worked with a number of NGOs in the DR to raise awareness about the dangers of human trafficking. They’ve also worked with organizations to create training programs for Dominicans, teaching them how not to be caught up in visa forgeries, smuggling, and trafficking. Officials saw the anti-trafficking work the players were doing, coupled with the fact that they were not the masterminds of the scheme, and relaxed the ban to get them visas.

This story is one that has a pretty happy ending. Thanks to the investigative work from the State Department, no women were trafficked in this scheme. Beltre and Ogando learned some valuable lessons and were able to pass them along to other Dominicans who may find themselves in a similar situation. The Texas Rangers get two talented young pitchers, and Beltre and Ogando get a second chance that they’re incredibly grateful for.

What do you think about this case? Did the punishment fit the crime? Are Beltre and Ogando just two guys who made some mistakes and deserve a second chance to live their dream? Or should their involvement in human trafficking have kept them out of Major League Baseball forever?

Southwestern University has signed an agreement with the City of Georgetown that will enable it to meet all its electric needs for the next 18 years from wind power.

The agreement makes Southwestern the first university in Texas to have all of its electricity supplied by wind power and one of fewer than 20 universities in the country to have a totally “green” source of power, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“In recent weeks, much attention has been focused on how the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By taking the bold step to obtaining all of their electricity from wind power, Southwestern University becomes a leader in showing the nation how it can be done,” said Paul Rowland, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Wind-generated power will be provided by the City of Georgetown through an agreement with AEP Energy Partners, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States. The electricity will come from the Southwest Mesa and South Trent Wind Farms in West Texas. These two wind farms have a total of 151 wind turbines, each of which can generate between 0.7 to 2.3 megawatts of electricity. Power is conveyed through transmission lines to customers such as the City of Georgetown.

Officials from Southwestern and the city signed the contract Jan. 12. The initial contract is for five years and is renewable through 2028. Southwestern President Jake B. Schrum said the agreement will help Southwestern toward its long-term goal of being carbon neutral, which it promised to work toward last February when he signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. This document formally commits campuses to eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions over time and educate students about climate neutrality.

“This is an historic moment for Southwestern,” Schrum said. “We hope Southwestern will be an inspiration to other universities to advance sustainability.” He noted that Southwestern students were the ones who initiated the conversation with city officials, and after that, both the city and the university worked to bring the idea to reality.

Jim Briggs, Georgetown’s assistant city manager for utility operations, said Southwestern is one of the city’s largest customers, with energy needs that are equivalent to the demand from 450 homes. The agreement establishes a fixed energy cost for Southwestern that is competitive with the city’s standard electric rates.

Briggs noted that the agreement also helps the city move toward the goal of meeting 30 percent of the city’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2030. “This is the kind of renewable energy partnership we want to expand in the future. This is only a beginning,” Briggs said.

Richard Anderson, vice president for fiscal affairs at Southwestern, noted that having its utility price locked in for the next 18 years will help the university considerably in its strategic planning.

“We’re proud of this partnership with the City of Georgetown,” Anderson said. “With this wind energy agreement, we are making a strong statement reflecting Southwestern’s commitment to conservation and sustainability, and our concern for the environment for the long term.”

Southwestern has undertaken a variety of other sustainability initiatives in the past year, including the following:

· It has completed two “green” buildings. The Wilhelmina Cullen Admission Center received Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and Southwestern will be applying for LEED certification for the new Prothro Center for Lifelong Learning, which will open in March.

* Small compost bins have been placed near all the residence halls and a large compost bin that will handle waste from the cafeteria has been installed north of the greenhouse.
* The student dining area went “trayless” in the fall of 2009.
* Southwestern students, faculty and staff members have planted an organic community garden behind the Studio Arts Building.
* Southwestern students organized their third environmental summit for area high school students in 2009.

For more on Southwestern’s sustainability efforts, visit www.southwestern.edu/sustainability.

by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent.

While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in March that public concern about global warming had declined, that the number of Americans who believed that news about global warming was exaggerated had increased, and that the number of Americans who believed that the effects of global warming had already begun had declined.

The reasons offered for these declines are as varied as opinion about climate change itself. Skeptics say the gig is up: Americans have finally figured out that global warming is a hoax. Climate activists blame skeptics for sowing doubts about climate science. Pew’s Andrew Kohut, who conducted the survey, says it’s (mostly) the economy, stupid. And some folks have concluded that Americans, with our high levels of disbelief in evolution, are just too stupid or too anti-science to sort it all out.

The truth is both simpler and more complicated. It is simpler in the sense that most Americans just aren’t paying a whole lot of attention. Between being asked about things like whether they would provide CPR to save the life of a pet (most pet owners say yes ) or whether they would allow their child to be given the swine flu vaccine (a third of parents say no), pollsters occasionally get around to asking Americans what they think about global warming. When they do, Americans find a variety of ways to tell us that they don’t think about it very much at all.

Three years after it seemed that “An Inconvenient Truth” had changed everything, it turns out that it didn’t. The current Pew survey is the latest in a series of studies suggesting that Al Gore probably had a good deal more effect upon elite opinion than public opinion.

Public opinion about global warming, it turns out, has been remarkably stable for the better part of two decades, despite the recent decline in expressed public confidence in climate science. Roughly two-thirds of Americans have consistently told pollsters that global warming is occurring. By about the same majority, most Americans agree that global warming is at least in part human-caused, with this majority roughly equally divided between those believing that warming is entirely caused by humans and those who believe it to be a combination of human and natural causes. And about the same two-thirds majority has consistently supported government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1989.

This would be good news for action to address climate change if most Americans felt very strongly about the subject. Unfortunately, they don’t. Looking back over 20 years, only about 35 to 40 percent of the U.S. public worry about global warming “a great deal,” and only about one-third consider it a “serious personal threat.” Moreover, when asked in open-ended formats to name the most serious problems facing the country, virtually no Americans volunteer global warming. Even other environmental problems, such as air and water pollution, are often rated higher priorities by U.S. voters than global warming, which is less visible and is experienced less personally than many other problems.

What is arguably most remarkable about U.S. public opinion on global warming has been both its stability and its inelasticity in response to new developments, greater scientific understanding of the problem, and greater attention from both the media and politicians. Public opinion about global warming has remained largely unchanged through periods of intensive media attention and periods of neglect, good economic times and bad, the relatively activist Clinton years and the skeptical Bush years. And majorities of Americans have, at least in principle, consistently supported government action to do something about global warming even if they were not entirely sold that the science was settled, suggesting that public understanding and acceptance of climate science may not be a precondition for supporting action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The more complicated questions have to do with why. Why have Americans been so consistently supportive of action to address climate change yet so weakly committed? Why has two decades of education and advocacy about climate change had so little discernible impact on public opinion? And why, at the height of media coverage and publicity about global warming in the years after the release of Gore’s movie, did confidence in climate science actually appear to decline?

Political psychology can help us answer these questions. First, climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy. Coal executives may deny that global warming exists, but at the end of the day they’re just in it for a buck, not hiding in caves in Pakistan plotting new and exotic ways to kill us.

Second, the dominant climate change solutions run up against established ideologies and identities. Consider the psychological concept of “system justification.” System justification theory builds upon earlier work on ego justification and group justification to suggest that many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.

Many observers have suggested that Gore’s leading role in the global warming debate has had much to do with the rising partisan polarization around the issue. And while this almost certainly has played a part, it is worth considering that there may be other significant psychological dynamics at play as well.

Dr. John Jost, a leading political psychologist at New York University, recently demonstrated that much of the partisan divide on global warming can be explained by system justification theory. Calls for economic sacrifice, major changes to our lifestyles, and the immorality of continuing “business as usual” — such as going on about the business of our daily lives in the face of looming ecological catastrophe — are almost tailor-made to trigger system justification among a substantial number of Americans.

Combine these two psychological phenomena — a low sense of imminent threat (what psychologists call low-threat salience) and system justification — and what you get is public opinion that is highly resistant to education or persuasion. Most Americans aren’t alarmed enough to pay much attention, and efforts to raise the volume simply trigger system-justifying responses. The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people. In fact, the louder and more alarmed climate advocates become in these efforts, the more they polarize the issue, driving away a conservative or moderate for every liberal they recruit to the cause.

These same efforts to increase salience through offering increasingly dire prognosis about the fate of the planet (and humanity) have also probably undermined public confidence in climate science. Rather than galvanizing public demand for difficult and far-reaching action, apocalyptic visions of global warming disaster have led many Americans to question the science. Having been told that climate science demands that we fundamentally change our way of life, many Americans have, not surprisingly, concluded that the problem is not with their lifestyles but with what they’ve been told about the science. And in this they are not entirely wrong, insofar as some prominent climate advocates, in their zeal to promote action, have made representations about the state of climate science that go well beyond any established scientific consensus on the subject, hyping the most dire scenarios and most extreme recent studies, which are often at odds with the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

These factors predate but appear to have been exacerbated by recession. Pew’s pollster Kohut points to evidence indicating that the recession has led many Americans to prioritize economic over environmental concerns and that this in turn has probably translated into greater skepticism about the scientific basis for environmental action. But notably, both the Pew and Gallup data show that the trend of rising skepticism about climate science and declining concern about global warming significantly predate the financial crisis. Pew found that from July 2006 to April 2008, prior to the recession, belief that global warming was occurring declined from 79 percent to 71 percent and belief that global warming was a very or somewhat serious problem declined from 79 percent to 73 percent. Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who believed that news of global warming was exaggerated rose from 30 percent in March of 2006 to 35 percent in March of 2008. So while these trends have accelerated over the last 18 months, they were clearly present in prior years.

Perhaps we should give the American public a little more credit. They may not know climate science very well, but they are not going to be muscled into accepting apocalyptic visions about our planetary future — or embracing calls to radically transform “our way of life” — just because environmentalists or climate scientists tell them they must. They typically give less credit to expert opinion than do educated elites, and those of us who tend to pay more attention to these questions would do well to remember that expert opinion and indeed, expert consensus, has tended to have a less sterling track record than most of us might like to admit.

At the same time, significant majorities of Americans are still prepared to support reasonable efforts to reduce carbon emissions even if they have their doubts about the science. They may be disinclined to tell pollsters that the science is settled, just as they are not inclined to tell them that evolution is more than a theory. But that doesn’t stop them from supporting the teaching of evolution in their schools. And it will not stop them from supporting policies to reduce carbon emissions — so long as the costs are reasonable and the benefits, both economic and environmental, are well-defined.

Over the years, The Nation and I have closely tracked the heroic work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) as they have fought to protect agriculture workers in the fields of Florida from exploitation. CIW has exposed cases of slavery and worked with the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute them. It has carried out a Campaign for Fair Food to raise wages and improve working conditions. In short, it has led a movement that recognizes the dignity of the people who harvest the food we eat, and rewards and protects their labor.

In recent years, the organization has focused on obtaining “penny per pound” pay raises for tomato workers from major food retailers that purchase the produce. It doesn’t sound like much, but it would result in about a 75 percent wage increase–from $10,000 annually to $17,000–significantly improving workers’ living and working conditions, and making them less vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and traffickers. CIW struck penny per pound deals with McDonalds, Burger King, and Yum! Brands (whose subsidiaries include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s and A&W) after long, hard fought campaigns.

But the community-based farmworker organization has reached a new milestone with its latest victory.

On Friday in Capitol Hill, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis attended a press conference along with representatives of CIW and the world’s largest food service company, Compass Group, to announce that the company will pay an extra 1.5 cents per pound of tomatoes that it purchases annually, with one cent per pound going directly to the farmworkers. Compass Group purchases over 10 million pounds of tomatoes every year, and serves 6 million meals at over 10,000 locations every day.

But the key difference between this agreement and previous ones is that Compass Group will only purchase tomatoes from Florida if there is a grower or growers willing to implement the pay raise and a “code of conduct” which includes: a system of clocking in and out to accurately record working hours; the ability of workers to voice labor and safety concerns without fear of retribution; freedom for CIW to educate workers on their rights on company time and at the worksite; and third party auditing for full transparency. If no Florida grower were to step up to these Fair Food standards, Compass Group would remove tomatoes from its menus and use the absence to educate customers about the working conditions that led the company to make this decision.

In the previous agreements brokered by CIW, the food retailers didn’t take this extra step of mandating that they would only purchase from socially responsible growers. That’s significant because the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE)–a trade association representing over 90 percent of the state’s growers–has threatened to fine any grower $100,000 for every worker that receives a penny per pound raise. The result? Growers refused to pass along the monies owed to the farmworkers so approximately $1.5 million is now held in escrow by the food retailers.

This time, however, Florida’s third largest grower–East Coast Growers and Packers–broke ranks, dropping out of the FTGE in order to participate in the new agreement between Compass Group and CIW. This was a courageous decision. The Madonia family which founded the farm 53 years ago (to the day of the press conference) will be ostracized by a rather tight-knit group of growers and lose the services of the trade association that represents them. But it will also gain the business of Compass Group and the corporations that signed onto the previous agreements–because all of the CIW-brokered contracts require the companies to preferentially purchase from any grower who is willing to meet the specified Fair Food standards.

“The contracts are designed to move the demand of the largest tomato buyers in such a way as to reward those growers who are paying and treating their workers better and take business away from those who don’t,” explained CIW staff member Greg Asbed.

At the press conference, Lucas Benitez, co-founder of CIW and recipient of the 2003 RFK Human Rights Award, said: “The future of Florida agriculture is contained in this agreement. And that future is founded on mutual respect and mutual benefit. It’s a future based on common purpose in which farmworkers, growers, and leaders in the retail food industry, and consumers, will create together a true social responsibility…. It’s a future that guarantees that both businesses and workers can receive benefits from a more fair industry.”

“This is a great victory for the farmworkers,” said Secretary Solis. “When my father came to this country as an immigrant, he also came as a farmworker…. My mother toiled in an assembly line for almost twenty years…. What I remember most importantly about what they instilled in the family is that you respect work, honor the worker. To know that wherever you work there should always be dignity and respect…. I feel very, very honored to be here today to be able to see that such progress has been made at this local level. And I hope to be a part of this partnership so that we can extend this kind of progress throughout the country.”

Indeed the vision that CIW has pursued and is beginning to see come to fruition is an inspiring one, and a model for the nation.

“I want to see more of this happen, way beyond just the agriculture arena, but also in the service sector fields where you see a lot of people of similar backgrounds being taken advantage of,” Secretary Solis said after the press conference. She indicated that the new Administration was providing “more incentive for these kinds of cooperative agreements to come about.”

“In the previous administration, we didn’t have much enforcement or visibility by the Department of Labor, and Wage and Hour, and OSHA,” she said. “Now you will see a difference.”

There is still work to be done in Florida–the FTGE still stands in the way of growers who might not possess the same kind of courage as East Coast Growers. Will the Department of Labor get involved to help growers who want to do the right thing? “We’ll look at ways,” said Secretary Solis. “…This is a moral issue–one about fairness in the workplace and dignity and respect for those workers that bring the food items that…[are] served to the consumer.”

CIW now has the four largest restaurant companies in the world, the largest foodservice company in the world, and the largest organic grocer signed on to its Fair Food contracts, with more undoubtedly to come. A major grower has now quit the draconian FTGE and will soon be rewarded by the market for doing so.

“The flood wall can’t hold forever,” Asbed said. “This would seem to be the start of the ‘mighty stream’ that we have been waiting for.”

An oil trading firm has agreed to pay more than $46m (£28m) compensation to people in Ivory Coast who say they were made ill by dumped waste in 2006.

Trafigura, with offices in London, Amsterdam and Geneva, said 30,000 people will each receive $1,546 (£950).

The money is in addition to the nearly $200m that the company paid the Ivorian government in 2007.

Trafigura and the plaintiffs’ lawyers agreed that a link between the dumped waste and deaths had not been proved.

A joint statement by the company and the British lawyers representing the Ivorians, Leigh Day and Co, said at worst the waste had caused flu-like symptoms.

‘Vindicated’

A victims’ spokesman has criticised the agreement, saying the compensation was insufficient.

“The cost of medication spent over three years goes much beyond that amount,” Toxic Waste Victims’ Association head Ouattara Aboubabacar told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

He believes the suffering may be continuing today.

Trafigura said it had been completely vindicated by the agreement.

However, the company still faces legal action in the Netherlands over the case.

The chemical waste was generated by Trafigura and transported to Ivory Coast on a ship called Probo Koala.

In August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was dumped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast.

In the weeks that followed the dumping, tens of thousands of people reported a range of similar symptoms, including breathing problems, sickness and diarrhoea.

UN report

On Wednesday a United Nations report suggested a strong link between at least 15 deaths and toxic waste dumps.

The report said there is “strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping of the waste from the cargo ship”.

Trafigura criticised the UN report as premature and inaccurate, saying: “We are appalled at the basic lack of balance and analytical rigour reflected in the report.”

Trafigura has always insisted it was not responsible for the dumping of the waste, as this was carried out by a subcontractor.

It also denies that the waste – gasoline residues mixed with caustic washings – could have led to the serious illnesses the residents claim, which include skin burns, bleeding and breathing problems.

In 2007 it paid nearly $200m to the Ivorian government to “compensate the victims” among other things.

The government-administered fund paid compensation to the families of 16 people whose deaths they believed were caused by the waste.

Havana is hosting the biggest open-air concert since the 1959 revolution, featuring some 15 top Latin American, Spanish and Cuban performers.

Hundreds of thousands of people – many wearing white – are attending the free event in Revolution Square, Havana.

Colombian singer Juanes, who organised the “Peace without Borders” concert, has received death threats from Miami-based critics of the Cuban regime.

But he has won support from 20 high-profile jailed dissidents inside Cuba.

The BBC’s Michael Voss at the concert says there is a mood of excitement, as many residents of the isolated, music-loving island have never seen anything like it before.

AT THE SCENE
Michael Voss
Michael Voss, BBC News, Revolution Square
It’s absolutely packed here. There’s never been a free open-air concert like it ever before.

When Pope Jean Paul II gave his historic mass in this same place just over 10 years ago, there was about 250,000 people here. We estimate there is double that number here now.

This is the centre of power here in Cuba. Normally when I come here, it is to cover the big May Day parades and there are red flags everywhere.

Now, everyone is wearing white. There are white flags, white shirts. That’s the message – Peace without Borders.

He says people have travelled from across the island to attend.

Organisers said some 500,000 people were expected.

But our reporter says heat is a problem. He has seen a lot of people being carried away on stretchers.

“Together, we are going to make history,” said Puerto Rican singer Olga Tanon, as she opened the concert with the love song, Es Mentiroso Ese Hombre (That Man is a Liar).

“We’ve been here since 0300 waiting for everyone, waiting for Juanes and for Olga Tanon,” Luisa Maria Canales, an 18-year-old engineering student, told the AP news agency.

“I’m a little tired, but I am more excited.”

While critics have complained that Juanes is endorsing the island’s communist system, the dissidents say the concert is an opportunity for reconciliation.

Woman dancing

In pictures: Cuban peace concert

Juanes said the show was about peace and tolerance, not politics.

“It’s a message of peace, not only for Cuba. It’s for the entire region,” he said.

He added that preparations for the concert had not been easy, but “we have all got over our fears”.

Our reporter notes that the location of the free concert is highly symbolic.

The headquarters of the communist party is in Revolution Square, along with a giant metal sculpture of Che Guevara’s head.

The square was used by Fidel Castro to give five-hour speeches, and is also where Pope John Paul II held a historic open air mass in 1998.

Among the artists taking part on Sunday are Spain’s Miguel Bose, Olga Tanon from Puerto Rico, the Cuban performers Silvio Rodriguez and Los Van Van.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — In Pakistan’s combustible Swat Valley, some girls refuse to wear uniforms so they can make it to school without being harmed.

Other girls hide textbooks in their shawls to escape harassment.

School-age girls are among the victims in the fierce fighting between government soldiers and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley. The Pakistani government said it has flushed much of the Taliban out of the area, but some fighting persists.

Many girls remain banned from schools. Dozens of their schools have been bombed, and militants have burned books.

A new program has taken 26 girls out of the battle-scarred region to Islamabad for a 10-day retreat, where they can learn in safer surroundings.

A group of college students of Pakistani background is helping the girls. Among them are Shiza Shahid, 20, from California’s Stanford University, who organized the program called Shajar-e-llm, or Tree of Knowledge.

Shahid said she was moved to help after hearing about how the girls struggled to get an education.

“I think we were so angry, upset and emotional that we decided we have to do something,” she said. Video Watch as Shahid says she had to act to help the girls »

Though well-intentioned, the program sometimes seems disorganized.

“We need support. We need unfortunately more organization, more of the bureaucratic nitty-gritty that you don’t want to do, but you have to,” Shahid said. “We are young, and that does come with the burden as not being equally trusted or seen as capable.”

Nonetheless, the group has ambitions for a boys’ learning retreat as well.

The lessons are simple enough — confidence-building exercises, critical-thinking lessons — all framed in the context of Islamic values.

The girls — ages 11 to 14 — spoke about their dreams. One wants to meet a poet; another wants to learn calligraphy. Another wants to grow up to lead Pakistan.

“I want to become president and rule this country in a good way,” said 12-year-old Malila.

One day during the retreat, the girls were taught a song about freedom of speech. As a guitarist strummed, the girls sang that God gives everyone the right to free speech and no one can take it away.

Free speech seemed to end with the song, however. The girls could not risk talking about Taliban harassment, because the militants’ version of Islamic law lingers. Such Islamic law, or shariah, also keeps females from going to school or going outside without their husbands.

The United Nations estimates that 375,000 Swat Valley residents fled their homes during fighting that started in April. In all, 2.5 million Pakistanis were displaced in what was said to be one of the largest human migrations in recent history.

Many residents have returned to their homes, but peace has not been completely restored to the region.

And soon, the girls at the learning retreat will return home to the Swat Valley as well.
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Organizers said they hope the girls will carry a new love for education.

“There were tears and there were tough moments,” said Madihah Akhter, a volunteer with the program. “But the girls surprised me. They were really resilient. They were beyond their years.”