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Human Rights

The undermining of fundamental human rights in the Delta has been both an outcome and a driving factor of violent instability in the region.

Civil society has been severely compromised and now lacks the capacity to adequately promote understanding and observance of fundamental rights. In the absence of effective education or advocacy around rights, violence is increasingly being adopted as a means of social expression and a vehicle of political intervention.

SDN's initiative, Groundwork, in the next three years will develop an educational, documentational and implementational framework designed to boost and sustain the capacities of civil society to advance and protect key civil, cultural, economic, environmental, political and social rights.

The aim of SDN's work is to improve understanding and documentation of human rights in the Niger Delta by civil society actors and to foster a grassroots network, with international support, that reinforces the application of human rights in daily life.

Learn more about human rights

Voluntary or Regulatory

In complex and violent situations like the Niger Delta multinational oil companies are more likely to support voluntary initiatives that are designed to uphold rights, rather than binding legal obligations.

SDN recognises the potential of voluntary initiatives and believes that they should be rigorously tested in areas like the Niger Delta to see if they merit support.

Voluntary initiatives should only be written off and regulatory mechanism developed, once voluntary process have been proven to fail. Human rights are far too important to be turned into an academic debate - it is the impact that initiatives have on the ground that is most important.

With this in mind SDN has teamed up with IKV Pax Christi to identify local perceptions to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. SDN is keen to work with other groups who want to test the OECD guidelines on multinationals and other voluntary human rights mechanisms.

Read the SDN and Pax Christi's report: The Process: 'Local Perspectives on Security and Human Rights'