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Shut Out of Treaty Summit, Campaigners Call for Elimination of Plastic Sachets
"Plastic pollution is a global crisis, fueled by our addiction to single-use plastics," said one organizer.
Aug 23, 2024
Amid concerns over the exclusion of Indigenous leaders, environmental advocates, and scientists from a four-day summit beginning Saturday in Bangkok to help advance a global plastics treaty, campaigners on Friday called on the political leaders and experts who will be in attendance to develop "robust criteria" to eliminate single-use plastics by drastically cutting down on their production.
Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) led a call for delegates, who will represent United Nations member states, to focus the talks on single-use plastics like sachets—small, sealed pouches and packets that have flooded markets in Asia and much of the Global South as businesses see them as affordable and convenient.
"Plastic pollution is a global crisis, fueled by our addiction to single-use plastics," said Von Hernandez, global coordinator of BFFP. "The solution is clear: Eliminate these nonessential products and reinstate reuse and refill systems which have been in place before our markets were overwhelmed with sachets and other disposable plastics."
A 2020 report by GAIA found that sachets account for an estimated 52% of the residual plastic waste stream and increasingly "defile the natural landscape, choke waterways, harm wildlife, and threaten livelihoods like tourism and fisheries."
Multinational corporations that sell fast-moving consumer goods like soda, chewing gum, and over-the-counter medications are major contributors to what GAIA called the "sachet economy," which has led to one of the most common types of plastic pollution in Africa and Southeast Asia.
"It is essential to reject the empty promises of petrochemical and fossil fuel industries who pursue profit over our collective welfare and avoid ineffective technologies like plastic credits and chemical recycling."
Tara Buakamsri, country director for Greenpeace Thailand, expressed hope that the Thai government will use the upcoming meeting as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the plastic crisis by championing a global plastics treaty that limits production and bans single-use plastics."
"It is essential to reject the empty promises of petrochemical and fossil fuel industries who pursue profit over our collective welfare and avoid ineffective technologies like plastic credits and chemical recycling," said Buakamsri.
The meeting is the latest step in a treaty process that began in 2022, when countries agreed to hold talks hammering out the first legally binding treaty to stop plastic pollution.
The final treaty negotiations are set for November 25-December 1 in Busan, South Korea.
At the meeting in Bangkok, policymakers aim to "identify criteria for plastic products, chemicals, and product design, as well as potential sources and means of implementation for a plastics treaty, including financial mechanisms," according to BFFP.
But civil society groups have denounced the U.N. for including in the talks only two dozen invited technical experts and members of national delegations—who include plastic and oil industry representatives, in the case of countries such as China and Iran.
Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), told campaigners in a letter last month that countries had not agreed to allow observers to participate in the talks.
"Civil society and rights holders, including Indigenous peoples, must be recognized as essential stakeholders," said Dharmesh Shah of the Civil Society and Rights Holder Coalition on Plastics Treaty. "We are deeply disappointed that the INC Secretariat and [U.N. Environment Program] have not shifted their stance on observer participation despite multiple representations from the civil society and rights holders groups."
"The exclusion of these constituencies," added Shah, "disregards the fundamental human right to participation in environmental decision-making, a right that is vital for ensuring that the voices of all stakeholders, especially those most affected, are heard and respected."
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'A Sigh of Relief' as Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Rescued After Harrowing Sea Journeys
However, around 180 other Rohingya are feared dead amid reports their overcrowded boat sank after setting sail from Bangladesh earlier this month.
Dec 28, 2022
The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province was praised Tuesday as "an act of humanity" by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that's been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that "Indonesia has helped to save 472 people in the past six weeks from four boats, showing its commitment and respect of basic humanitarian principles for people who face persecution and conflict."
"We feel like we got a new world today... We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us."
"UNHCR urges other states to follow this example. Many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help," the Geneva-based agency added. "States in the region must fulfill their legal obligations by saving people on boats in distress to avoid further misery and deaths."
Ann Maymann, the UNHCR representative in Indonesia, said in a statement that "we welcome this act of humanity by local communities and authorities in Indonesia."
"These actions help to save human lives from certain death, ending torturous ordeals for many desperate people," she added.
\u201cPengungsi Muslim Rohingya Myanmar di Pantai Gampong Ujong Pi'e Muara Tiga Laweung Pidie @Aceh\u201d— Aceh (@Aceh) 1672056262
The Syndey Morning Heraldreports residents of Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh, rushed to help 58 Malaysia-bound Rohingya men who arrived Sunday in a rickety wooden boat, many of them severely dehydrated and starving.
The following day, 174 more starving Rohingya men, women, and children, were helped ashore by local authorities and fishers after more than a month at sea.
Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, whose 27-year-old sister Hatamonesa was aboard the boat with her 5-year-old daughter, told Pakistan's Arab News that "we feel like we got a new world today."
“We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us," he said of his family. Speaking of his sister, he added that "she thought that she would die in the voyage at sea."
\u201cStarvation, hunger and dehydration made them half. Rohingya betting their lives for survival by taking the dangerous journey via sea\u201d— Aung Kyaw Moe (@Aung Kyaw Moe) 1672113525
Babar Baloch, the UNHCR regional spokesperson in Bangkok, stated that 26 people had died aboard the rescued vessel, which left Bangladesh a month ago.
"We were raising alarm about this boat in early December because we had information that it was in the regional waters at least at the end of November," he said. "So when we first got reports that it was somewhere near the coast of Thailand, we approached authorities asking them to help, then when it was moving towards Indonesia and Malaysia we did the same."
"After its engine failure and it was drifting in the sea, there were reports of this boat being spotted close to Indian waters and we approached and asked them as well and we were also in touch with authorities in Sri Lanka," Baloch continued.
"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well."
According to the BBC, the Indian navy appears to have towed the boat into Indonesian waters after giving its desperate passengers some food and water. The boat drifted for another six days before it was allowed to land.
"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well," Baloch said. "It is an act in support of humanity, there's no other way to describe it."
Relatives of around 180 other Rohingya who left Bangladesh on December 2 said Tuesday that they fear the overcrowded vessel has sunk in the Andaman Sea. Mohammad Noman, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, toldThe Guardian that his sister was aboard the boat with her two daughters, who are 5 and 3 years old.
"Every day we called up the boat two or three times on the boatman's satellite phone to find out if my sister and her two daughters were all right. Since December 8, I have failed to get access to that phone," he said. "I know some other people in Cox's Bazar who made phone calls to the boat every day and stayed in contact with their relatives there. None of them has succeeded to reach the phone after December 8."
\u201cAt least 180 Rohingya feared dead says U.N. refugee agency. Countries in the region fail to assist in locating and rescuing those stranded, passing the buck despite risk of lives lost https://t.co/Pm0IzpVNiP\u201d— meenakshi ganguly (@meenakshi ganguly) 1672111094
The captain of another vessel transporting Rohingya refugees said he saw the distressed boat swept up in stormy seas sometime during the second week of December.
"It was around 2:00 am when a strong wind began blowing and big waves surfaced on the sea. [Their] boat began swaying wildly, we could gauge from a flashlight they were pointing at us," he told The Guardian. "After some time, we could not see the flashlight anymore. We believe the boat drowned then."
More than a million Rohingya Muslims are crowded into squalid refugee camps in southern Bangladesh after having fled ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and other violence and repression in Rakhine state, Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Since 2020, thousands of Rohingya have fled the camps by sea.
\u201cWho are the #Rohingya\u201d— Protect The Rohingya (@Protect The Rohingya) 1672070107
Hundreds have died during the perilous journey. If the sinking of the boat with 180 aboard is confirmed, it would make 2022 the deadliest year for Rohingya at sea, according to UNHCR.
UNHCR's Baloch stressed that "countries and states in the region have international obligations to help desperate people."
"We have been calling on states to go after people smugglers and human traffickers as they are responsible for putting people on those death-trap boats, but victims have to be saved and saving human life is the most important act," he told the Morning Herald.
"The refugee issue and saving lives cannot just be left to one country, it has to be done collectively, together in the region," he added.
Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.
"Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees," he told the Morning Herald.
"These people are facing genocide in Burma," Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. "It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there."
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