November, 25 2018, 11:00pm EDT
Interior's Plan to Destroy Public Records is "Unacceptable"
Interior’s request for permission to destroy certain records comes as Zinke’s department has failed at transparency
WASHINGTON
Today, Western Values Project (WVP) submitted a formal comment to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requesting that they not grant the Interior Department's request to delete public records. Interior's request comes as the department and Secretary Zinke have dragged their feet responding to and in some cases simply failed to provide responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Today is the last day for the public to submit comments to NARA on Interior's request.
Interior is seeking permission from NARA to permanently destroy a range of records relating to oil and gas leases sales, legal matters, mineral exploration permits, and fish and wildlife surveys, among other issues. WVP's comment asserts that extensive record keeping is essential to holding Interior accountable by ensuring they are doing the public's work properly and legally.
"This is pretty rich coming from someone who claimed he would run the most transparent Interior Department in his lifetime. But as Ryan Zinke's future remains in question, we are not surprised by his attempt to rewrite history," said Chris Saeger, Executive Director of Western Values Project. "It's unacceptable that Interior is already turning their efforts to destroying documents when they can't even respond to the public records requests they have coming in. Despite his claims to the contrary, Zinke is trying yet again to pull wool over the eyes of the American people by keeping the public in the dark while his department wages attacks on public lands and wildlife."
WVP's comment points out that since the beginning of the Trump administration, Secretary Zinke's Interior Department has only fulfilled 10.53 percent of FOIA requests that WVP submitted. 132 FOIA requests that WVP has submitted to Interior are still outstanding, including FOIA requests that are 18 months old, dating all the way to May 2017.
The unfulfilled requests have forced WVP to sue the department, with multiple lawsuits still ongoing.
Earlier this year, Interior accidentally released thousands of pages in response to a FOIA request that were supposed to be redacted: the accidentally-revealed documents showed that as Zinke conducted his national monuments review, his staff "rejected material that would justify keeping protections in place" and instead looked for evidence that supported rolling back public lands protections.
Zinke has also kept the public in the dark by using a secret calendar and releasing incredibly vague calendars to the public.
Read Western Values Project's full email to NARA here.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
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"As this legislative cycle starts, the E.U. can and must do better than abandon its commitment to the global refugee protection regime," said an Amnesty campaigner.
Jul 09, 2024
Nearly 100 human rights organizations came together Tuesday to emphasize that members of the European Union "must guarantee the right to seek and enjoy asylum and uphold their commitments to the international refugee protection system."
The joint statement from groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam came as members of the European Parliament prepare for the July 16 plenary sitting, the first meeting scheduled since the bloc's June elections, which resulted in the far-right "Patriots for Europe" becoming the third-largest alliance in the legislative body.
The human rights coalition underscored obligations under Article 18 of the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights and expressed concern about "the recent and increasing attempts by the E.U. and its member states to evade their asylum responsibilities by outsourcing asylum processing and refugee protection risk undermining the international protection system."
As the groups detailed:
Italy, for instance, is currently seeking to process asylum applications of certain groups of asylum-seekers outside of its territory, from detention in Albania—which risks leading to prolonged, automatic detention, a denial of access to fair asylum procedures with necessary procedural guarantees, and delayed disembarkation for people rescued or intercepted at sea. Others, such as Denmark and Germany, are assessing the feasibility of this type of arrangement. Fifteen E.U. member states and some political groups have endorsed similar shortsighted measures to shift asylum processing outside E.U. territory and encouraged the European Commission to explore ways to facilitate this through further legislative reform, including through a watered-down 'safe third country' concept.
These attempts must be seen in the context of parallel containment efforts that seek to stem departures and prevent the arrival of asylum-seekers to E.U. territory through partnership agreements with third countries, with little to no attention to the human rights records of those authorities.
The coalition stressed that "as the extensive track record of human rights violations in partner countries such as Libya demonstrates, the E.U. and Member States have no adequate tools and competencies to effectively monitor or enforce human rights standards outside of E.U. territory."
A report published in November by Doctors Without Borders features stories of violence that migrants endured in nations including Libya and Tunisia while trying to get to the E.U. That publication also points out that 2023 was the deadliest year for migration in the Central Mediterranean since 2017, due in part to E.U. countries failing to assist those at risk of drowning.
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The organizations also pointed to an asylum scheme attempted by the United Kingdom—which left the E.U. in 2020 following the 2016 Brexit vote—and Rwanda, which the statement notes "is not yet in effect following the U.K. Supreme Court declaring it unlawful and in any event is unlikely to be operationalized at any significant scale."
The U.K.'s failed attempt to forcibly remove people to the African country was "projected to cost a staggering £1.8 million per asylum-seeker returned," which is equal to €2.13 million or $2.3 million. The coalition called such schemes "not only an unjustifiable waste of public money, but also a lost opportunity to spend it in ways that would truly aid people seeking asylum by investing in fair and humane asylum systems and the communities that welcome them."
Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty's E.U. advocate on migration and asylum, said in a statement Tuesday that "attempts by states to outsource their asylum responsibilities to other countries are not new—but have long been criticized, condemned, and rejected for good reason."
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Responding to an application for a protective action filed by the Kitu Kara Indigenous people, a Quito judge on Friday found that municipal authorities are responsible for violating the Machángara River's rights and ordered officials to devise a decontamination plan.
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Kitu Kara organizer Darío Iza said in a statement that "this is historic because the river runs right through Quito, and because of its influence, people live very close to it."
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The militaries of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries emitted an estimated 233 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023, a sharp uptick that exacerbates climate breakdown and serves only to enrich weapons manufacturers, according to a briefing issued Monday by the Transnational Institute, a research and advocacy organization, and several other nonprofits.
The 32 national militaries together emitted more carbon than the country of Colombia, which has a population of about 52 million people, the briefing says. NATO countries' military spending increased from about $1.21 trillion in 2022 to $1.34 trillion in 2023, thanks in part to the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. TNI used a spend-emission conversion factor to estimate the carbon cost of the spending.
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If NATO members increase their spending to 2% of GDP in the next five years, they will divert an estimated additional US$2.57 trillion away from climate spending. This would be enough to pay for climate adaptation costs for all low- and middle-income countries for seven years. pic.twitter.com/7KJkqutYXS
— Transnational Institute (@TNInstitute) July 9, 2024
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Source: Transnational Institute
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